Sean Miller, “The Replacement” (2018)
What starts out as an investigation of the consequences of cloning in this sci-fi comedy short turns out almost to be a philosophical inquiry into the vexed question of how much nature or nurture influences a person’s destiny, the choices he or she is able to make, and how acquiring power and control can also influence personality and future choices, with all the consequences that arise. (The film’s original premise was actually more ordinary: it was intended to show what uncomfortable consequences could accrue if biological and other scientific breakthroughs and advances resulted in actual technological changes faster than society’s ethics and laws can keep up with them.) Despite a rather weak plot, the film leaves viewers pondering how much of a nation’s politics and ultimately its history, culture and society are shaped by the personalities of its past leaders and their backgrounds. In the not-so-distant future, lowly janitor Abe Stagsen (Mike McNamara) subscribes to an organisation that makes clones of his cells in the belief that ultimately his clones can help get him out of his low-paying job; instead his clones pursue their own ambitions and one of them ends up being elected President of the United States. Irate, Abe cancels his subscription and vows to get even with President Abe to demonstrate that the original Abe still matters. In his quest to find President Abe, the real Abe discovers that he’s not the only person angry at his clone; other people are out to hunt down all the Abe clones and his own life is in danger.
Structured as a vehicle for McNamara to show off his acting chops, which he does admirably, the film ends up having a sketchy plot which ends with Abe joining an underground movement. Viewers are left high and dry with this open-ended and uncertain coda. The film glosses over the discrepancies in the time the clones take or need to grow up before one or a few of them actually meet a still youthful orignal Abe as adults. Instead the film shoves poor old Abe into one rushed and not well thought-out scenario after another, with many improbable escapes: in one scene, he narrowly escapes being machine-gunned into Swiss cheese when in the nick of time, a bunch of police centurions leap into the scene and machine-gun his would-be executors willy-nilly while miraculously sparing him even though he is in the thick of it all.
Still, that Miller manages to pack a 12-minute film with so many interesting questions on the ethics and consequences of cloning for society is no mean feat. The film really needs a proper full-length movie treatment or a television series that can investigate the moral and ethical issues in some depth.