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Parents' Guide to

Zone 414

By Jeffrey M. Anderson, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 15+

Violence, sexual situations in derivative sci-fi thriller.

Movie R 2021 98 minutes
Zone 414 Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

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What's the Story?

In ZONE 414, ex-police-officer-turned-private-detective David Carmichael (Guy Pearce) is seen shooting a woman and then removing some kind of robotic hardware from her skull. It turns out that it was a test to see whether he's right for a certain job. Marlon Veidt (Travis Fimmel), who grew excessively wealthy by creating lifelike robots, needs David to enter "Zone 414" -- a special city designed by Veidt where humans and robots can interact freely -- to find his missing daughter, Melissa. There, David meets Jane (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz), an android who's begun to develop her own feelings. She agrees to help David find Melissa if David will help her, since she's been receiving threatening messages from an anonymous stalker. What they discover together is most unexpected.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say: Not yet rated
Kids say: Not yet rated

This good-looking sci-fi thriller has some fun set designs, but it also has a big "been there, done that" quality. Zone 414 borrows liberally from Blade Runner, Ghost in the Shell, and Westworld, without adding any new themes or interesting characters. David Carmichael feels like he walked out of an old-fashioned hard-boiled detective novel, and Pearce plays him with one note: kind of an annoyed, impatient grimace. And Fimmel gives an odd performance while slathered in puffy age makeup. Meanwhile, Lutz can't quite intuit where to draw the line between Jane's android body and her developing emotions, and her character comes across as just lost. Zone 414 tries to engineer an emotional connection between the two main characters, and it fails.

Aside from a handful of interesting sets -- Jane's vast apartment, decorated with creepy busts and a crashed chandelier -- and intriguing locations (a boat yard?), the movie doesn't really establish what Zone 414 is actually like, how you get there, where it is, how big it is, or what goes on behind the scenes. Time seems different, too. After David spends the night on Jane's couch, the next scene takes place ... at night. (What did they do all day?) Not long after that, it's dawn again. Many of the problems of Zone 414 are no doubt due to a low budget, but other devices -- like twitching surveillance footage -- suggest a lack of inventiveness, too. This story has been told many times before, and much better.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about Zone 414's violence. How did it make you feel? Was it exciting? Shocking? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

  • What would be the appeal of a city full of robots? What do the customers actually do there? What would be some of the benefits of robots?

  • How does the movie depict sex? What values are imparted?

  • How are alcohol, drugs, and smoking depicted? Are they glamorized (do they look cool)? Are there consequences? Why does that matter?

  • What makes the movie feel futuristic? Is it a hopeful future, or a "dystopian" future?

Movie Details

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