Soulm8te Review – I Expected a Disaster. I Was Wrong

If only last year’s M3GAN 2.0 had made money at the box office, Kate Dolan’s destiny with her Soulm8te would have remained in the January 9, 2026 theatrical release calendar as intended. Except that M3GAN 2.0‘s dismal $39.1 million worldwide gross for a heavily promoted summer movie got Universal cold feet, even pulling the spin-off Soulm8te out of its schedule at the last minute in December. The studio initially shopped the movie to other studios, only to end up unveiling it straight to digital platforms instead.

Fast-forward to today, and I chose to watch it with zero expectations. Dolan, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Rafael Jordan, treads familiar ground in exploring the dark side of AI female companionship. We have already seen them in the Megan Fox-starred Subservience, and of course, last year’s Companion. Dolan reportedly took inspiration from many ’80s and ’90s erotic and psychological thrillers, notably the seminal Fatal Attraction — the movie that also happened to inspire Subservience.

What Soulm8te Is About

Like that 2024 techno thriller, where Fox’s Alice became increasingly obsessed with Michele Morrone’s Nick, it’s the same case for Sara (Lily Sullivan) and David (David Rysdahl). The latter is an engineer working for Ultima Robotics, which specializes in advanced AI technology. We learn he recently lost the love of his life and has been grieving ever since. The only connection he manages to warm up to is the AI chatbot (the ULTI-M8TE) on his phone.

Then, he gradually signs up for the company’s beta testing to bring home the prototype of the titular AI robot. Delivered straight to his doorstep by the company technician, the lifelike robot, Sara, is perfect straight out of the box. She’s already been programmed to standard operating mode and is not to be tampered with. But of course, a lonely guy like David wouldn’t want to settle for the mundane. He decides to remove the safeguards and override her core program to make her more human.

For the first 50 minutes or so, everything seems to be going well as planned. David and Sara grow closer to each other, to the point of intimacy. But re-programming Sara makes her absorb more information and, have a learning curve, for better or worse, likes what she sees on television when David is off to work.

Lily Sullivan’s Robotic Performance Is the Reason to Watch

I admit the movie takes its time to get the plot going, with Rysdahl’s grief-stricken protagonist living in isolation coming across as flatly monotonous rather than someone worth empathizing with. Thankfully, casting Lily Sullivan, best known for her role in Evil Dead Rise, is the right choice. She convincingly embodies the clinical mannerisms of an AI robot trying to act human and emote like one. Beneath her obedience and loyalty to David, Sara’s complex sentience allows her to react independently, such as going out without permission and, at one point, violently injuring a guy for trying to attack her in the back alley.

The Fatal Attraction Twist That Powers the Back Half

The second half begins to pick up its pace as it enters the Fatal Attraction-like territory, where Sara’s jealousy slowly surges to a breaking point after she isn’t pleased with David flirting with his co-worker, Aubrey (Claudia Doumit). The typical AI-runs-amok angle soon takes over, sneakily alternating between Sara seducing her victim (the part revolves around kinky sex elevating to a grossly uncomfortable level) and acting cold yet remorseless against anyone attempting to shut her down (the scene in the parking garage comes to mind).

No doubt that Sullivan equally nails her character’s volatile and creepy vibe like a woman scorned, and she does so without resorting to wildly over-the-top histrionics. Soulm8te isn’t as bad as I thought in the first place, especially since Dolan, marking her sophomore feature after 2021’s folk-horror You Are Not My Mother, showcases some effective flair for emulating the look and feel of erotic/psychological thrillers of the past. Here it’s repackaged in a contemporary AI-themed cinematic sheen.

Where and When to Watch Soulm8te

Soulm8te is available now. After being pulled from its original January 2026 theatrical slot, the film skipped cinemas entirely and premiered exclusively on digital retail platforms starting August 1, 2026, from Universal Pictures Home Entertainment.

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