Guy Pearce is a near-future detective in a mysterious A.I. case in “Zone 414”

I don’t know if it is of common conception, but when I think of Guy Pearce I have in mind science-fiction. Maybe because the big blast of his career happened with Christopher Nolan’s Memento (2000), which is not a science-fiction movie per se, and one of his latest and most popular performances has been Peter Weyland in Prometheus (2012). But the man is also recognized by a bunch of titles closer to action and horror like L.A. Confidential (1997), Ravenous (1999), The Proposition (2005), or Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark (2010). Anyway, when I saw he was starring in the science-fiction thriller Zone 414 (2021) I kinda felt everything was in order.

Zone 414 (2021) is set in the near future in a colony of state-of-the-art humanoid robots. When its creator’s daughter goes missing, he hires private investigator David Carmichael, to bring her home. David teams up with Jane, a highly advanced and self-aware A.I., to track down the missing daughter. Moving through the dangerous iron jungle, they rapidly piece together the mystery, uncovering a crime that leads them to question the origins of Zone 414 and the true purpose behind the City of Robots.

This is the debut feature film of Andrew Baird after a good amount of short films. The movie has been written by Bryan Edward Hill, an American author, screenwriter, and comic book known for being one of the writers of Ash vs Evil Dead (2015–2018) and Titans (2018–).

Alongside Guy Pearce, Travis Fimmel, Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz, Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson, Ned Dennehy, Colin Salmon, Jonathan Aris, and Olwen Fouéré also star.

Zone 414 (2021) is Rated R for violence, disturbing images, language, some drug use, and nudity. The movie is distributed by Saban Films and came out on digital on September 3, 2021. Here you can watch its official trailer.