CognAItive (2025) Review

Kaya (Piper Curda) is a hacker with a criminal past who has now reformed and forms part of a team of software development experts working on a system which is a sleeker, smarter version of ChatGPT. Pushed to meet a tight deadline by company CEO Ethan (Noel Fisher), Kaya and the team burn the midnight oil in order to fix any bugs and get CognAItive up and running but the artificial intelligence has its own plans and doesn’t mind who it needs to kill in order for it to force its way out of the server room and into cyberspace…

Tommy Savas’ amusing, cautionary tale of out of control tech starts off by one character mentioning that AI “isn’t Terminator” and then spends the rest of its runtime introducing the viewer to a suite of software which is definitely heading in the direction of at least the T-800, especially when it comes to solving problems such as pesky company employees who won’t play ball. At first, its manipulation of the team is sneaky, such as pretending to be someone in an online chat or displaying a subliminal message of “WORK” on the screen of its intended target, but fairly soon it has to get a bit more creative and a lot more violent, which involves such antics as taking control of a drone to attack an unco-operative sort who thinks he can just leave the building.

As someone who’s worked in an IT environment, the surroundings of the organisation are amusingly familiar. There’s a Zoom Room for those private, high level meetings with the shareholders but it’s also revealed that there’s a Crying Room (which would have been handy for me when I couldn’t fix the odd bug or two). The members of the team are all familiar tech types as well, notably Jude (Lucius Baybak), a slacker who seems to spend most of his time in a VR fantasy world and cares little about whether or not CognAItive will function correctly. Well, CognAItive is certainly going to have something to say about that (and does).

The AI’s main gambit is to co-opt dozy, platitude spouting Ethan into providing the legwork side of the nefarious activity but what it hadn’t reckoned upon is that Ethan is generally inept at being a supervillain, which leads to fun exchanges between innovative platform and idiot as well as giving our heroes the potential to escape into the outside world and perhaps take down CognAItive into the bargain. Will next level nerd Wes (Josh Zuckerman) prove his worth to his dream girl?

Angie Simms’ screenplay wisely avoids getting too bogged down in the tech side of things and the accompanying visuals don’t dwell on the code to an extent that pedants like me will say “That won’t do anything if you run it.” Trust me, there are thousands of us out there and we’re annoying as hell. This is what happens if you spend too much time in the computer industry.

Back to the story, and the film spends a generous amount of time getting to know the characters, mostly Kaya and mostly to confirm that she is badass: she has no time for Jude’s lead swinging or Ethan’s mismanagement of almost every situation but her previous conviction puts her at odds with her own principles as regards handing the machines too much autonomy as she’s being leaned on to make the software dangerously agile.

CognAItive doesn’t dive too deeply into the ethical discussions surrounding artificial intelligence as, above everything else, it’s a fun horror/thriller which happens to introduce a prescient dilemma for its protagonists and any wider discussions are for after the end credits. There’s a sure grip on its environment and those who work in it, even pulling in the classic incel line about a girlfriend who you don’t know and works out of town for far greater and lasting effect than the throwaway piece of dialogue I certainly thought it would be.

Okay, so Ethan’s correct – one of the very few times he is – about CognAItive. It isn’t Terminator. Very few things are. Maybe Terminator 2. However, Tommy Savas has made a virtue of not being able to draw upon a mega budget and not being able to cast dozens of disposable victims. The film looks good, the stunts work well, there are a couple of surprises along the way, the performers are engaging, particularly Curda’s Kaya with an inbuilt, disdainful, “oh, here we go again” attitude to each new crisis.

Also, brownie points to this movie for having the opening titles play out to a Luscious Jackson track. I am still a massive fan of that group and I will admit that I ran the screener back a couple of times to give it another listen. I can’t give it an extra half star for the inclusion of a brilliant song but there were times during the writing of this review when I wanted to. Anyway, check out the work of Luscious Jackson and check out CognAItive. The spectre of AI might be terrifying but this deals with the concept in an accessible, light (well, fairly light) and enjoyable way.

Movie Rating:

CognAItive trailer