ROMI Featured, Reviews Film Threat
The greatest strength of Robert Cuffley’s ROMI is its social poignancy. It taps into a burgeoning movement of films that focus on rogue technology, specifically the danger of AI assistants. Cuffley uses his cutting-edge visual identity to convincingly combine the tone of a crime thriller with the horror of a malicious AI. However, despite its thematic strengths, the film has a number of pacing and narrative issues that prevent it from achieving true cult status. ROMI follows the 23-year-old Maddi (Alexa Barajas), an aimless young woman whose parents’ political connections are enabling her going-nowhere life. After fleeing the scene of a hit-and-run, Maddie is forced to hide from the authorities in an isolated smart home powered by a state-of-the-art AI named Romi. But it is only upon Maddie’s arrival at the house that she realizes Romi isn’t working as intended.
The film is almost entirely confined to the interior of the smart house, creating not only claustrophobia but also a palpable sense of periodic confinement. Caffrey quickly and deftly traces the interior of the house to the viewer, making it feel familiar. It also establishes an elegant aesthetic that is cleverly reminiscent of modern smartphones. Within these parameters, Caffrey attempts cinematography in a variety of interesting ways. He often frames shots off-center, inserts dark hallways, or splits the screen between Maddie and an empty room, beautifully hinting at the presence of the macabre while also adding to the otherwise ordinary moments. Gives a sense of tension.
The lead actress also gives an impressive performance, acting alone for long periods of time and becoming increasingly unstable. Solid supporting performances from the rest of the cast complete the whole thing. Each character brings a distinct personality and recognizable perspective to the idea of ROMI. These characters come in and out of the house, creating a sense of calm and tension that gives the film an appealing theatrical quality. Where ROMI falls short, however, is in underutilizing these characters and stories. The screenplay by Susie Moloney is fairly generic. Each character is unique, but their interactions follow a certain repeating pattern. This creates a sense of redundancy and delays the film’s middle act. Despite there being an interesting conceit at the heart of ROMI’s story, it is rarely explored. There is also a veiled social commentary present in the film, but it, too, is lazily navigated. These issues are emphasized by a climax that, while surprising, is as tiring as it is convenient.
These criticisms don’t make ROMI obsolete, but they hinder what could have been a memorable piece of genre cinema. ROMI lacks the key element that a horror film needs to be fully realized: novelty. While the film certainly has some exciting moments, the mystery that Caffrey deftly evokes doesn’t have the same compelling impact. After all, ROMI seems all too familiar to me. This is just another ghost story with a technological shell.