Mercy opens in IMAX and 3D theaters on January 23.

The screenlife genre gets a buggy update in Timur Bekmambetov’s Mercy, a rapid-action thriller in which a man accused of murder must prove his innocence to an AI judge within 90 minutes or be put to death. This clockwork setting has potential, but what it lacks, ironically, is execution. It’s often hilariously slapdash despite its conceptual prowess, and a prime example of great ideas being squished together and squandered…not to mention, made entirely headache-inducing if you watch it in 3D.

Right from the get-go, Mercy takes a strange approach to explaining its futuristic setting, beginning with a neatly edited “previously on” montage that lays out how the crime-ridden, poverty-stricken Los Angeles of 2029 came to adopt AI-driven capital punishment. Hilariously, it turns out this trailer for the film’s own premise is being shown to an accused killer, Detective Chris Raven (Chris Pratt), who ought to be more than familiar with the imposing AI entity Judge Maddox (Rebecca Ferguson) since he pioneered the “Mercy” project that gives the film its name. Still, this exposition is somewhat forgivable, if only because it sets up the film’s parameters with the efficiency of LED screens lining the queue for a ride at Disneyland. Raven, who’s just regained consciousness in an enormous, empty room, is strapped to a lethal chair set to give off a fatal electrical pulse unless he can prove he didn’t murder his wife Nicole (Anabelle Wallis) earlier that day.

Before the restrained detective stands an enormous screen from which the imposing Maddox – her face silhouetted and cast in shadow – makes stern proclamations, deeming him “guilty until proven innocent,” and granting Mercy a not altogether uninteresting legal conundrum. Maddox also has unlimited access to the digital and GPS data of everyone in LA thanks to a communal cloud, which Raven can also sift through in order to prove his innocence. As either the judge or the accused bring up dueling evidence (courtesy of texts, doorbell videos, and countless other digital sources), iOS windows pop up in the space around Raven’s head like nifty 3D holograms. The case seems watertight: Raven arrived home during the work day, got into a fight with Nicole, and left, only for their teenage daughter Britt (Kylie Rogers) to find her stabbed minutes later.

The only problem is that Raven has no memory of the events depicted, an idea that seems intriguing until it’s quickly handwaved. From that point on, as the on-screen clock counts down, the story switches gears at breakneck speed and introduces a multitude of supporting characters via FaceTime calls, from Raven’s fiery police partner, Jacqueline “Jaq” Dialo (Kali Reis), to his diligent AA sponsor, Rob Nelson (Chris Sullivan), among many others. The mystery is unraveled practically backwards, with clues being explained or exposed in the very same moment they’re first discovered, while Raven uses Jaq as his proxy to revisit the crime scene and even chase down other suspects, viewing the world through her body cam, then a series of drones, then digital renderings of real spaces, then insert-new-idea-here without nearly enough time for us to adjust, let alone reflect. The movie switches focus just as haphazardly, going from tech conspiracy to domestic drama to some errant mixture of drugs-and-terrorism thriller that becomes impossible to invest in given the sheer flurry of images and pop-up windows flying at you at once. These are also never in the same plane of focus, forcing your eyes to adjust faster than you can process information, which becomes even more physically demanding in 3D.

However, what is perhaps strangest about Mercy is what it has to say – and often, what it doesn’t say – about technology. Its setting involves an omniscient state apparatus that uses bare-bones facts to make snap judgements before sending people to their deaths. And yet, this instant access to all facets of people’s lives doesn’t end up remotely framed as a dilemma or inspire any hesitation (the way it does in, say, the climax of The Dark Knight). The neutral approach to all-encompassing surveillance isn’t a bad thing in and of itself – after all, it’s the foundation of Mercy’s mystery setting – but paired with the film’s eventual pro-AI bent, despite depicting AI as a fascistic entity, it’s hard not to be perturbed by what Bekmambetov is selling.

Screenlife has been one of the more interesting filmic byproducts of the internet age, dating back to webcam experiments like the French comedy, Thomas in Love (2000), and the American supernatural horror film, The Collingswood Story (2002), and culminating in perhaps the ultimate example of the concept just last year: the reviled Ice Cube vehicle, War of the Worlds. Bekmambetov has produced a number of screenlife films: the Unfriended series; the father-daughter mystery, Searching (2018); and the modern Shakespeare adaptation, R#J (2021). He knows better than anyone that the challenge of screenlife is the self-imposed limitations of telling a story as it plays out within the confines of a computer screen.

But with Mercy, Bekmambetov pushes the concept past its limits until it breaks and becomes uninteresting in the process. Sure, we see digital evidence through Raven’s eyes, but half the time, the camera is focused on Pratt’s aggressive close-ups as the story reveals his character to be an unpleasant, borderline irredeemable husband and policeman whose innocence becomes hard to root for. Ferguson’s shadowy AI magistrate, by comparison, comes off as far more human…which is an incredibly strange outcome. There’s no emotional challenge or cognitive dissonance in wanting Raven to break free – the film’s approach to morality is dispiritingly flat – and Pratt often fails to imbue the character with realistic emotions or even the kind of showiness that might make Mercy an operatic romp. If nothing else, watching Pratt struggle with the material is at least a reminder of the flawed human artistry on display.

When the story eventually departs from its courtroom confines in its final act, the question of whose perspective – or cameras – we’re seeing the world through, and why, is just as nagging as the movie’s tonal inconsistencies and sloppy action scenes that cut between too many visual sources. The promise of unfurling a screenlife story into three-dimensional space around a character forced to interact with it is an alluring concept, especially when it concerns the wealth of information at Maddox’s and Raven’s fingertips. And yet, Bekmambetov never goes beyond simply introducing these ideas, casting them into the ether without a second thought. In a world that’s as radically changed as the one we see here, and as theoretically dangerous, you need a story that engages with its own premise on at least some level, and allows its doomed protagonist to wrestle with notions of morality and his own culpability in creating this status quo. Mercy is not only not that movie, but it also seems to salivate at the thought of a world where punitive justice and invasions of privacy are possible and easy, and the only downside is rogue actors who might misuse these technologies, which is a conclusion the film practically narrates to the camera.

Perhaps the screenlife genre, or this particular rapid version of it, isn’t the right venue for the material to begin with. On one hand, the images represent a kind of voyeuristic invasion and a ceding of liberty, which might have been interesting to explore. On the other hand, the sheer flurry of these invasive pop-up windows is also how the movie conjures its few moments of intrigue and excitement. Watching Mercy, it’s hard not to wonder: Why even make a futuristic sci-fi movie set in a dystopia if your fawning aesthetic framing makes the setting feel utopic? At that point, Bekmambetov may as well just invest in a generative AI company instead; oh, wait...