There is a compelling movie buried inside SYNC, RJ Zabasky’s near-future sci-fi drama about grief, artificial intelligence, and the dangerous temptation to resurrect the dead through technology. The film, which screened Saturday at Dances with Films, has a strong premise, a haunting central idea, and a standout performance from Jonetta Kaiser (Vampire Academy), who brings warmth and vulnerability to a story that often struggles to get out of its own way.
Set in a future that feels close enough to be uncomfortable, SYNC follows Ryan, played by Cody Christian (Teen Wolf), a man still mourning the death of his wife, Fiona (Kaiser), who died from cancer a year earlier. Ryan works for a tech-giant company run by Damien, a sort of older Elon Musk type, played by Michael Paré (Streets of Fire, The Philadelphia Experiment), that has developed a new AI simulator designed to help grieving people reconnect with digital versions of their deceased loved ones. Reluctant at first, Ryan agrees to become a beta tester and enters a beautifully rendered simulation where he is reunited with Fiona in what feels like a technological Garden of Eden.
At first, the setup works. The idea of grief being exploited, or perhaps “helped,” by artificial intelligence is timely and emotionally rich. Writer-director Zabasky is clearly interested in the line between healing and dependence, and in what happens when technology promises comfort but begins to undermine something essential about the human soul. In the press notes, Zabasky describes the film as an exploration of “our relationship with innovation and what makes us human,” and that ambition is visible throughout the movie.
The problem is that SYNC too often explains its ideas instead of trusting us to feel them.
Almost immediately, Ryan suspects something is wrong. The AI version of Fiona knows private details about their lives that she should, in theory, not have access to, and the simulation begins to reveal cracks beneath its idyllic surface. Ryan encounters dangerous helmeted moderators in white who disrupt the program, and as he digs further into the mystery, both the AI Fiona and the real-world Ryan are pulled deeper into danger.
That should be more than enough to power a tight, unsettling sci-fi thriller. Instead, the screenplay frequently weighs the movie down with exposition. Characters explain what is happening after we have already seen it. Conversations that should deepen mystery or emotion instead spell out plot mechanics and themes. The result is a film that often feels as if it does not trust its audience to connect the dots.
But we aren’t given enough time to put everything together because the script explains it to us.
Christian gives Ryan the right haunted quality, and he works hard to ground the character’s grief. But he is repeatedly held back by dialogue that sounds more written than lived in. Too many lines feel like they came from a screenwriting workshop rather than from a man trying to survive the impossible possibility of seeing his dead wife again.
Kaiser, however, is the film’s major strength. Whether playing Fiona during her illness or the AI simulation of Fiona inside the program, she owns the screen. She gives the character an honesty that cuts through the film’s more awkward stretches, and she brings a real sense of presence to a role that could have easily become just another sci-fi construct. Kaiser makes Fiona feel like someone Ryan would risk everything to see again, and that emotional credibility is crucial to whatever power SYNC has.
The supporting performances are more uneven. Jake Ebright plays Ryan’s friend Jared with a broad energy that feels out of step with the rest of the film, particularly in scenes involving the sexbot twins played by Emily and Abigaille Ozrey.
The material seems designed to inject humor and edge into the story, but it pushes the tone into camp just when the film needs to deepen its tension. Jared also feels positioned for a betrayal that never arrives, which makes his arc feel like a missed opportunity. Paré, who also serves as a producer, plays Damien as a kind of cartoonish tech villain. Looking at you, Dr. Evil. When Damien’s larger plan is finally revealed, it lands as expected rather than shocking, partly because the screenplay has already overexplained so much of the world.
Visually, though, SYNC is often impressive. Cinematographer Pascal Combes-Knoke gives the film a polished, atmospheric look, while Alura Johnson’s production design helps create a near-future world that feels clean, seductive, and quietly ominous.
The VFX, led by supervisors Ahmed Nasar and Can Cangor, are among the film’s strongest elements. The simulation sequences have a lush, dreamlike quality that suggests a more elegant, more emotionally precise movie trying to break through.
Zabasky shows real promise as a director. He has an eye for imagery, mood, and world-building, and the film’s best moments suggest he understands the emotional horror at the premise’s center. The issue is that, as the writer, he may have needed a more ruthless collaborator. Someone needed to push harder on the script, cut the repetition, sharpen the mystery, and demand a leaner edit.
At 121 minutes, SYNC is simply too long. The opening takes too much time to move into the second act, and the film’s debate section drags when it should be tightening the emotional noose. A story this conceptually clean would likely have played much better at 90 minutes, or perhaps as a taut, one-hour anthology-style thriller.
The ending is also a problem. After treating its subject matter with solemn seriousness for most of its runtime, the film shifts into a tone that plays oddly comedic and undercuts the urgency. Instead of building to a devastating emotional or philosophical conclusion, the final stretch defuses tension and makes the movie feel less controlled than it should be.
That is frustrating because the ingredients are here. Grief, AI, lost love, digital resurrection, and corporate exploitation are all potent material. The film’s best version is a dark, intimate techno-thriller about the danger of refusing to let the dead remain dead. But SYNC keeps talking when it should be haunting us.
In the end, SYNC is a visually sumptuous sci-fi drama with a strong performance from Jonetta Kaiser and impressive craft behind the camera. But it is also held back by a muddled screenplay, too much exposition, and a runtime that drains the tension from a premise that should be immediate and unnerving.
We have seen this kind of story before, and in sharper form. SYNC has the bones of a strong Black Mirror episode. Unfortunately, it stretches that idea into a feature that never quite justifies the extra time.
The Geek is a working screenwriter, director, and screenwriting instructor.
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