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Love Me is available on VOD for purchase or rental.

DIRECTED BY: Andrew Zuchero, Sam Zuchero

FEATURING: Steven Yeun, Kristen Stewart

PLOT: After the apocalypse wipes out Earth’s entire population, an AI-equipped buoy connects with an AI-equipped satellite that holds a digital record of humanity, and together they decide to recreate a human relationship in virtual reality.

COMMENTS: Love Me, the debut feature from real-life married couple Andrew and Sam Zuchero, debuted at Sundance in 2024 to underwhelming reviews, but managed to get a theatrical release a year later based on the strength of stars Kristen Stewart and Steven Yeun. The overall reaction to the film has been tepid, both from critics (who have tended to find it too obvious) and audiences (who have tended to find it too outlandish). Still, although not without flaws—including an unwillingness to pursue the most interesting ideas it raises—Love Me is original and adventurous enough to elevate it above the usual dreck that litters the romance genre.

Although the core romantic relationship inevitably falls into cliché (including the mildly offensive trope of a hysterical girlfriend who demands every detail be storybook perfect as a way of eluding her own insecurities), the film feeds off its high concept post-apocalyptic premise. The most interesting part of Love Me, in fact, is its nearly experimental opening, which shows a spinning globe briefly shrouded in a flash of nuclear flame, before zooming into the planet for a time lapse montage showing the passage of innumerable days. Stewart’s smart buoy, equipped with a scanner shaped like an eye, clicks to life and her speech module gets stuck on stutter mode as her programming resets, post-apocalypse. Meanwhile, Yuen’s satellite, a kind of eternally revolving monument to humanity containing  pedabytes of data, is already fully operational. The two beings connect and, via the satellite’s archive, try to reconstruct what it means to be a human being (in the 21st century, at least).

The film’s take on A.I. remains willfully unexamined (the movie is not about A.I. at all; the characters could just as well have been aliens). The answer as to how these machines developed emotions like loneliness and curiosity is a little thing called “willing suspension of disbelief.” Love Me‘s technological focus is more on current Internet culture and social media, and the take seems positive enough at first: the A.I.s effectively investigate human behavior through YouTubes and memes, encountering genuine human miracles like baby laughter reinforcement loops. As the film goes on, this attitude develops more a satirical edge, as it becomes clear that modeling a relationship on an influencer’s Instagram feed won’t lead to an accurate simulacrum of human connection. But the attempt creates a dual romantic metaphor for the film. On a shallow level, it’s a warning about the destructive influence of the unobtainable sanitized fantasies presented on social media as model lifestyles, as the buoy slaves to in vain to perfectly recreate a spicy quesadillas/whimsical onesie/”Friends” marathon date night video she’s seen starring an Instagrammer (also played by Stewart). On a deeper level, one on which the viewer must do most of his or her own work, Love Me can be viewed as an existential parable about persona and authenticity. The buoy and the satellite can only meaningfully interact in a shared virtual reality where they are represented by their chosen avatars—which is almost a religious scenario, when you think about it.

The film’s audiovisual elements are good, for the budget. Many reviewers complained about the midfilm virtual reality section being too long and repetitive; it’s easy to see where they are coming from, even if I don’t share their level of frustration. Once the movie shifts into live action for the final act, Stewart and Yuen show real chemistry and passion (as they must, since there are no supporting actors to turn our attention to). Josh Jacober’s solo piano accompanies the film throughout, in a fashion reminiscent of a silent movie score. And the film features a one-billion year fast-forward, which sets a record by exceeding even the eons-spanning smash-cut from 2001.

While there’s no question Love Me doesn’t soar to the thoughtful heights of similarly-themed movies like Wall-E, Her, or A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, it easily exceeds the low standards we expect from the romantic movie genre. While it’s not something I’d recommend actively seeking out, if you’re a couple who finds yourself with 90 minutes to kill on an evening, you could do a lot worse on date night (for example, mail-order Mexican food and a “Friends” marathon).

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a daringly weird debut, executed with real style and vision. It’s an oddity that’s bound to appeal to fans of similarly strange high-concept love stories, like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”–Tasha Robinson, Polygon (contemporaneous)

Love Me [Blu-Ray]

• Love Me [Blu-Ray]

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