{"id":14802,"date":"2026-08-03T15:38:26","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T19:38:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=14802"},"modified":"2026-08-03T15:38:29","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T19:38:29","slug":"soulm8te","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2026\/08\/03\/soulm8te\/","title":{"rendered":"Soulm8te"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Soulm8te <\/strong>(2026)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 99 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong violence, gore, strong sexual content, graphic nudity, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Kate Dolan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Rafael Jordan and Kate Dolan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Anthony Willis\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Narayan Van Maele\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 1, 2026 (US, digital)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Lily Sullivan, David Rysdahl, Claudia Doumit, Arty Froushan, Elijah Cook, Emma Ramos, Mara Huff, Sydney Blackburn, Isabelle Bonfrer.<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: *<\/p>\n

\u00a0Hear me out. I promise I\u2019m 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\u2019s Sneakers. It wasn\u2019t 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\u2019s where I got all my sneakers throughout my teen years and beyond.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Why do I mention this? I kept thinking of John\u2019s while watching Soulm8te<\/strong>, a spinoff of M3GAN that\u2019s 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\u2019s wouldn\u2019t even put it on the shelf if it was a pair of sneakers.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Software engineer David (Rysdahl, Alien: Earth), still grieving the loss of his wife, volunteers to be a BETA tester for his company\u2019s latest innovation, a companion robot called SOULM8TE. This is after he connects with an AI chatbot he names Sara. He\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0David\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Directed by Kate Dolan (You Are Not My Mother), Soulm8te<\/strong> is the cinematic equivalent of a glass of tepid tap water. Utterly predictable and deathly dull, it\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0How many movies have there been warning of the dangers of AI? I don\u2019t have a figure, but it\u2019s pretty high. It\u2019s a safe bet that Soulm8te<\/strong> is one of the worst. It\u2019s right down there with AfrAId (2024). It commits the worst crime a horror movie can. It\u2019s NOT scary, not in the slightest. Every turn of the lame plot, every ineffective \u201cBOO!\u201d 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\u2019s all CGI. A few more bloody kills might have helped a little.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Horror movies generally aren\u2019t known for their acting and Soulm8te<\/strong> is no exception. In fact, the acting is especially poor. To be fair, I can\u2019t place all the blame on the cast. They weren\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

\u00a0M3GAN was a truly effective villain in the first movie. The same cannot be said of Sara in Soulm8te<\/strong>. She\u2019s basically a sexed-up clone of M3GAN without the sweet dance moves. She has zero in the way of personality even though she\u2019s 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\u2019s inferior product.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Soulm8te<\/strong> 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\u2019s possible Dolan was going for stylish, but all she does is dull the senses.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Soulm8te<\/strong> is unoriginal, uninspired, unscary and all but unwatchable. It\u2019s never once any fun. It\u2019s like everybody involved took ludes before going to work. It\u2019s 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\u2019s utterly soulless.\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Soulm8te (2026)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Horror\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 99 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated R (strong violence, gore, strong sexual content, graphic nudity, language)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Kate Dolan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Rafael Jordan and Kate Dolan\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Anthony Willis\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Narayan Van Maele\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: August 1, 2026 (US, digital)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Lily Sullivan, David Rysdahl, Claudia Doumit, Arty Froushan, Elijah Cook, Emma Ramos, Mara Huff, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14803,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-now-playing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Soulm8te-POSTER.jpg?fit=620%2C930&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14802"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14802\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14806,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14802\/revisions\/14806"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}