Night 22 of 31 Nights of Horror

This movie is surprisingly ahead of it’s time. It’s about an AI that takes control of a smart home and kidnaps the woman who lives there, and it was made almost 50 years ago. Although, people back then obviously thought we’d be further along technologically than we actually are. This smart home was making drinks for people and opening doors, while I still can’t get Alexa to just remove the picture-in-picture on my Fire TV after my Blink doorbell rings (all three are Amazon products by the way).

At it’s heart, Demon Seed is a mad scientist/monster story a la Frankenstein, set in the budding computer age. I loved the initial robot body that Proteus builds for itself. It shows imagination on the part of the writers to not go the obvious humanoid route, and instead a collection of interconnected triangles that allowed it to re-configure it’s shape. TARS from Interstellar reminds me of it in a way.

The movie was well done and I enjoyed it, but I didn’t love it. I’m not sure why exactly, but I didn’t get as strong a feeling of menace from the AI as I should. Many of the scenes are disturbing, but… I don’t know. I can think of other films with computer villains that felt far more unsettling and creepy, like HAL from 2001 or GERTY from Moon. Maybe it was the lighting, the editing, pacing, the voice acting? Maybe all of it. It wasn’t bad, don’t get the wrong impression, I just felt, in comparison to other movies I’ve seen, it could have been stronger.

Demon Seed is currently streaming for free on Tubi in Canada, so you can check it out for yourself if you feel like it.