PROJECT DOROTHY REVIEW
An indie tech thriller that does a lot with seemingly very little.
Horror movies about tech gone rogue are nothing new, possibly going back even further than Hal 9000 in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, with other memorable entries into the sub-genre being The Terminator movies and the more recent M3gan. With the dangers and concerns over A.I. being a constant conversation-starter these days, it seems like perfect timing for George Henry Horton’s Project Dorothy, a film that’s commendable for doing a lot with very little, without ever quite achieving greatness.
It starts oddly in an enormous abandoned warehouse as the camera cuts between various locales, and we hear screams of mayhem without really knowing what we’re watching. We then meet two criminals on the lam after a robbery – the older James (Tim DeZarn) and younger Blake (Adam Budron) – breaking into that warehouse while escaping the police, who for some reason, will not follow them inside. We learn that the warehouse has been taken over by an A.I. named “Dorothy” (voiced by Danielle Harris), who proceeds to terrorize the two men by controlling the electronics around them.
Project Dorothy is an interesting low-budget thriller for the fact that the filmmaker clearly had this huge, expansive location available that was wide open to film in. It’s surprising how much that brings to the movie in terms of scale, both in terms of the exteriors and interiors. Much of the film involves the two main actors in this environment, enhanced by some DIY visual effects to show Dorothy’s point-of-view, as we do randomly cut to “her” in a strange red AI form, possibly a few times to really make it work.
Because there are only two characters, Project Dorothy can’t do the normal thing where they’re killed off one-by-one, so instead, it’s just about her terrorizing them in attempt to retrieve a Wi-Fi dongle in the guys’ money bag, presumably to give her more access to the world outside the warehouse. It is explained that Dorothy was an AI experiment that went awry, killing everyone there, but it’s never quite clear how she’s being contained so effectively.
Although Horton clearly didn’t have an enormous visual effects budget for his movie, he benefits from having two strong actors as his leads, as well as that jaw-dropping location, and music and sound effects that are used to decent effect. With a larger budget, this could have been something akin to the original Resident Evil movie, but instead, it isn’t particularly scary and Harris’ voice-over performance as the titular AI leaves something to be desired. Much of that has to do with her having weak dialogue that never quite delivers on the intended effect.
Unfortunately, the premise also runs its course pretty quickly and loses a lot as it goes along. By the last act, the entire pretense has grown stale, since it’s hard to keep a viewer interested with so little beyond the very simple general plot.
Horton’s Project Dorothy should be commended for how much it’s able to do with very little, but ultimately, this premise can only be taken so far before it falls flat.
Rating: 6/10
Project Dorothy is currently available on all VOD platforms.