‘T.I.M.’ Director Spencer Brown Talks Killer AI Manservants

T.I.M., the new AI thriller starring Georgina Campbell, Eamon Farren, and Mark Rowley, hits theaters in the U.S. this Friday. We sat down with director and co-writer Spencer Brown to talk about classic stalker films, the mind of an obsessive robot, and bringing a comedy background to a sci fi thriller.

“Both [me and co-writer Sarah Govett] grew up with ’90s stalker thrillers like Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct,” Brown says. “We wanted to create a film in that genre. But we’ve also got this weird paranoia about Alexas [the popular AI household assistants from Amazon], and Big Data, and this feeling that we’re being constantly monitored.”

In T.I.M., prosthetics engineer Abi (Campbell) takes a new job with a robotics company, and finds out that her new home comes equipped with a robotic manservant (Farren). The robot, T.I.M., is integrated into every smart device in Abi’s life, from her phone to the locks on her door. However, when tensions arise between Abi and her philandering husband Paul (Rowley), T.I.M. starts to veer from loyal to obsessive.

“I was reading about something where one of the algorithms was analyzing your data and working out when you were depressed so it could sell you more things,” Brown says. “I didn’t feel like anyone had addressed that kind of manipulation before. It feels like Big Data is the ultimate stalker in a way, becoming obsessed with you, ultimately working out how to control you.”

Indeed, thanks to the abundance of smart devices in Abi’s life, T.I.M. can sense every detail about her, right down to her heart rate and hormone levels. Not only that, but T.I.M. gradually gets smarter and savvier about how to manipulate Abi and Paul. “We wanted to show this growth in T.I.M.’s character,” Brown says. “At the start, he’s very much an innocent, loyal and faithful to Abi. He starts to learn, in the same way that AI starts to learn. But who knows whether there’s a consciousness behind that?”

Brown found that it was challenging to make a sci fi film without the bells and whistles of higher budget projects—but the talent of the cast went a long way. “You start to believe very quickly that T.I.M. is a robot, despite the fact that we couldn’t have any special effects around him,” he says. “We weren’t in a position to do the sort of Ex Machina pop-off-his-head sort of thing.”

One of the most interesting aspects of T.I.M. is that Brown was able to bring his background as a standup comic into his filmmaking, infusing the movie with moments of macabre humor. “Someone was complaining that there are all these ‘unintentional’ moments of slapstick,” Brown laughs. “Nope! Those are supposed to be funny! If you spend years and years performing comedy, you just can’t help putting the occasional joke in. You sort of get this in Marvel films, but I miss those old films where you would have humor within the action and drama, and I wanted to have little moments of lightness amidst the tension.

“Jokes are constantly coming into my head because I’ve been training for years, and if it fits in, it fits in,” Brown continues. “Writing this film was a very instinctive process, and the actors picked up on the things that were supposed to be funny.”

T.I.M. comes out in theaters and on demand on Friday, January 12.

(featured image: Brainstorm Media)