Singularity (2017)

(On Cable TV, March 2020) Someone should tell Singularity’s writer-director Robert Kouba some harsh truths: Big ideas, adequate special effects and one headlining star do not ensure a good science fiction film. Especially when the star is John Cusack, who’s been sinking deeper and deeper in the undistinguished morass of straight-to-streaming far of the past decade. Not when the film is blandly executed with trite dialogue, implausible worldbuilding, awkward staging and extremely familiar tropes. A look at the film’s production history is instructive, as Singularity was initially shot in 2013, and then retooled with a Cusack-starring framing device years later—almost certainly an attempt to salvage existing footage into a sellable property. The stitches certainly show, with the Cusack AI-introducing segments being slightly more interesting than the somewhat humdrum central post-apocalyptic quest narrative of the bulk of the film. Oh well: exactly no one will be surprised to learn of a low-budget Cusack film being terrible nor of a low-budget film whose high concept is badly executed. Still, I wonder — What happened here?