Her feels a great deal like a feature-length Black Mirror episode. True to that form, it takes a premise that has the potential for both dystopian malaise and unexpected beauty and delivers both in equal measure. What makes this story so compelling is how its characters and narrative are so much more fleshed-out than one would expect. Joaquin Phoenix's Theo is portrayed as a morose, defeated figure, but he's not drawn as the sad sack he could have been, making him more relatable and allowing the audience to engage more deeply with his emotional development. A story that could have easily worked as an exercise in magical realism that lays aside the realistic ramifications of its concept is instead constructed as much as speculative science fiction as it is as unorthodox love story. Samantha’s AI is cast in a much more creative way than such characters tend to be in either.

Her does shockingly well in ensuring that both Theo and Samantha are placed on equal footing with regard to the development of their relationship. The narrative is crafted so as not to have the audience empathize more with one than the other. There are points in the film where Theo comes across as frustratingly distant and noncommittal as this AI is falling rapidly and completely in love with him, and points where Samantha seems cavalier about her quickly-developing connectedness to the other OS-1s as they move toward singularity, and about its consequences for her relationship with Theo. Her insensitivity evokes the familiar pain of watching a lover discover a new passion and feeling left behind.

The adversities this romance faces are subversions of what one usually sees in a story like this. There is the initial friction generated by the fact that Samantha isn't human enough, but as things go on, even more trouble arises because she is too far beyond human to sufficiently empathize with Theo in necessary ways. What begins as a predictable story of love and loss grows into something wholly unique that leaves the audience feeling empty and ambiguous in both an emotional and existential sense.