Life Like (2019) - Review
Plot
A young couple, James and Sophie, inherit a large estate and acquire Henry - a cutting-edge humanoid robot designed to manage the household. Henry is eerily human: articulate, attentive, emotionally perceptive. Sophie grows increasingly drawn to him - intellectually, emotionally, and eventually physically. James, threatened by the connection, spirals into jealousy. The film builds toward a reveal: Henry was never a machine. The company uses conditioned humans, not robots. The “android” was a person the entire time.
What This Film Is Actually About
Beneath the sci-fi surface, Life Like is an examination of how our behavior changes based on what we believe we’re interacting with. Sophie is reluctant to order around human servants but finds herself more open to it with Henry because she believes he’s a machine. Eventually Sophie permits herself a level of openness with Henry, that she doesn’t even with James, just because she thinks Henry is a machine. There’s no ego to bruise, no judgment to fear, no social contract to violate. The “machine” label gives her permission to be vulnerable.
James’s jealousy is equally revealing. He doesn’t feel threatened by a household appliance - he feels threatened once the interaction starts resembling a human relationship. He intellectually insists on Henry being a machine but he himself is not able to act on that belief either.
The film, despite being filmed before ChatGPT arrived to our phones, captures something true about how we interact with AI today: we say things to machines we wouldn’t say to people. We’re more honest, more open, less guarded. The question Life Like raises - perhaps unintentionally - is whether that openness is a bug or a feature. Should we fear those emotional connections to machines or embrace them?
What I Wish This Film Was About
In my opinion, the twist undermines the most interesting version of this story. By revealing Henry as human, the film retreats to safe territory: it was infidelity all along, not a genuine human-machine connection. The audience is let off the hook.
The braver film would have kept Henry as a machine and forced the characters - and the audience - to sit with the discomfort. What if Sophie genuinely preferred interacting with an AI? What if that preference wasn’t a pathology but a rational response to what the AI could provide that James couldn’t?
Even more interesting: could the two relationships coexist? Could James accept that the machine fills gaps he can’t, without it threatening the marriage? Could Sophie accept the same about herself without feeling guilty? Would a female robot body make James more comfortable with Sophie’s attachment to Henry? What if both partners had companion of the opposite sex? Could the marriage become stronger because neither person carried the impossible expectation of being everything to the other? What would the marriage look like if both partners had a machine companion? What would be the role of human to human connection in a world where machines are better companions?
I don’t have clean answers to most of these. I’m not sure anyone does yet. But the film doesn’t even try to ask them - it chose a plot twist over a thesis. The result is a movie that’s interesting to think about despite itself - the conversations it provokes are better than the conclusion it reaches.
Rating: 6/10 - compelling premise, cowardly ending