Soulm8te (2026) Universal/Horror RT: 99 minutes Rated R (strong violence, gore, strong sexual content, graphic nudity, language) Director: Kate Dolan Screenplay: Rafael Jordan and Kate Dolan Music: Anthony Willis Cinematography: Narayan Van Maele Release date: August 1, 2026 (US, digital) Cast: Lily Sullivan, David Rysdahl, Claudia Doumit, Arty Froushan, Elijah Cook, Emma Ramos, Mara Huff, Sydney Blackburn, Isabelle Bonfrer.
Rating: *
Hear me out. I promise I’m going somewhere with this. When I was in my teens, I always wanted to wear name-brand sneakers, but we all know how expensive they are. My friend clued me into a place called John’s Sneakers. It wasn’t an ordinary shoe store. They exclusively sold factory rejects, sneakers with a minor, unnoticeable flaw (e.g. an extra lace hole, uneven stitching), at a discount. That’s where I got all my sneakers throughout my teen years and beyond.
Why do I mention this? I kept thinking of John’s while watching Soulm8te, a spinoff of M3GAN that’s being treated the same way as the aforementioned footwear. It was supposed to come out this past January, but Universal cancelled its theatrical release and sent it straight to digital. I can see why. It too is a factory reject. The difference is all the flaws are noticeable. John’s wouldn’t even put it on the shelf if it was a pair of sneakers.
Software engineer David (Rysdahl, Alien: Earth), still grieving the loss of his wife, volunteers to be a BETA tester for his company’s latest innovation, a companion robot called SOULM8TE. This is after he connects with an AI chatbot he names Sara. He’s not entirely satisfied with the almost life-like robot (Sullivan, Evil Dead Rise) so he decides to make a few alterations to the code to make Sara more human. This, of course, turns out to be a HUGE mistake.
David’s wish to ease his loneliness without having to make a human connection has deadly consequences. It starts with Sara taking down a few deserving creeps before turning her attention to David’s co-worker Aubrey (Doumit, Timeless) who she sees as a threat. Sara wants David all to herself and will stop at nothing to make it happen.
Directed by Kate Dolan (You Are Not My Mother), Soulm8te is the cinematic equivalent of a glass of tepid tap water. Utterly predictable and deathly dull, it’s completely without flavor. It wants to be like one of those erotic thrillers from the 90s in which an unhinged stranger is invited into the life of some unsuspecting victim only to try and destroy it. It fails. Dolan never fully leans into it. She plays the notes without feeling the music. Her screenplay, co-written by Rafael Jordan, must read more like sheet music than an actual script.
How many movies have there been warning of the dangers of AI? I don’t have a figure, but it’s pretty high. It’s a safe bet that Soulm8te is one of the worst. It’s right down there with AfrAId (2024). It commits the worst crime a horror movie can. It’s NOT scary, not in the slightest. Every turn of the lame plot, every ineffective “BOO!” scene can be seen coming from a mile away. It has a couple of gory scenes, including one where a sleazy tech guy is literally screwed to death by Sara, but it’s all CGI. A few more bloody kills might have helped a little.
Horror movies generally aren’t known for their acting and Soulm8te is no exception. In fact, the acting is especially poor. To be fair, I can’t place all the blame on the cast. They weren’t given much to work with by the screenplay. There is next to nil in the way of character development. The only one with anything resembling depth is David (dead wife, self isolating), but even with that he still feels one-dimensional. Everyone else is a character type, especially the new boss (Froushan, Daredevil: Born Again) whom you know right away is a two-faced louse.
M3GAN was a truly effective villain in the first movie. The same cannot be said of Sara in Soulm8te. She’s basically a sexed-up clone of M3GAN without the sweet dance moves. She has zero in the way of personality even though she’s been endowed with human-like traits. As such, Sullivan is just going through the motions. She does nothing to distinguish Sara from other AI-generated baddies. She’s inferior product.
Soulm8te fails on an artistic level as well from the generic score by Anthony Willis to the flat cinematography by Narayan Van Maele to the unimaginative production design by Susie Cullen. Poor lighting makes a few scenes unintelligible to the human eye. It’s possible Dolan was going for stylish, but all she does is dull the senses.
Soulm8te is unoriginal, uninspired, unscary and all but unwatchable. It’s never once any fun. It’s like everybody involved took ludes before going to work. It’s simply a dull slog through familiar territory. It brings nothing new to the table. It should have gone from the factory straight to the trash can. It’s utterly soulless.
