The once shelved Soulm8te is resurrected on VOD
The story of Soulm8te is a weird one. It was supposed to launch theatrically back in January, but presumably the abject box office failure of the second M3GAN movie last year made Universal a bit skeptical about its financial outlook. So the movie was unceremoniously scraped from the schedule and looked like it was going to be shelved indefinitely a’la Coyote vs. Acme.
Well, the plan apparently changed.
Sure, Soulm8te isn’t getting a full-fledged theatrical run like the aforementioned Coyote vs. Acme. But it was rescued from the ash heap of “lost media” when Universal opted to release the film directly to VOD earlier this month. I don’t think there’s much of a surprise as to why the studio had a sudden-about face regarding the film.
After all, in the interim, a little movie called Obsession happened.
Granted, comparing Soulm8te to Obsession isn’t exactly a one to one scenario. Yet the films are nonetheless thematically similar enough that you can’t help but see the proof in the pudding. If one movie about a murderous girlfriend makes a lot of money for one studio, you KNOW another studio is going to at least test the waters on another murderous girlfriend movie. And since Soulm8te was already in the can, why not take the path of least resistance here?
There’s nothing revolutionary about Soulm8te, even factoring in the “robot love substitute” motif — which we’ve already seen in Companion and Subservience. It’s a very by-the-numbers movie that takes few chances with the concept, to the point it almost feels like a mildly recycled version of the 2019 Child’s Play remake (albeit, with some obvious changes when it comes to sex, violence, and sexualized violence.) There’s even a scene where the titular Soulm8te android is corrupted by an influx of YouTube and Instagram videos, the very same way Chucky was turned “evil” in the ‘19 remake. I’m not saying it’s a completely reused script, but then again, I’m not saying it isn’t, either.
I feel like there was some iffy after the fact editing going on with this film. It’s technically set in the same cinematic universe as the M3GAN movies, but there’s no references to the previous two films at all (unless you want to count a few name drops of non-existent tech companies, and like hell I can remember what those were called.) It almost seems like they wiped out any and all explicit M3GAN shoutouts and tried to keep Soulm8te its own distinct thing. Which makes sense, considering this movie definitely strives for that hard R rating. It takes a while for Soulm8te to hit its stride, but when it gets gory, it gets VERY bloody. But then again, if you’re looking for taste and tact in a horror movie about killer sex robots, you already took a few wrong turns before you even hit play on your remote control.
The storyline is pretty basic. David Rysdahl plays a grieving engineer (weirdly enough, also named David) who can’t seem to get over the memory of his deceased wife. His robotics firm is bought out by an even more evil tech firm and they push him hard to tinker around with their proprietary Soulm8te technology and before long, he’s having an emotional affair with a ChatGPT algorithm. If you’ve seen Her, you’ve already seen this part of the movie.
You can figure out where this leads. Dave’s new boss tells him about their latest product — a shockingly lifelike android that looks, sounds, smells, tastes, feels and bumps uglies like a flesh and blood woman — that David names Sara. I think that’s supposed to be a joke, considering it’s literally a movie about rogue A.I. and the robot shares her name with the protagonist of the first two Terminator movies. Or maybe it’s a coincidence, who knows.
Sara is played by Lily Sullivan. To her credit, she is pretty good at playing a soulless sex android that can’t tell real life from TikTok reels. She speaks in a creepy monotone, customer service voice the entire movie and she always looks like she’s a Stepford Wife on the verge of a serious malfunction. Anyway, David doesn’t like her personality so he non-consensually tinkers with her microchips and turns her into a nymphomaniac fetish doll and … well, we’ve all seen Obsession and know where that leads.
Soulm8te, as uninspired as it is, still manages to sneak in a few halfway intellectual questions about free will and sexual autonomy. It’s not as pointed and meaningful as the stuff we got out of Obsession — you really can’t say this movie is about sexual coercion and abusive relationships, at least in the same degree — but it still touches upon a few similar issues and hot button topics. It’s not so much a movie about intrusive tech as it is intrusive men who think they are obligated to female bodies, even when the bodies are made on an assembly line. It’s an interesting angle amid the so-called “male loneliness epidemic,” but the movie never really goes anywhere with it … which is probably the central problem of the entire film.
Soulm8te is an unusual modern horror film in the sense that it suffers from the opposite problem of most contemporary genre films. It’s a film that actually finishes very strong, but absolutely stalls out for the first hour of its roughly 90-minute runtime. It’s a movie that takes forever to get interesting and by the time it does … it’s practically over. The best scene of the movie is when Sara “seduces” a tech and literally atomizes him with her … well, use your imagination. There’s a follow-up scene involving an unsavory character and a hacked Waymo that’s almost as great and it just leaves you thinking to yourself “why weren’t these things included earlier in the movie instead of all of the boring crap?” I can’t explain it, but it probably explains why this thing was yanked from a theatrical run … it’s not always bad, but it always feels like a complete mess, even at its highest peaks.
I don’t think Soulm8te is going to impress too many viewers, but it might entertain them with its weirder aspects. We’ve seen psycho sex doll slashers before, but we haven’t seen them making deep fake revenge p*rn and doing show-stopping karaoke renditions of “Lovefool” by The Cardigans before.
Too bad that wasn’t the whole movie, though.
GIVE IT A TRY IF YOU LIKE: Relationship dramas, not so subtle anti-A.I. messages, blondes that wear lipstick that’s too dark for their complexions
DIRECTOR: Kate Dolan
WRITER(s): Kate Dolan, Rafael Jordan, James Wan, Ingrid Bisu
STARRING: Lily Sullivan, David Rysdahl, Claudia Doumit, Arty Froushan
STUDIO: Atomic Monster, Blumhouse Productions
DISTRIBUTOR: Universal Pictures Home Entertainment
RUNTIME: 99 minutes
LANGUAGE: English
RELEASE DATE: August 01, 2026 (VOD)
