Feel free to weigh in with your favorite nightmare, here’s my incomplete list.
My number one is the largely forgotten “Colossus: The Forbin Project”, which I saw at a tiny theater in Frankfort, Michigan in 1970, the year it came out, and just rewatched recently.
Totally holds up, and, if anything, is more terrifying.
What’s unique about it is that the clunky tape and typewriter technology of the era provide jarringly anachronistic visuals, but the story, which starts right out and doesn’t let up, is completely contemporary and immediate.
Fun Fact: Elon Musk perversely named his disastrous Hyperscale project outside of Memphis “Colossus” after the rogue AI in this movie.
Highly, highly recommended if you have not seen, “Ex Machina” is a humanoid robot nightmare scenario, directed by genius Alex Garland (28 Days Later) with a creepy Tech Bro unforgettably played by Oscar Isaac.
The Marvel franchise (if you partake) has a major vein of AI paranoia, best represented by the “Age of Ultron”.
An underrated entry in this genre is “Transcendence”, which did not do much at the box office, but has a terrific cast, with Johnny Depp, Rebecca Hall, and Paul Bettany, all at their absolute best.
From 2006, Will Smith in “I, Robot” borrows from and heavily riffs on Isaac Asimov.
No list would be complete without Hal, the cool but murderous disembodied monster-bot antagonist of Kubrick’s classic “2001”.
Enjoy your weekend!