Sean Parker
AI appears poised to become the embraced subgenre of movie culture in 2025. As the world debates whether DeepSeek surpasses ChatGPT, three popular films are currently dominating my friends’ Letterboxds. Companion tells the story of a robot made self-aware by her villainous boyfriend. Meanwhile, Renner features Frankie Muniz as a man who turns his deceased mom into an Alexa-like device to help him attract a girlfriend. Then there’s Levels, a video game take on the ethical implications of building an AI open world.
Dropping this weekend on AMC+, Levels stars Cara Gee from The Expanse and Peter Mooney from Rookie Blue as Ash and Joe, a couple whose meet-cute, inspired by Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, evolves into a devoted romance. That is until, at the peak of their happiness, a man appears during their café date and executes Ash in front of Joe. Devastated, Joe falls into a deep depression until he starts receiving messages from Ash asking him to retrieve something for her from the bookstore where they first met. However, once he retrieves it, Joe becomes a target caught in an unknown conspiracy, only to discover that the world he knows is a fabrication—a digital universe constructed within a physical one.
Poking around inside the Sentec-developed digital universe, Ash’s encounters and emotional connection to Joe have freed her mind to consider the sentience contained within the AI model. She begins a pilgrimage to save Joe’s world from the maniacal grip of his creator.
If you think adding a little Mariah Carey music is all it takes to make this sound more like Free Guy, you’re not wrong. Levels, written and directed by Adam Stern, who handled the visual effects for the underrated series Almost Human, seems deeply rooted in the realm of sci-fi gems and attempts to incorporate his favorites here, with visuals ranging from The Mandala Effect to the tone and style of the real-world segments of the Prime series Upload. And as far as story is concerned, Levels is a carbon copy of the aforementioned Ryan Reynolds 2021 comedy, sacrificing fun for a darker tone.
With Shudder not serving up new scares for another few days, AMC+ subscribers will probably pivot to Levels to give them a blast of genre fare, and why not? Even with a dead serious tone, you are bound to find some entertainment in the stylish sci-fi action film, even if it’s just pointing out the veracity of holes in the plot that ultimately make it look like Swiss cheese. But for Expanse fans looking for more Camina Drummer in their life, Cara Gee’s Ash isn’t a bad substitute.
I’m a Star Trek-collecting, Star Wars-debating, full-on sci-fi nerd with a degree in Computer Science who just so happens to love writing and discussing film. When movies like Levels come out, I’m immediately drawn to them, no matter how independent or underground they might be. I love the creativity and the ideas in these films. And though Levels is way more fiction than science and limited in view on many of its assertions, it has good intentions. It’s just in a bit of a regurgitated package.
Checksum errors are mentioned, for instance, presenting a provocative rabbit hole for Levels to traverse but decidedly do not. A checksum error occurs when your computer flubs a computation and freaks out. This can lead to program crashes, like when you see Explorer restart and then hang, removing the taskbar and making PC navigation difficult. This can result in system instability. However, knowledgeable users can manage if they know how to restart services. Essentially, these are glitches ranging in significance. Some glitches can be fixed quickly, while others may require a reboot or possibly some OS repair operations. Ash mentions checksum errors to Joe as a reason Hunter (Abrams) can’t erase him from existence after she scrubs a body from his apartment. She explains that the digital universe construct depends on policies and rules to maintain its functionality, and performing magic tricks like making a body disappear causes instability. I still believe Hunter would take the risk, though.
Still, many sandbox items and operative tools that had to exist to make and maintain the AI are never mentioned, such as simple partitioning or quarantining of Joe’s code, which would ideally bring about Matrix parallels and storylines where we could watch Joe try to adapt or overcome his limitations as an AI model. While I understand that would still throw Joe’s world slightly out of whack, this would remain a contingency for maintenance, especially if his code contained an error that would affect others. We can also consider rollbacks and individual resets, simple ideas that NPCs would never notice, like reverting from an alternate save file. Plus, there’s the simple horde mode strategy of propagating a sudden outbreak or the surrealness of hurling a comet through his window.
While I understand that Joe’s digital universe is likely not the same GTA-inspired experience that Free Guy utilizes, this open-world motif would have some tools for predicting real-life occurrences and applying life-saving measures. As would it have regular clean-up tools. Otherwise, what is its purpose for this company, and how does it profit from Levels’ digital universe?
By the end of the film, Levels constructs a God versus Devil storyline via Hannibal’s Aaron Abrams and Clarice’s David Hewlett, which is fitting given their connection to the Thomas Harris television series.’ There’s also the God versus creation concept that’s even more enticing considering our reality’s current AI fixation. The film showcases the megalomania associated with God complexes, which is undoubtedly redundant with the prominence of corporate decision-making placing greed above compassion. Even though we still have no idea how the digital universe is marketed in the film’s physical reality. The film’s final moments of the film feel ripped from Rick and Morty’s “The Ricks Must Be Crazy,” and if you’ve seen the episode, you can probably grasp what a film called Levels might suggest in this context. Hell, even Ash tells Joe that time operates differently in their separate worlds.
Here’s the long and short of it: I didn’t hate Levels, but I didn’t like it either. It was nice to see Cara Gee in a lead role, and the acting in the film from Gee, Abrams, and Hewlett particularly is quite good. The effects aren’t jaw-dropping, but they’re not bad either. And the imbued nuance in the writing is far better than the film’s surface-level offerings, which play like a mishmash of better and more culturally relevant films. The cinematography is satisfactory overall, but outside of a couple of images, there’s not a lot to write home about. Ultimately, Stern’s directorial effort is so solidly in the middle it’s frustrating, and because of that, it may even lean on the lower side. Perhaps this is the effort that eases him into the director’s chair for future features, but I am not sold on this knockoff video-game romance.
Levels is now streaming on AMC+.
Levels Official Trailer | HD | RLJE Films | Ft. Cara Gee, Peter Mooney, Aaron Abrams, David Hewlett
In Theaters and Everywhere You Rent Movies November 1st Starring Cara Gee, Peter Mooney, Aaron Abrams, and David Hewlett Written and Directed by Adam Stern After witnessing his girlfriend’s murder, a man risks everything, including reality itself, to discover the truth. #Levels #RLJEFilms
