This past weekend I had bad insomnia, so while lying wide awake in bed around 03:00 on a Sunday morning, I decided I might as well make some use of my time and watch a horror for review. The Rebecca Wahls directed and Alec Seymour written Golem.AI is an indie found footage movie in the style of something like Unfriended or Host; the whole film playing out from the perspective of a PC monitor screen. The IMDB page classes it as a horror, while the press release leans more into it being a comedy horror. The question wasn't so much which of these it would feel more like, but rather, would this low budget horror be any good?
The plot takes place back in the time of Covid and nationwide lockdowns. Two former friends who had drifted apart are reunited online when studious Alec (Seymour) contacts the abrasive Dylan (Dylan Hares) to ask him if he wants to play some online video games together. They decide to play an old multiplayer FPS shooter that they used to love, but after the game fails to work on their new machines they give up on that idea. Unknowingly, trying to play the game has unleashed an unfolding night of terror for the pair, with both men seeing a shadowy figure in the background of the respective webcam footage they are looking at. Alec first assumes immature Dylan is playing a prank on him, chiding him for breaking lockdown rules for a silly joke. Slowly, both come to realise something sinister is at play, it appears they have woken up a digital ghost, who has decided to haunt the pair for a perceived past wrong they apparently committed.
At 65 minutes, this thankfully didn't have much of a chance to outstay its welcome. Try as I might, I just couldn't work out if the film was meant to be purposely funny, or if that was an accident of its creation. From the moment Dylan appears on screen he was very irritating to watch. I don't know why he was given the direction, but from the moment he appears he is pulling weird gurning facial expressions for no reason at all. Even when he is the sole character on screen he is pulling these odd exaggerated expressions, something that was increasingly distracting for me. I didn't think either of the two core actors were amazing, with the duo occasionally struggling to carry the film. I liked some aspects of the characters, Dylan being a former man-child living in his mom's basement, is trying to leave that more toxic past behind, even if he is still living in a basement, albeit, somewhere else. At some point in the past, Alec came out as gay, Dylan of course ribs him for this, but makes a point not to be actually homophobic, especially defending when he is accused of having used gay slurs against his friend. Alec is the more serious of the two, his backstory being that he has recently split up with his live-in long term boyfriend. Alec and Dylan's shared history is them having once been toxic players on the lobbies of the old FPS they used to play.
The horror here failed completely for me, falling flat time and time again. There was a large amount of weak jump scare attempts that were signposted from miles away, leading to annoyance rather than scares. Not much variety of horror really happens either, with both characters freaking out far more than was required when sheets of printed Hebrew letters start appearing around their apartments. When the characters do come under attack, any injuries sustained take place off scene. The entity is represented by some weak VFX, maybe purposely so as this is a digital ghost, but made it not seem a part of the locations it was haunting. Then there was the entity's voice, so guttural and distorted that I couldn't really hear what it was saying very well. The actual idea for the evil was unique enough, and made for the part of Golem.AI that worked the best, earning an extra rotting head on my review's final score.
As a straight horror this failed, and as a comedic horror this also failed. It felt like the film could never decide if it wanted to be taken seriously or not. Not remotely scary and barely entertaining, but not boring enough that it helped me with my insomnia. Golen.AI had its UK digital debut on 12th October 2026.
SCORE:
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