News just in: the future is looking bleak. It used to look bright, but it’s getting dimmer by the minute.

And you know why – yep, that’s right, AI. Mankind is creating a digital monster that will undoubtedly do away with us all – which will probably be the best case scenario, or simply allow us to barely exist for its own amusement.

But until then, watch these ads and by lots of shiny stuff with the latest technology to make our lives so much easier.

At least you can watch some fine entertainment, such as Gore Verbinski’s one possible outcome of this not-too-distant tech apocalypse.

At ten-past-ten at night a strange-looking guy, covered in cables, walks into Norm’s diner in LA. He is a man from the future (Sam Rockwell), or so he claims, and he has walked into this diner over a hundred times before.

He’s there to recruit the perfect team to save the world, but as he’s been there a number of times before, you get the impression he’s yet to collect the correct team combination as yet.

He makes his case, and still manages to get a number of volunteers, such as school teachers Mark (Michael Peña) and Janet (Zazie Beetz), Uber driver Scott (Asim Choudhry), bereaving mother Susan (Juno Temple) and children’s party princess for hire Ingrid (Haley Lu Richardson).

They then attempt, for the first time together, to save all their futures from a rogue AI – but how?

After his impressive box-office success helming the first three Pirates of the Caribbean films – with the last one released in 2007, even though winning the Best Animated Film Oscar in 2012 for his follow-up Rango, Verbinski hasn’t had much luck with his last two releases – 2016’s A Cure for Wellness and this one, both of which bombed at the box office. And for this one in particular, it’s a shame as it has a cult-in-the-making feel about it.

Matthew Robinson’s script walks the perfect tightrope of tapping into the current zeitgeist fears regarding AI, whilst creating a thrilling story, filled with interesting back stories, for some really entertaining characters. There is some punchy dialogue, rich with dark humour, as the audience is made to almost feel the silent member of the team.

Verbinski’s direction is pin-sharp, with a vision that pays homage – intentionally or not – to the likes of Terry Gilliam (Time Bandits, Brazil and 12 Monkeys) and early Edgar Wright (think Cornetto trilogy), sprinkled with the future paranoia of Black Mirror.

The result is hugely entertaining, with the kind of winning script that is virtually impossible to second guess, as the magnetic Rockwell leads us all into a quirky, riveting adventure to save the world.

It may have bombed in cinemas, undeservedly so, but Verbinski’s superb film has all the components to be a much revered future sci-fi classic, for as long as AI chooses to have us around to enjoy it.