Vexille

Vexille (2007) is a Japanese CG-animated sci-fi feature you can watch online on iFILM. Director Fumihiko Sori sets it in 2077, a decade after Japan walled itself off from the rest of the planet.

The trigger was a global ban on dangerous robotics and biotech. Tokyo answered by quitting the UN and vanishing behind an electromagnetic veil: no one in, no one out, no word of what grows inside. An American special unit called S.W.O.R.D., led by a woman named Vexille, slips across the barrier to find out. What waits there turns out to be worse than any forbidden experiment.

Sori favors a cold, metallic surface and large-scale chases, landing closer to the cyberpunk of Ghost in the Shell than to hand-drawn anime. It clicks for fans of bleak technology-gone-wrong stories about where the human ends and the machine begins. Viewers after warm classic animation should look elsewhere. Stream Vexille (2007) online on iFILM.