★★★☆☆
Love Me, Kristen Stewart’s new movie, covers the possibility of personhood in the metaverse.
Directed by Sam and Andy Zuchero, Love Me, 2025’s first post-apocalyptic sci-fi film, hit box offices on Jan. 31. A commentary on the role of media in the present and the world to come, the film stars Stewart and Steven Yeun as robots turned humans exploring the meaning of life and the possibility of love beyond humanity.
Set in 2050, the film depicts Earth after a global conflict eradicates humanity, leaving a frozen, desolate world with only skeletal remains of buildings. A robotic buoy, trapped in the icy New York Harbor, awakens and tries to determine its location.
A satellite with a loudspeaker circles the sky, announcing itself as a “helper for life forms encountering the planet once known as Earth.” It initially refuses to assist the buoy, which cannot prove it is a lifeform. In response, the buoy accesses the internet via the satellite and turns to YouTube to explore existential questions: “What is life?” and “Who am I?”
Overwhelmed by varied answers, the buoy fixates on a defunct account once run by a woman named Deja (Stewart). It becomes obsessed, consumes her content, and ultimately assumes her identity, even altering its voice to match hers. Seeing this, the satellite adopts the persona of Deja’s husband, Liam (Yeun), hoping to maintain a connection with the buoy.
The film follows the robots as they evolve from Instagram-scrolling entities to avatars in a metaverse, mimicking Deja and Liam’s lives—down to meals, routines, and even a virtual dog. Deja’s avatar embraces the familiarity of human imitation, but Liam’s avatar grows restless.
An argument erupts over their reality and purpose, with Liam declaring their existence a lie and seeking evolution. Deja, shaken, emotionally shuts down. In a melancholic montage, she disconnects from the metaverse, leaving the two robots separated for a billion years.
Separated from Deja, Liam realizes his virtual world is a fabrication and experiments with creating essentials like water. Through trial and error, he understands that reality is what he makes of it and, in an emotional montage, transforms into a human form.
Deja reappears, also materializing as a human after reflecting on her livelihood. Liam tells her he wants her, not just Deja’s persona. They forgive each other and consummate their newfound physicality.
As an Academy Award nominee, Stewart’s performance fell short of expectations—her portrayal of a robot felt ingenuine and flat. Yeun’s depiction of an android working toward emotional sentience and physical materiality, on the other hand, felt extremely raw and realistic.
Although the film stands as a beautiful commentary on how media informs our individuality and reality, the concepts it explores feel too ready-made for the film to be considered thought-provoking. The occasional plot holes and pre-packaged issues leave the movie on a similar level as Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (2023), where the existential concepts are directly fed to the audience.
Ultimately, Love Me stands as a quick watch where the audience will contemplate deeper questions during the film but leave the cinema with the more shocking and comical scenes in mind. Nevertheless, it was an entertaining and compelling watch. If you have a spare 91 minutes in your day and are looking for a digestible movie, Love Me is in theaters now.
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