Be Right Back... from the dead, literally

"Be Right Back"? Who would’ve thought that meant “Be Right Back from the dead” … literally. In the film, the characters are a married couple, Martha and Ash. At the beginning of the film, Ash is completely indulged in his phone, not paying attention to some of the things Martha says. One day Ash leaves to run an errand, and never returns home, which worries Martha. She then finds out that her husband died, so a funeral is held, and she’s torn into pieces. She seems to be grieving normally at first, the normal depression, but one of her friends mentioned a program that allowed Martha to communicate with Ash, even though he was no longer living, and had signed her up for it. Martha is hesitant at first, but then when she does decide to open the program, she becomes addicted to it, because she was feeling like ash was actually still there. The program starts out as just an automated webchat that is programed to respond like Ash, which isn’t too strange. The next step is automated phone calls with an imitation of Ash’s voice, which to most viewer still wouldn’t classify as weird or creepy, then the final step is an actual robotic body that takes the exact form of Ash’s prior appearance… now that’s what was creepy. The uncanny resemblance was surreal, and the fact that he performed everyday functions like a normal human, is mind puzzling in a way. It’s puzzling to the human mind because we know it’s not the real Ash, but somehow this robot is doing functions we would, but then again sometimes Martha would have to tell him how the real Ash would act, and then the robot would respond in that manner. At one point in the episode, Martha realized that it was not really ash, and she has a break down towards the robot. The whole process didn’t seem like a healthy way to grieve a death, because in a way Martha never really let go of Ash in a sense, even if at the end he’s just up in the attic. Watching the whole film and how Martha interacted with the robot was quite strange, especially at the end, where she put him up in the attic, but still allowed her daughter to visit “Ash”. Why would she even bring robot Ash into her daughter’s life if it’s not the real thing? Overall, I feel as if we had these types of robots, many would be uncomfortable, and many would also agree that you wouldn’t be letting go of that person. Sure, you’d get the comfort for a while, but then come back to reality and realize that it is not an actual person.