This is a low-budget indie movie that should have been way worse than it was. In a dystopian urban future that visually resembles our dystopian urban present, a scientist invents an android duplicate of himself, then gets into a love triangle when the android and he both fall for the same quiet, timid store clerk. The entire movie is narrated by the android from its own point of view.

The acting is abysmal in some places, the story is quiet and slow and honestly nothing special, and I'd go so far to say most people probably wouldn't like it—I suspect my usual post-review check online will reveal a lot of haters—but it definitely had some appeal to me.

But it maintains a certain low-budget dystopian esthetic well, and had a certain low-key cerebral quality to it that I liked. The android, imprinted with its creator's memories, is overarchingly concerned with its own psychology, its own inner development as a conscious being. It's kind of a humanist vision of technology.

It could have gone so wrong, but instead, somehow it works. It somehow managed to be just contrived and pretentious enough to stay interesting for such a quiet little picture, but without crossing the line into being offputting on either count. That doesn't happen often.

I dunno. Hard to put my finger on it. I just found it kind of good in ways that a most super-low-budget indie flicks aren't, and it wasn't annoying in the ways that so many of them are.

It's almost like, a lot of movies by untalented low-budget directors seem to try very hard. Instead, this one kept it reined in nicely, almost almost like a filmmaker just knew what they were good at and what they weren't, and even if some of the things they weren't good at are kinda necessary to a good movie, at least they kept their efforts confined to just what they actually were able to deliver on. Even if it's very far from perfect, or even necessarily conventionally good, it never breaks the spell by overreaching. And I do like low-key, cerebral, character-driven sci-fi. It's not Ex Machina by any remote stretch of the imagination, don't go in expecting that. But I enjoyed it.

It went out of its way to mention "critically acclaimed" in the blurb on Tubi, which of course led me to immediately assume it would suck. And, I do imagine most critics didn't see much in it. But I'm also sure a few people, here and there, must consider it a notable minor-league standout, in the way I did. It's that kind of movie.

Your mileage may vary—for sure.

EDIT: 5.5 stars on IMDB including a fair number of 6-8 star reviews, and 100% positive reviews from 7 critics on Rotten Tomatoes, including the New York Times and Variety. Ok, cool. I'm glad. Now if only people would get behind Necropath. (Nah, I know, that's asking much too much.)