We live in an age where everyone has a virtual assistant. Whether we’re using Apple’s Siri to set alarms and reminders or Amazon’s Alexa to play music throughout the house, it’s hard to find anyone without at least one device with an artificially intelligent assistant. Lionsgate’s upcoming action-thriller, Warning, features a next-level virtual assistant called God that records its users’ sins.
Set in the not too distant future, Warning is an intense sci-fi thriller that explores the repercussions that mankind faces when their omniscient technology becomes a substitute for human contact. After a global storm causes electronics to go haywire, life begins to unravel for the characters and it’s something of a nightmare. See what happens to Mary (played by Alice Eve) when she receives the latest version of her virtual assistant, God, in the clip below.
First, the device explains all its new features: wireless, waterproof, non-flammable, and simply indestructible. This may sound amazing to everyone reading this on an iPhone, but in Warning, God is not a phone. It’s a device that sits in the house, with smaller versions that are more portable for travel. Still, having an indestructible thing that you paid a lot of money for seems great. Until it starts recording your sins.
Fitting for a virtual assistant named God, the device seen in the clip above from Warning records the sins of its user. In the first minute of activating God, Mary (Alice Eve) has three sins recorded: using the Lord’s name in vain, rolling her eyes at God (a sign of contempt), and swearing. The second sin reveals that the device can see her. After hearing the third sin, Mary attempts to turn off the device and learns that she can’t. It doesn’t shut down, ever. So naturally, Mary throws the device out the window, which is so satisfying.
The God device is just a taste of the advanced technologies seen in Warning. People can buy robots that look, speak, and feel human to bring home as caretakers or butlers. Those born into higher classes can choose immortality. Memories are recorded and stored, giving people the ability to relive them through a virtual reality sort of video game, so they can keep relationships alive after losing a loved one to death or a break-up. Probably the most far-fetched technology in the film is the ability to rent another person’s body (for a fee, of course), but the overall experience the film provides feels like it can happen in real life within the next few years.
Warning is a fascinating exploration of the meaning of life. Immortals ponder the point in doing anything today when tomorrow is forever while mortals view time as more precious. A newly single man spends his days re-living his relationship in his memories. It’s interesting, but also horrifying to see the very realistic and tragic direction the world may be headed in the near future. Warning brings the question of whether we’ve gone too far to come back in the realm of technology too close for comfort.
The film stars Thomas Jane, Annabelle Wallis, Alex Pettyfer, Alice Eve, and Kylie Bunbury. Warning arrives in theaters, on Digital and On Demand October 22.
