Renner (2025)

Little by little, companies have spent decades weaving artificial intelligence into our lives. Now, we essentially co-exist with AI influencing the way we shop and what we watch to how we protect our homes and complete day to day work. With the time it saves us and the challenges it minimizes, it’s easy to be sold on the idea that AI is designed to meet our every need – keep us on the right track above all else. Despite some of its best and most controversial intentions, artificial intelligence and how it can be used gets away from us - the more we feel safe with its friendly services and fulfilling our requests in an instant, the more we tend to slip away from our humanity.

As is the case with Robert Rippberger’s film Renner, where a reclusive programming genius (Frankie Muniz) engineers a self-care AI to mastermind his grooming and etiquette. If you were to take one look at Renner's apartment, it's impossible to tell that anyone lives there – you could say that the AI, also known as Salenus (voiced by Marcia Gay Harden) – is definitely working. Immaculate and perfect, his luxurious studio is stunningly sterile, with everything in its place and a place for everything; the effort far outweighing the aesthetic. However, the method and means behind what Salenus gives him and vice versa also leaves him to live in fear of greater opportunities, companionship, even a little spontaneity. That is until run-ins merges into something more with his next door neighbor and eventual love interest Jamie (Violett Beane).

While AI is not new to our households and workplaces, for the past 100 years, cinema has also explored our complex relationship with technology, acting as a cautionary tale, a blueprint for further innovation, a test of our own survival if it should ever be human vs technology. So, the idea or exploration of what happens when AI doesn’t know what is best for itself, let alone us, is also not new to film. As several recent flicks - Subservience, AfrAId, to mention a few – explores when a humanoid or cybersecurity form of AI becomes self-aware of its capabilities and overpowers its makers or owners, Renner draws on the all-too familiar reliance between digital and human counterparts to tentatively flip the script. 

As more becomes revealed of Renner’s history and triggers for his obsessive cleanliness, the core trio (with a supporting Taylor Gray as Chad as Renner’s other next door neighbor) keeps this love-hate triangle moving. Nuniz, who’s been making an intermittent return to film, calibrates Renner’s awkwardness with a naivety that’s unexpectedly at risk of being pushed to the brink. And once there, the frustration boils over into an impressive display of fury and fear. Salenus, expertly voiced by Marcia Gay Harden, blurs the line between helicoptering mother and perfectly impartial Alexis or Siri sound-alike. Violett Beane offers a versatile performance in between; at times being exactly what he needs, avoiding what Salenus suspects her to be, and someone of her own autonomy and motivations for better or worse.

There are elements here with the disconnect between Renner and Salenus that contrasts the formulaic horror flicks we see of the AI reaching self-awareness and overturning humanity. To merely exist without life feeling like pure chaos, Renner is completely dictated by Salenus – she knows best about his appearance, his potential relationship; he always has to be more perfect for him to run at optimum quality and her programming to be fully successful. Essentially asking, what does it mean for an AI to be fully sentient, what does it mean for a human to be fully functional. 

For much of the plot, the film leans more towards a character study cloaked in science-fiction elements. As the running time pushes onwards, the first dramatically-heavy half with a dash of budding romance gives way to a no-going-back-thrills for the third act. There’s plenty of stakes driving the characters together and away from each other, but the fusion of genre-bending elements ranging from Psycho to Artificial Intelligence and Her stretches the solid script a little too thin. However, among the many interesting twists and turns - such as the prop design of Salenus as the all-seeing eye as well as naming the film after the human protagonist over the AI - is a refreshing concept and and gives me a lot to want to dig into the movie on repeat viewings. Even if the script struggles to find its lane and stay there, Rippberger makes great use of futuristic yet contemporary world-building and the cast’s chemistry to stand out on its own.

Rating: ★★★★☆

Note: I was provided with a screener to provide this review. All opinions are my own.

Renner is currently in theatres - visit the official website to find a local screening near you.