BigBug Is The Weirdest Sci-Fi Movie On Netflix
Bigbug, a sci-fi film about household appliances gone amok, is the oddest film streaming on Netflix.
90s kids will remember the 1999 Disney Channel Original Movie, Smart House, about a rogue computer system that locks a family inside their home. It was a weird movie that somehow snagged a permanent place in many millennial minds. While Smart House isn’t available to watch on Netflix, an even weirder sci-fi movie with a similar theme is currently streaming on the platform—it’s called Bigbug, and according to SlashFilm, it’s one of the most bizarre sci-fi movies ever made.
Since the dawn of the information age, writers, filmmakers, and storytellers have been fascinated with the terrifying possibilities that can arise from technology. Imagining how gadgets that we invent can turn on us and go from helpful to nightmarish has almost become a genre of its own with movies like Smart House, the 1977 sci-fi horror film Demon Seed, 2014’s Transcendence, and now Bigbug exploring the thrilling worlds where tech has gotten out of hand.
Released on Netflix in 2022, Bigbug follows a group of suburbanites locked in their home by their once well-intentioned homemaking robots.
Usually, these sci-fi films lean towards the dystopian genre as they act as cautionary tales about how humans rely on technology and try to play God with their inventions. But Bigbug falls into a different category because, while it carries a theme of warning against technology, and the humans find themselves subject to the robots’ mercy, the movie often leans in bizarre directions, becoming almost slapstick in nature.
It’s a genre bend that seems to work, though, because despite only receiving a 44 percent approval rating from critics at the time of its release, this weird sci-fi film has gained massive popularity on Netflix.
Bigbug is the collaborative effort of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Guillaume Laurant, known for their work on films such as The City of Lost Children, Amelie, and A Very Long Engagement. It is their first project together since 2013’s The Young and Prodigious T. S. Spivet.
The film features an ensemble cast, including Isabelle Nanty, Elsa Zylberstein, and Claude Perron. This French film was produced by Gaumont Film Company and Eskwad and distributed by Netflix.
Set in a not-so-distant future in the year 2045, Bigbug revolves around four domestic robots who stage a hostage situation during a rogue android uprising. While the premise may sound terrifying, the film combines ridiculous comedy with the existential questions often posed in AI-gone-awry movies. Part of the brilliance of this Netflix film is that it doesn’t just include futuristic tech but actually incorporates multiple generations of technical advancements to show a realistic future version of our world.
For instance, in Bigbug, some individuals relentlessly pursue the latest Apple products, while others remain content with their flip phones. One of the standout robots is Einstein, resembling a hybrid of Rosey from The Jetsons, Crow T. Robot from Mystery Science Theater 3000, and the T-1000 exoskeleton from Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Another robot, Monique, offers a retro-futuristic take on companion robots, similar to Grace in Netflix’s The Umbrella Academy.
More than a comedy or a futuristic sci-fi film, Bigbug delves beyond robots seeking revenge and aims to critique the upper-middle-class obsession with excess and privilege, highlighting society’s continuing detachment from human connectivity. By showcasing a variety of robots across generations of technology, the Netflix film suggests this disconnect is not a recent phenomenon.
As we see today, older generations in the movie constantly criticize the youth for becoming obsessed with their technology. In Bigbug, the Netflix film explores the thought that this is not a new phenomenon but something that every generation has gone through. As every year passes, people grow further apart and interact less with their fellow humans and more with the technology created to make their lives easier.
Since the movie is set just a few years away in 2045, the older characters in the story would have lived through the era of AOL Instant Messenger and the dawn of the internet—perhaps they even watched Smart House on Disney Channel when they were kids.
Netflix’s Bigbug is a film that will jolt viewers out of their comfort zones and make them think about the possibilities of a future world that they will likely be alive to witness. The tone of the movie screams at the audience to wake up from the technological trance we’ve been stuck in for the past 30 years, describing how we’ve become increasingly desensitized to the genuine threats of artificial intelligence.
Unlike most sci-fi movies, Bigbug actually comes across as anti-sci-fi, despite its whimsical moments, as it breaks more genre conventions than it embraces, resulting in an incredibly refreshing and mind-boggling final product.
