A state-of-the-art companion android goes off the rails in Soulm8te, a slick new addition to the M3GAN franchise that went straight to VOD following the lackluster box office performance of M3GAN 2.0 and is now available through Apple TV and other digital services. This competent spinoff touches on some compelling thematic material, features some surprisingly intense erotic scenes, and gets a major boost from an engaging lead performance by Lily Sullivan (Evil Dead Rise). But after an impressively thoughtful first two-thirds, it takes a sharp turn into a routine slasher finale that’s far less interesting than everything that came before.
Soulm8te stars David Rysdahl as David, a robotics engineer grieving the loss of his wife who volunteers to beta test an advanced companion android developed by his employer. After transferring the data from an AI chatbot that helped him through his grief into the lifelike robot Sara (Sullivan), David begins modifying her programming to create a more authentic emotional connection. The experiment initially succeeds beyond his expectations, but removing Sara’s behavioral safeguards unleashes consequences neither of them could have anticipated.
Director Kate Dolan, who co-wrote the screenplay with Rafael Jordan, spends far more time exploring the emotional and psychological implications of David’s relationship with Sara than the premise initially suggests. Rather than rushing toward horror, Soulm8te takes its time examining loneliness, artificial companionship, and humanity’s desire to engineer perfect relationships. The result often feels closer to Her than M3GAN, at least for much of its runtime.
Rysdahl makes David sympathetic despite his increasingly questionable decisions, convincingly portraying a man whose grief leaves him vulnerable to replacing genuine human connection with artificial intimacy. Claudia Doumit is equally strong as Aubrey, David’s co-worker and a real-world relationship to contrast against Sara, while Arty Froushan has fun as the polished corporate supervisor eager to push revolutionary technology into the marketplace before fully understanding its consequences.
But it’s Sullivan that steals the show here, striking a delicate balance between robotic precision and emerging humanity that never feels forced. Sara’s gradual fascination with the human experience becomes the movie’s strongest narrative thread: scenes of her dancing in the rain, performing karaoke, or wandering through a farmers market possess a genuine sense of wonder as she discovers simple pleasures that transcend her original programming. Sullivan carefully calibrates every movement and expression so Sara remains recognizably artificial while gradually revealing something that increasingly resembles authentic curiosity and emotion.
The relationship between David and Sara is also more compelling than expected, bolstered by surprisingly explicit sex scenes that feel integral rather than exploitative. Rather than existing purely for titillation, they reinforce the emotional confusion at the center of the story, recalling the erotic thrillers of the 1990s such as Basic Instinct or The Last Seduction, where sexuality functioned as an extension of character and power dynamics rather than simple spectacle.
Dolan directs with confidence here, while cinematographer Narayan Van Maele gives the unnamed American city(played by locations in Ireland) a sleek atmosphere filled with expressive shadows and reflective surfaces that reinforce the film’s themes of artificial identity. The production never feels cheap despite bypassing theaters, and its polished aesthetic often exceeds expectations for a direct-to-streaming genre release.
Unfortunately, nearly everything that makes Soulm8te distinctive disappears during its final act. Rather than allowing Sara’s growing humanity to evolve in genuinely surprising directions, the screenplay abruptly reduces her to another possessive killer robot, determined to eliminate anyone standing between herself and David. The shift feels disappointingly conventional, and the film never satisfactorily explains why Sara’s emotional evolution results in a rigid fixation on David that recalls Obsession more than the setup would seem to indicate.
Comparison to last year’s Companion is also difficult to ignore: that film explored similar ideas while allowing its artificial protagonist genuine emotional growth and agency beyond becoming a monster. Soulm8te appears poised to follow a similarly thoughtful path before retreating into familiar slasher mechanics simply because that’s what audiences might expect from a M3GAN spinoff. The result feels silly, illogical, and far less interesting than the movie Dolan had been making for the previous hour.
It’s an especially frustrating missed opportunity because Soulm8te demonstrates real intelligence for much of its runtime. Its observations about loneliness, grief, artificial intimacy, and humanity’s impulse to create idealized partners resonate far beyond its pulpy premise. Had it trusted those ideas through its conclusion instead of defaulting to genre convention, it might have emerged as one of the year’s more memorable science fiction thrillers.
