My quick rating – 5.5/10. I have to say, Affection wastes no time making you feel uncomfortable. It begins with a car stalled on the road, door hanging wide open. That annoying “door is ajar” beeping is heard amidst the stillness. A woman is sprawled out on the road, facedown. She drags herself upright, only to seize violently, and before you can even process that, she’s stumbling into the road and gets hit by an oncoming car. It’s the kind of opening that immediately locks you in and makes you wonder what kind of sci-fi nightmare you’ve just stepped into.
Then Ellie wakes up in bed.
Jessica Rothe plays Ellie, a woman trapped in a reality she can’t reliably hold onto. Her memory keeps resetting, and the film puts us directly inside that disorientation. She’s trying to understand her life while constantly losing it, and Rothe sells that confusion and fear really well without ever overplaying it. Something is clearly wrong, but the film refuses to explain it cleanly at first.
Joseph Cross plays Bruce, the man who claims to be her husband, and his presence keeps the tension simmering. You’re never quite sure if he’s a stabilising force or part of the problem, and that uncertainty does a lot to keep you interested. Then there’s Alice, played by Julianna Layne, who honestly ends up being one of the most striking parts of the film. Her presence, and the strange puncture marks shared across both her and Ellie, hint at something far bigger and far more invasive going on than anyone wants to admit.
The mystery is strong enough to keep you engaged, and for a while it works. You’re constantly trying to piece things together, building theories as the story unfolds. I was even circling close to the truth at points, but never quite landing it. That’s usually a good sign for this kind of sci-fi thriller.
Where Affection starts to fall apart is in its own science fiction. It deals with memory manipulation, identity, consciousness transfer, and something loosely resembling cloning, but it can’t seem to follow a clear set of rules. Every time it seems like the film is establishing how its technology works, it contradicts itself or shifts the goalposts. Instead of sharpening the mystery, it becomes tangled in its own mechanics until the explanation starts feeling more like noise than payoff.
That’s frustrating because the cast is solid across the board. Rothe carries the weight, Cross keeps the ambiguity alive, and Layne leaves a strong impression whenever she appears. B.T. Meza also directs with real focus at times, and there are moments where the film feels like it could break through into something excellent. But the production design and visual execution don’t fully match the ambition of the ideas, and the script never quite holds its own structure together.
Affection ends up as a classic “almost great” sci-fi thriller. We get strong performances, compelling mystery, and interesting ideas undermined by a screenplay that never builds a consistent rulebook. Since B.T. Meza is both writer and director, the fix feels pretty clear. There’s real directing talent here, but the script needed another set of hands to shape it into something cohesive. What we get instead is a fascinating, frustrating loop of a film that can’t quite remember what it wants to be.
