The Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda is not a filmmaker anyone would accuse of being Hollywood-adjacent. But his new movie, “Sheep in the Box,” takes off from an idea that sounds like pure high-concept Hollywood — or, in fact, several versions of that movie at once, all of them bad. It’s the story of an architect, Otone (played by the weirdly Sandra Dee-like Haruka Ayase), and her runty carpenter husband, Kensuke (Daigo), whose 7-year-old mop-haired son, Kakeru (Rimu Kuwaki), died two years ago in an accident. They’ve been suffering ever since, but then they’re approached by a company called REbirth that specializes in building generative AI humanoid replicas of lost loved ones. Before long, the couple welcomes into its home a replicant version of Kakeru, who looks and talks just like him. Problem solved! Or, in fact, problems just starting.
You can instantly envision a blockbuster American version of this story. And though “Sheep in the Box” is a sweetly wan sci-fi parable that mostly just sits there, I could see a smart producer ripping off the concept anyway. Here are a few of the ways it might go: The new robot kid is so winsome and appealing that he’s like a “perfect” version of the boy they lost — which pleases the couple greatly, until they realize that no, he really isn’t their son, and no one ever could be. Or…the robot kid possesses a remarkable intelligence that comes off as a bit sinister, and from the start he seems to be missing a certain emotional je ne sais quoi. Or…it could all veer off into a strange subplot about an older boy who gathers local youngsters into a woodland “Children of the Damned” cult, which the robot Kakeru joins.
