Keanu Reeves is William, a scientist leading in the fields of transferring human minds to robots and creating human clones without minds of their own. But it’s only when his wife and three children (Mona Foster, Emjay Anthony, Emily Alyn Lind, Aria Leabu) die in a car crash that he thinks of combining these skills, accidentally Invasion of the Body Snatchers-ing himself by cloning creepy replicas, in this sci-fi Pet Sematary. Pet Laboretary?

This convoluted tale definitely brings in some genuine sci-fi ideas, but gets bogged down in a conspiracy so deep that William’s boss has been faking his name (“My name isn’t even Jones”) and it even turns out the company he’s been working for is actually just out to make money.

Appropriately chunks of the film are creepily replicated from elsewhere including Minority Report, I, Robot and The 6th Day while somehow managing to look worse 20 years later, including a dreadfully CGId robot that looks like a crappy Chappie. And like The 6th Day its wooden star acts surprisingly well with Reeves remarkably providing the film’s strongest performance.

It’s played remarkably straight considering William is constantly falling into Man With Two Brains style scientific farces. During his new family’s 17-day gestation period he has to pretend they’re all still alive, including messaging his daughter’s boyfriend while mournful music plays. But once they’re re-birthed things get even worse when has to do a Goodbye Lenin! and convince them that they haven’t lost 17 days of their lives.

And it’s not made more plausible by the dialogue which is so corny it’s like mutant GM maize with five ears. With its iffy visuals, meaningless technobabble and a messy plot with more holes than Holes it amounts to dumb un-fun cloned many times over.