iBoy (2017)

iBoy (2017), a Netflix science fiction superhero film from director Adam Randall, concerns a teenage boy in gang-ridden East London who takes a bullet to the skull and wakes with a smartphone fused into his brain matter. This is the kind of premise that could support a wry, pulpy entertainment. The film instead adopts a grim, rain-slicked realism, as though the material were a social document about urban decay. It is not. It is a story about a boy who can make cell phones explode with his mind.

The narrative engine is the brutal rape of Lucy Walker, Tom's neighbor and romantic interest, which functions almost entirely as motivation for Tom's revenge campaign. She spends much of the runtime as a shut-in, then as a hostage, briefly seizing a gun before being rescued. Progressive sensibilities are not the film's concern, and the structure is a familiar male vengeance fantasy dressed in cyberpunk wiring. The cast reflects the genuine demographics of the estate where the film was shot, with Black and mixed-race actors in supporting and villainous roles. This is organic to the milieu, not a statement. Race, racism, and racial justice go unmentioned.

The antagonists are drug traffickers and a crime kingpin, presented as criminals rather than as avatars of a broken economic order, so the film's politics extend no further than a general suspicion of men who sell cocaine. There is no environmental content, no body-positivity messaging, no neurodiversity narrative, and no engagement with the LGBTQ+ experience. Tom's head injury is a plot device, not a portrait of a mind that works differently. History is neither revised nor invoked. The film does not stop to lecture, which is its most admirable quality, though the grimness is relentless enough to suggest it wants credit for seriousness it has not earned. It is a nice idea that does not quite come off.