Sheep In The Box film review: Overly sentimental sci-fi
Hirokazu Kore-eda’s weighty robot drama grapples with grief, humanity and AI, but feels oversaturated with exaggerated emotions
Japanese auteur Hirokazu Kore-eda (Air Doll, Shoplifters) returns not quite at his best with this futuristic AI fable. Architect Otone (Haruka Ayase) and her construction worker husband Kensuke (Japanese TV comedian Daigo) live together in the house she designed and he built. But absence is keenly felt; two years earlier, their seven-year-old son Kakeru died. Unable to cope with the grief, Otone signs up for REbirth, a tech company capable of creating lifelike human replicas. Before long, a sentient being (Rimu Kuwaki) who looks exactly like their lost son is brought to them.
Avoiding the usual doom-and-gloom that comes with AI stories, Kore-eda crafts something akin to Steven Spielberg’s AI Artificial Intelligence, albeit here focusing less on the robot boy’s feelings than those of the mother and father. Can a synth ever replace the real thing? Will they grow up and leave the home just like a real boy might? Exploring issues of nature and technology as well as our relationship to loss, it’s a thoughtful work, benefitting from delicate production design that makes this future feel all too near. Sadly, though, it’s not the most satisfying of third acts; awash with sentiment, it lacks true emotional impact when it really matters.
Sheep In The Box, Cameo, 14 August, 9pm; Cineworld, 15 August, 12.30pm; Filmhouse, 16 August, 2.30pm.