Replicas 2018 – Thriller/Fantasy 1h 47m Movie Review

by Douglas Montgomery II

Have you ever watched a movie and thought to yourself, “how in the world did this movie get made”? Or wondered, “what movie executive let this happen”? If so, then Replicas, starring Keanu Reeves is just the movie to elicit such questions. Replicas is so awful, and there are so many bad things in this movie, it’s difficult to select just one or two from an assortment of poor acting, plot holes, unrealistic situations, etc, etc.

Replicas’s set up is simple, but nothing we really haven’t seen before. Scientist Will Foster played by Keanu Reeves, works for a Research company, Biodyne Industries, who are experimenting with moving a recently deceased individual’s mind/consciousness into a robot. Okay, I’m interested. Well, the crux of this movie is built around Will Foster’s wife and children dying in a car accident, and he of course grief stricken (however, unconvincingly) will use the very experiments he’s been championing, to move his family’s minds into…..clones of his family. Yes, I said clones, not robots. As it conveniently turns out, not only is Biodyne moving minds into robots as we’re initially told, but they can also clone people.

From here we’re treated with a series of plot devices that are all over the place and often make no sense, but are simply inserted to get to the movie’s ultimate ending that this movie goer could not wait to arrive. Along the way we get some “replicated” (pun intended) special effects that you’ll recognize immediately from the likes of 2002’s Minority Report and 2008’s Iron Man. And while these effects are nice to look at on the screen, their hardly remarkable.

I could go on and on with things to pick at in Replicas, but why bother, I’m sure you get the point. One thing to note that I did ponder is what has happened to Keanu Reeves and his movie choices? I mean where is the Keanu Reeves from 1988’s Dangerous Liasons, 1992’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula, 1994’s Speed, and of course the Matrix trilogy?

I prefer to tell anyone to go check out a movie and judge for themselves. But that recommendation will not be happening this go round. I advise if you want to see this movie, wait until it shows up on NetFlix or some other platform. Otherwise, the descriptions I’ve provided, and the questions I’ve pondered here will be sadly “replicated”.