T.I.M., the technologically integrated manservant, is a humanoid robot (Eamon Farren) given as a prototype to Abi (Georgina Campbell) and her husband, Paul (Mark Rowley), as a requirement for her new job. They give T.I.M. unfettered access to their digital accounts to help facilitate their needs. Paul notices that T.I.M. is developing an eerie affection for his wife. But Abi, still wary of trusting Paul after his cheating, doesn’t take his concerns seriously.

British comedian Spencer Brown directs and co-wrote T.I.M., his feature debut, with his wife, novelist Sarah Govett. He humorously says they’re “Luddites who are extremely paranoid about technology of any kind” and “feel that people are monitoring and manipulating us.” Both “grew up with the great stalker thrillers” like “Basic Instinct, Fatal Attraction, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, and Single White Female.” They wanted to create the “ultimate stalker, a humanoid Alexa.”

Brown doesn’t “believe AI can become conscious.” He thinks “consciousness is something that’s developed organically. If you take microchips, on a very basic level as being physical objects in space, electrical currents doing things. No matter how complex they get, there’s no reason it should form consciousness, any more than pebbles rolling down a beach. It’s just a complex system.” Brown is more concerned with Google and “this massive amount of computational power analyzing us.” Read on and watch above for our full interview with Spencer Brown.

Eamon Farren’s Uncanny Look
T.I.M. Release Date January 12, 2024 Director Spencer Brown Runtime 1hr 41min Writers Spencer Brown

MovieWeb: Please discuss writing T.I.M. with your wife, Sarah Govett. What inspired the film?

Spencer Brown: Okay, so yes, my wife and I are both Luddites, who are extremely paranoid about technology of any kind. We do not have an Alexa in our house, do not have any smart lighting, or smart heating. We don’t have a smart doorbell. We are very paranoid about our information, and feel that people are monitoring and manipulating us (laughs). We wanted to write something about that basically. We both grew up with the great stalker thrillers. We’d watch those on sleepovers, not together. That would have been weird. You know, Basic Instinct, Fatal Attraction, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, Single White Female, these kinds of films […] We decided to create a humanoid Alexa, which became T.I.M., the technologically integrated manservant. That was the heart of the film.

MW: The Terminator comes to mind when thinking of dangerous robots. T.I.M. is a humanoid Alexa that goes rogue. Obviously, you don’t want something that looks threatening in the house. I’m curious about the production design of the robot. He’s tall, thin, and good-looking. Why go for that specific body type?

Spencer Brown: When we saw Eamon [Farren], that sort of guided us. We had the actor from our casting director. He’s got such a great face. He’s obviously handsome. But at the same time, he’s got an uncanny look, like he could be an owl or a creature from another world. We thought he had such a great look for a robot. We didn’t have the budget to give him loads of bells and whistles, not that I particularly wanted to. We needed someone that did have that otherworldly look, and was a great actor.

Spencer Brown: We were always going skinnier. Skinny is efficient. That’s the idea. If you’re strong and skinny, you’re efficient. They’ve got a scene where Paul, the husband, he’s carrying a big bag of soil. T.I.M. just comes up and takes it off him. That’s more striking in a way. Mark [Rowley] was in The Last Kingdom. He’s in a BBC show about SAS guys. He’s actually pretty strong and tough. He’s got good muscles. Eamon has this slight, slender figure who can just lift twice as much.

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MW: T.I.M.’s mannerisms are interesting. Eamon’s a bit robotic in some of his movements. Then, in the scene where they all watch a movie, you see his eyes watering. There’s a hint of something deeper going on. He’s making a human connection. Was that the point where the audience can see that he’s not just a machine?

Spencer Brown: Yeah, I think that that was probably the moment where we started to empathize a bit with him. But also, we wanted the whole film to mirror Abi’s acceptance of him as a human. It’s through her point of view. She’s come to accept him. I wanted to mirror the way that we all quickly forget we’ve got this massive amount of computational power analyzing us on our computers. We’re just having a scroll through Google. We’re not thinking about them trying to manipulate or scan us for data.

Georgina Campbell’s House

MW: Abi’s an engineer, but somewhat naive. She’s not willing to listen to her husband until it’s too late. Georgina Campbell’s a phenomenal actress. I first saw her in Barbarian. Talk about her performance.

Spencer Brown: We always wanted her to be a different kind of scientist. That’s why we made her a prosthetics scientist. She’s great at the physical stuff, and can make circuits work. But she’s not an AI scientist. She has a fascination with what’s happening to him. But at the same time, she isn’t aware of the inner workings. Georgina’s a very instinctive actor to work with. She read the script, and I think got where it was. She seems to internalize things very quickly and comes so prepared to set. She came to it fully formed. We knew how great she was, and how subtle she is with her face. The fact that she’s so real. That’s what we were hoping she’d bring to the role. And she did. That cliché, about 90% of directing is casting the actors, there’s a bigger truth to it.

MW: T.I.M. takes place inside the house. There’s a lot of confined blocking. They go up and down the stairs, in bedrooms, and the garage. How much of that was that done practically? Or was it all shot on sets?

Spencer Brown: We knew when we conceived the film, the first film I was going to be directing as a feature, it had to be sort of cheapish. We basically wrote three chapters, staying in one location. Then we searched around and made it in this real house. We were hoping that it would feel more expansive than that. I think it does in many ways. We did have four weeks’ filming. We shot three in the house. There were certain things wrong. We’ve got too many scenes in the hall. We had to change the script around. We had that sense of space and background, so it never felt repetitive. The house was big, but at the same time, a lot of the rooms we weren’t allowed to use. There was stuff pushed in them. It was a case of making it feel like we were moving to new places, and also trying to avoid reflections. Because there’s so much glass in the house as soon as we turn the lights on.

Related: Eamon Farren & Mark Rowley Discuss AI Sentience in T.I.M.

MW: The film has a Hitchcockian element. T.I.M.’s popping up behind you. He’s always around in a creepy way.

Spencer Brown: I’m a big believer in Hitchcock. He is a great influence and a big believer in suspense. […] I wanted this to be a suspense film. There’s a ticking time bomb, and it’s about to go off, just having him constantly present. We were very aware of the blocking, little reveals, and having him in certain spaces in the background. That was very much on our minds.

T.I.M.’s Deadly Malfunction

MW: Before watching the film, I had literally just read an article about a Tesla robot arm that malfunctioned and hurt an engineer. Elon Musk was forced to reveal that it happened. The film speaks to a legitimate concern. What if the coffee machine decides to attack you instead?

Spencer Brown: One thing we wanted to have in the film was technology being rushed out. Dewson’s (Nathaniel Parker) character is always talking about trying to beat the Chinese to market. That’s just the reality of it. It’s like the Oppenheimer thing. They didn’t know, when they pressed that button, if it would destroy the world. There was a slight fear that it might, and they still did it. That’s the trouble. We’re so curious as a species. We just want to do things, no matter the consequences. We’re not going to take the proper precautions. Hopefully, society will wise up and be careful with this stuff. But that’s quite worrying.

MW: So when the singularity happens, an AI achieving consciousness, is humanity doomed? Or is there a possibility that it might actually be benevolent and help mankind?

Spencer Brown: I personally don’t believe in the singularity. I don’t believe AI can become conscious. Why would it work? I think consciousness is something that’s developed organically. It’s a mystery how it appeared. If you take microchips, on a very basic level as being physical objects in space, electrical currents doing things — no matter how complex they get, there’s no reason it should form consciousness, any more than pebbles rolling down a beach. It’s just a complex system. It may be that consciousness can be created, but I’m not too worried about the singularity per se.

Spencer Brown: I didn’t want [T.I.M.] to be too much about consciousness. I am worried about how we treat technology, how we accept it, and how we come to see it as human, even though it’s not. The danger is not necessarily becoming conscious and having goals different to our own. It’s that we program someone else’s goals and create these problems. For me, it’s less a mystical thing of an otherworldly being than just a malfunction and lack of understanding of complex systems. But that’s less fun, isn’t it?

MW: What was the best and worst day as director/co-writer of T.I.M.?

Spencer Brown: Probably the worst day was when we were doing a big finale sequence and didn’t quite factor in how long it would take to sort out various special effects. The prep for them, such as the harnesses and prosthetics, we basically ran out of time. Then we did miraculously manage to shoot part of the finale with two cameras at the same time. I abandoned storyboards. How do we get this done? Otherwise, we don’t have a film. It was quite funny. The first AD is brilliant. We had a fake knife. The main character is eating with a fake knife. We didn’t have time to do different takes. We would have to pause the take. Then bring in the new live knife, and the actors would continue. That was probably the low. But at the same time, to be honest, the whole thing was just a great experience for me. I’m so pleased I got to make a film. I feel so privileged to be able to do it.

MW: There are multiple T.I.M.’s in the story, because he is a mass consumer product like Alexa. Do you see other stories in the T.I.M.-verse?

Spencer Brown: Let’s see how successful this is. And see if it justifies a sequel and 10 times the budget. I have theories about what happened at the end of things. We weren’t thinking about continuing the character, but maybe something will strike us in a couple of years.

T.I.M. is available on demand and in limited theatrical release from Brainstorm Media.