The gift and the curse of society’s current obsession with artificial intelligence (AI), specifically large language models, is its heavy reliance on the past. AI is only as good as the information that is fed into it. While the past can be a powerful tool to advance the technology of the future, it can also stifle creativity when the story one is telling is full of callbacks to that which came before.
Adam Stern’s action thriller Levels suffers from this problem. For all its inventive moments, it is difficult to watch the film and not think of countless works that have influenced it.
The premise alone feels like it was ripped right out of the The Matrix. After witnessing the brutal death of his girlfriend, Ash (Cara Cee), Joe (Peter Mooney) finds his life in a downward spiral. Consumed by grief, an attempt to take his own life only is foiled when his gun, which works when not pointed at his head, refuses to go off. Things only get stranger when unknown men begin following him with an intent to harm.
Seemingly trapped in a nightmare he is unable to wake up from, one where he miraculously gains combat skills, and the deceased bodies of his assailants vanish into thin air, Joe is shocked to discover that Ash is alive. What is even more devastating than learning that the love of his life is living is the revelation that he is not. It turns out that that Joe is a creation of a digital universe constructed by Hunter (Aaron Abrams), a tech genius who has become drunk on his own power.
Achieving a virtual world, think Facebook’s Metaverse but with real life avatars instead of cartoon ones, with the help of tech savant Oliver (David Hewlett), Hunter quickly rose to become the head of a company known as Sentec. Using his worlds to test everything from products to weapons, his digital exploits soon ran afoul with government. Although Hunter attempted to hide his world, Ash figured out a way into this virtual land and fell in love with Joe in the process. Unfortunately, she was booted out before she could properly shut it all down.
Realizing that a special code needs to be uploaded from within, Ash has no choice but to entrust Joe with a mission to stop Hunter once and for all.
A slickly shot science fiction tale that is filled with well choreographed action beats, Levels shows plenty of promise. Stern’s film also has much to say about society’s obsession with the virtual world and the limitations we often place on its capabilities. While the human element, specifically love itself, remains at the forefront, it is not enough to distract viewers from the plots own faulty logic.
While Oliver quips that “I don’t even know if it is important” when trying to explain how all of the worlds in the film work, Stern never seems quite sure himself. The idea of a digital universe, which has multiple levels, is nothing new in cinema, and one does not need everything spelled out. However, the script’s murky logic, and the fact that everything from The Matrix to Inception is referenced, inadvertently overshadows the genuine moments of originality the film has. As a result, Levels is a film that looks great but ultimately feels like a hollow version of other films that came before it.
