In Zhang Nan’s Almost Human, an advanced female pleasure robot (Ma Yujie), having achieved self-awareness, breaks free from her creator and captor; to cover her sleek and otherworldly appearance, she murders a young woman and wears her skin. Curious about the meaning of human love, she randomly sets her sights on Wang Sheng (Duan Bowen), whose relationship to his girlfriend Su Xin (Hayden Kuo) is hitting a rocky patch.   Having kidnapped and sequestered Su Xin, she duplicates her appearance thanks to her creator’s latest invention, and takes her place within the couple. Almost Human‘s premise is interesting, basically a sci-fi twist on a Pu Songling horror romance like Painted Skin (the film’s Chinese title translates as “Mechanical Painted Skin” and replaces a fox spirit with a pleasure robot), and with a dash of Philip K. Dick rumination on artificial intelligence. Yet Zhang Nan does very little with the horrific, philosophical or even erotic potential of the story, going instead for tedious procedural (Liu Yiwei as an inspector leads the least urgent murder investigation ever), flat comedy (mostly sitcom-level bickering), and listless romance (Hayden Kuo and Duan Bowen have all the chemistry of diet coke and a veggie smoothie). Only of note are Ma Yujie, striking as the robot, and a nice Cliff Martinez-inspired score.  *1/2