Uncanny Ash

In the short film "Be Right Back," Martha and Ash are a good example of an average couple. Suddenly, Ash is involved in an accident and passes away. Unexpectedly and with Ash at such a young age, Martha is traumatized by the loss of her loved one. Soon after the funeral, Martha finds out she is pregnant with Ash's child. With this news added on top of the event of his death, Martha is tempted to start having conversations through email/text with a programmed system that will reply in the way that Ash would have through accessing his posts on social media. At first, I believe she does this to receive somewhat closure. This communication then turns into phone calls that sound just like Ash, as well. Quickly, this escalates and Martha orders a human like android robot that looks and talks and acts just similarly to how Ash would, which we will call Ash 2. Martha basically replaces Ash with this thing which imitates the real Ash. She soon figures out that in some ways there are differences between them and this upsets her because she wants Ash 2 to be just like the real Ash. This is not possible because Ash 2 is only programmed to sift through the posts Ash has posted online and there many parts of his life that he has no idea about, especially the past experiences and memories of the real Ash. In the end, there is a fast forward to about 8-10 years later and it shows Ash 2 is living in the attic and Martha and Ash's daughter gets to have some kind of relationship with Ash 2, who is somewhat similar to her biological father.  

After watching this short film, I find myself wondering what my life would be like living with this "near future" technology at my fingertips. If someone close to me passed away suddenly I would be very upset. With that technology, I believe that I would want one last phone call with that loved one who passed. Oppositely, I do not think I could bring myself to create a replica of that loved one and interact with it daily in the way that Martha did with Ash 2, basically replacing him and somewhat pretending he is still alive. I believe this is not a proper way to grieve and having Ash 2 around all the time prevents her from truly moving on from Ash's death. I find this film to be strange and creepy, but somewhat relatable. Although I would not take things as far as Martha did, I understand the reasons she did what she did under those circumstances. This film really makes me think: How far can technology go before it's considered unsettling? And how much do you need to be like a human to be considered a human?