Rise

It’s us or them. This is the dark conclusion that humans have reached in David Karlak’s short film “Rise.” In the near future, robots have developed advanced emotional sophistication and their human creators don’t like it. What should have been a simple and violent extermination of artificial life proves harder when a captured robot demonstrates that the human aggressors are biting off more than they can chew. Our team loves the short for its impressive visual effects and character driven story. The late Star Trek actor Anton Yelchin delivers an especially strong performance that gets viewers to sympathize with the plight of a creation that is no longer wanted by its creator.