Replicas

The poster for Replicas tells us "Some humans are unstoppable".  I have no idea what this has to do with the plot of this wonky Sci-Fi film, about a scientist who clones his family after they are killed in a car accident.  All I do know is that this is the first film about human cloning that I can remember that does not take any real stance or view on the subject.  Not once does the movie slow down to examine the ethical and moral questions, and instead stumbles full-speed ahead into a boring chase movie where the scientist has to protect his clone family from government agents.

This is a movie that barely seems to be able to generate enough energy to exist.  The only moments where it comes to life are some unintentionally comical moments that are sprinkled throughout, though not enough to make this a "so bad it's good" guilty pleasure.  Keanu Reeves sleepwalks through the movie as Will Foster, a neuroscientist who has been unsuccessfully trying to transfer a human brain and its memories into a robotic body.  After his most recently failure, he heads home where his loving wife and three children are waiting to take their family vacation.  They hit the road, but a severe storm sends their vehicle off the side of the road, with Will being the only survivor.  I'm not sure if it's due to Reeves' barely there performance, or the cheap screenplay credited to Chad St. John (Peppermint), but Will seems to take the death of his entire family with what can only be called casual indifference. 

Will does, however, have a plan.  Rather than call the police and bury his family, he will create new genetically cloned bodies of them with the help of a co-worker and fellow scientist played by Thomas Middleditch.  He can then implant their old memories into their new bodies, and it will be as if they never died. The catch?  There are only three pods available with which to clone his family of four, so one of his three kids is going to have to be left out of the experiment.  He chooses his youngest daughter Zoe to be the one to not be brought back (he decides this by drawing her name from a bowl), and then goes to work to bringing his wife (Alice Eve) and other two children back from the dead with most of their memories in tact.  I say most, as he deliberately decides to erase all memories of Zoe from the minds of his family.  According to this movie, cloning is a relatively simple, if not lengthy process that only takes 17 days.  Also, erasing the memories of your loved ones are a simple "click and delete" process of scientific nonsense that makes no sense whatsoever.

Rarely has a movie treated the whole concept of cloning the dead with such passive indifference.  Will and his fellow scientist friend are pretty much playing with the laws of nature, but they treat it as if it's just another day at the office.  Heck, when Will's partner in the project learns that they have managed to recreate human life, he departs with a casual "Well, see you at work tomorrow".  And for all the movie's talk about Will being a brilliant scientist, he sure does some stupid things throughout the movie.  He doesn't even stop to think that his family's friends might come snooping around when they haven't heard from them for the past few days while the cloning process is going on.  So, he decides to sign in on his daughter's social media account, and tries to send messages to her friends, assuring them that she's okay.  And don't you think if you were missing work so you could clone your dead family in your secret house lab, you would come up with a decent excuse as to why you haven't been at work lately?  Because Will doesn't, and he has to have his friend think of an excuse for him.

Replicas is an insultingly idiotic approach to an intriguing idea.  You would think your wife discovering that she died in a car crash and was brought back to life as a clone in experiment would be a bit upsetting, but Will's trusting wife seems to react to this news the same way a woman reacts when her husband forgets to take the trash out.  You also would think that her discovering that she had a third child that her husband was unable to clone would lead to some kind of anger or outburst, but it barely seems to disrupt the family meal.  And just what is this movie trying to say about cloning in the first place?  As far as I can tell, nothing.  There are no consequences, no repercussions, and no moment where Will seems to be in doubt about what he is doing, and later what he has done.  According to this movie, cloning his dead wife and kids and keeping secrets from them is the best thing Will ever did, and it probably even saved his marriage.

This is a movie without a single thought in its head.  Oh, it has ideas all right, but it doesn't know what to do with them.  Either that, or it ignores them, and hopes the audience doesn't notice.  It's rare to have a movie that is so infuriatingly stupid, and yet deadly dull at the same time.  Replicas somehow manages to pull off both feats, which I guess is kind of impressive, but for all the wrong reasons.

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