The screenlife subgenre is officially enshittified thanks to Mercy (now on Amazon Prime Video), an empty-skulled thriller that gives us the deeply unstimulating pleasure of watching Chris Pratt sit in a chair for 90 minutes, talking to an AI bot played by Rebecca Ferguson. Furthering the headscratching nature of this project, it’s the new directorial effort by Timur Bekmambetov, whose career has curiously shifted from admirably OTT stylized action films (Night Watch, Wanted, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) to producing and/or directing screenlife movies – his name turns up in the credits of Unfriended, Profile and last year’s highly ridiculed Ice Cube-led Amazon commercial War of the Worlds – which play out primarily on computer and phone screens. As Mercy sort of accidentally and/or unwittingly implies that a society in the grip of dystopian technology maybe ain’t so bad, all we can do is wonder why anyone would want to watch
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