Replicas

Replicas follows William Foster (Keanu Reeves), a scientist who specializes in synthetic biology. William Foster and Ed Whittle are bio-medical research scientists working for Bionyne Corporation in Puerto Rico, attempting to transfer the mind of a dead soldier into an android with superhuman strength, code-named Subject 345. Foster specializes in synthetic biology and mapping of the mind's neural pathways, while Whittle's specialty is reproductive human cloning. Ed Whittle (Thomas Middleditch) & Scott (Nyasha Hatendi) are members of his team ad Jones (John Ortiz) is his boss. Foster successfully captures the soldier's neural map and transfers it into the android's synthetic brain, but the experiment fails when the soldier recoils in horror at the android body and destroys it, killing himself again. Foster's boss Jones warns him that if he cannot get Subject 345 to work, the company's shareholders will shut the project down. Foster takes his wife Mona and three children Sophie, Matt, and Zoe, on a boating trip. But on the way back his family Mona (Alice Eve), Matt (Emjay Anthony), Sophie (Emily Alyn Lind) & Zoe (Aria Leabu) are killed in a car crash. Foster uses his unique knowledge to "resurrect" them in the form of biological clones. William uses the help of Ed to map their brains and to design biological clones for their bodies (so their minds don't reject them). Determined to resurrect his family, he coaxes Ed to bring him the Bionyne equipment necessary to extract his family's neural maps and to clone replacement bodies for them. He successfully extracts their neural maps and tells Whittle to dispose of the bodies, but the first major obstacle to his plan presents itself Ed is able to get only 3 cloning pods from Bionyne's lab, so William has to decide whom to give up. He randomly picks Zoe, and she is the one who is not cloned. Also, William deletes Zoe's memory from the memories of the others Mona, Matt and Sophie. When resurrecting his family, Foster does not inform them of this transition. After 17 days, the clone bodies are ready, and William is successfully able to transfer their memories into their bodies. Whittle starts the seventeen-day cycle required to create mature replacement clones for Foster's family and tells him he has only that long to solve the problem of integrating the neural maps into the cloned bodies, or else they will start to deteriorate by aging at an abnormally fast rate. Integrating the mind into a biological clone was phase two of the research project, to be solved after android transfer. Foster is forced to keep this secret, since he and Whittle have stolen millions of dollars of Bionyne equipment and are breaking bioethics. He spends the seventeen days removing evidence of Zoe's existence from his home and creating cover stories of illness to explain his family's absence from work, school, and social media contact. William is under pressure at work to imprint another mind into a synthetic body, but William doesn't feel it will work. He knows that the reason imprints are failing is because the mind is rejecting a synthetic body, but it accepts a clone one. When Foster notices his wife's central nervous system reacting to his touch, he realizes that Subject 345 failed because the mind expects connection to a biological body with heartbeat and respiration, rather than a synthetic one. He knows now that transfer into the clones will not be a problem, and the failure of android transfer can be solved by programming a simulated mind-body interface to make the android body appear biological. He successfully transfers the minds of his loved ones into the cloned bodies, then goes back to work creating a synthetic mind-body interface. William decides to imprint his own neural pathways into a robotic host. When the next dead body he receives has suffered too much brain damage to be viable, Foster resorts to recording his own mind for the android transfer. He manages that by writing an algorithm that tricks the mind into accepting the synthetic host as the real body. Meanwhile Mona can feel something is not right and confronts William. Sophie has a nightmare of her mother's death, and Mona catches Foster erasing her memory of the event. He confesses that they died in a car crash and that he resurrected them. The family soon discovers evidence of Zoe's existence that he missed. He then tells Mona that Zoe was their daughter, whom he could not bring back and he had eradicated her memory. This brings him into conflict with his corporate employers, who view his cloned family as property of Bionyne corporation. Jones confronts William and says he knows the truth and will confiscate the cloned subjects under Bionyne property. He tells him the research is not actually intended for medical purposes, but is being financed by the U.S. government to provide a military weapon, and that Foster's family are loose ends to be eliminated. William decides to eradicate the algorithm so that Jones cannot misuse it. Foster destroys the mind-body interface, incapacitates Jones, and flees, attempting to escape by boat. In retaliation, Jones orders the kidnapping of Mona, Sophie and Matt and forces William to come to him. Mona realizes that Ed was the one who ratted William out. Jones shoots Ed to put pressure on William to give him the algorithm. William agrees, but in the guise of designing the algorithm, he imprints his stored memory into the synthetic body and creates a robot, William. Robot William and human William join forces to fight for freedom for William's cloned family. Robot William kills Jones & his goons, But Ed dies in the process. William decides to take an imprint of Jones's mind (Ed was shot in the head and his mind is not imprint worth). 17 days later, William has a clone of Zoe. The two Fosters make a deal with Jones: he can live in a cloned body and become rich by working with Foster-345, selling clone transfers to wealthy people looking for a second life. Meanwhile, Foster is able to retire in peace with his family, including the newly cloned Zoe.