Mobile phones have become our most loyal partners in life. There is hardly no one or anything else which you interact with as much as with this device. People can’t wait to check out the latest innovations in the field and can’t wait until they are able to order the latest iPhone or the newest flagship of a different brand. It wouldn’t surprise me that if Samsung or Apple would present a phone which you had to connect directly to your body that a lot of people wouldn’t even hesitate to do so. The thriller iBoy shows what such a symbiotic connection could look like.
Tom (Bill Milner) is a regular guy, who after a very violent encounter wakes up in the hospital with parts of his iPhone embedded in his head. Because of possible damage to the brain surgery isn’t an option. He has to slowly recover and finds out that thanks to those fragments he has some “superpowers” which he decides to use against evil. With his new skills he’s able to manipulate every electronic device, whether that’s a mobile phone or a car computer. His enemy is an unknown group of boys who attacked a female friend of his and he wants to find out who they are.
The hype of placing “i” in front of various products has died down and because of that it makes the movie feel kind of dated. The reason for that title though is that the film is based on a book with the same name which came out in 2010, when this was widely used. By now Netflix has a big number of original series, but also movies. The thing which stands out though that in general the films aren’t always of the same high quality as the shows. Of course there are exceptions like Beasts of No Nation or The Fundamentals of Caring, but in general people aren’t as excited when Netflix announces a new movie. It seems that they still haven’t found the “magic formula” for those, which is also the case for iBoy. The concept is interesting and the way which it is visualized is interesting, but this is no masterpiece. Tom quickly changes from an average boy into a very talented hacker, just by watching some instructional videos on YouTube. Because of that it doesn’t all feel convincing and makes him sort of like Neo from the Matrix, who is able to learn fighting in just a few seconds by uploading data to his brain. The events which take place are never really surprising and the characters aren’t giving much depth. It’s a high concept film which isn’t a chore to watch, but isn’t a must-see either.
