Arka Mukhopadhyay
There’s hardly any better place than Puerto Rico to revive a modern-day Frankenstein. At least Jeffrey Nachmanoff’s 2018 indie-tinted sci-fi venture ‘Replicas’ seems to suggest so. The tropics, which were once known for their insects and diseases, become a land of extraordinary biotechnological achievement in the movie, but at the hands of a shady conglomerate.
Keanu Reeves‘ William Foster becomes the Jesus of the latter-day, bringing back the dead. The process is a bit dubious, and the execution runs haywire. There are some perils and plot holes, but does William’s story end in a comic way? There remains a lot of questions in its wake. Let us revisit the final moments of the story in greater detail. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Replicas Plot Synopsis
William Foster and Ed Whittle are neuroscientists in Bionyne trying to make conscious robots. The team manages to transfer a neural network of an officer into a humanoid. The officer, codename 345, becomes sentient and attempts to destroy himself. The experiment is a failure, yet again, and Foster’s boss, Jones, warns him that he is reaching the end of his trials.
Foster’s mind is disarrayed, and he embarks upon a trip with his family on a rainy night (nobody knows why he thought it to be an opportune moment). The car falls into a pond, and Foster’s wife and children pass away in the scene. Miraculously, Foster is alive, and he takes the bodies of Mona, Sophie, Matt, and Zoe to his home. William attempts to put his experimentation to use and resurrect his family, but there are some hurdles.
Replicas Ending: Does William Get His Family Back?
Ed brings the gears necessary from Bionyne to resurrect them, but there are only three pods. Although Ed thinks Foster to be out of his mind, Foster knows it is possible to pull off. He writes the names of his family members on separate diary pages and tosses them into a bowl. Ed denies picking up the piece, and Foster picks up Zoe’s name. Foster has to erase every memory of Zoe from others’ neural networks, and as William says, people forget all the time.
The process takes 17 days to complete. However, they need generators to keep the power supply on, but it is 2 A.M. They manage generators from somewhere, and the police appear the next day at William’s doorstep. All cars in the neighborhood have their batteries stolen, and William’s experimentation may have something to do with the stealing. Officer Perez and Rodriguez mysteriously leave after speaking to Foster.
William reaches the office a bit late, and he sees a drawing made by Zoe clipped to his desk. He leaves abruptly, and Matt’s teacher is standing at William’s doorstep. William’s family has been missing for five days, and people are starting to suspect. William carries his lie forward by hacking into his children’s social media profiles and his wife’s e-mail. He even gets to know that Sophie has a bae named Juan.
The accelerants are thought to make people age faster. Only they don’t, and Mona, Sophie, and Matt function quite well upon resurrection. But Mona feels pain in her stomach while out jogging, and her phone is also missing. Sophie sees the name of Zoe written in her closet. Upon hearing this, William is eager to erase that bit of her memory as well. At this point, Mona appears in the scene.
William explains to Mona that they are clones, and that he had to erase Zoe’s memory from each of their neural imprints. Mona is furious, and Jones comes by for a visit. Someone has spilled the beans about William’s experiment (we later come to know the culprit – Ed), and Jones thinks William’s family is the property of Bionyne.
Is Jones Dead or Alive? What Happens to Subject 345?
Jones sniffs out the absence of Foster in the office and interrogates Ed. He also lets Ed know that the company’s stakeholders would discontinue the project if William fails to breathe life into subject 345. Although Jones manages to make clones of human bodies, the company is more interested in robotics and bio-warfare. The invention is no doubt pathbreaking, but Bionyne is possibly the front of a shady bio-weapon organization more interested in instruments of violence and agents of death. Jones is not even Jones, he says himself.
Jones asks for the algorithm of the cloning, but William is one of the stubborn lots. He injects a serum in Jones, and when that does not work, he uses his memory plate as a weapon. After Jones turns senseless, William puts the memory plate in the microwave and goes on a run with the family. They come back to find Jones in safe health, albeit with a black eye. Jones erratically points his gun at Mona but shoots Ed. Ed atones for his breach of trust with his life. William is apparently prepared to let go of his creation. Only, he is not. He decides to put his conscience into subject 345, which becomes conscious and receptive to his body.
With the help of the robot William, human William finally puts Jones to rest. However, you may wonder whether Jones is dead or alive since his presence in the plot is all-pervasive. As the final scenes reveal, he is alive (or a clone of him) and runs an affluent business in Dubai. Robot William handles the surgical procedures. As you can remember, robot William extracts the memory of Jones after Foster escapes (possibly because he can set up a business with Jones after cloning him, who knows?).
Is Zoe Dead or Alive?
In the final scene at the beach, William and Zoe walk hand in hand through the sand. But there was no fourth pod. So how is Zoe alive in the last scene? Is she a clone of Zoe? What happened to Zoe’s body should be the first question here. The second one should be if the last scene is real or an erased memory of a destined holiday conjoined with the movie to confuse the audiences further? Or maybe robot William creates Zoe from his memory, which is an imprint of William’s memory. Zoe can only be alive in his memory since he erased her from others’ memories. The most obvious way to read it – William brings Zoe back and the whole family together.
Read More: Where Was Replicas Filmed?
