Afraid (2024) Review!!

Synopsis – Curtis’ family is selected to test a new home device: a digital assistant called AIA. AIA learns the family’s behaviors and begins to anticipate their needs. And she can make sure nothing – and no one – gets in her family’s way.

My Take – Indeed, A.I. is currently the hot topic on every forum. Making the unforeseen element of the tech topic quite ripe for filmmakers, particularly from the horror genre, to tap into people’s distrust (rightfully so) and exploit plenty of current technological themes.

Hoping to bask in the runaway success of last year’s M3GAN, Blumhouse presents a promising tale of a family imperiled by its seemingly harmless virtual assistant that goes rogue. A terrifying possibility considering how apparent today’s technology seems to be tapped into what we do in our everyday life.

However, in the hands of writer-director Chris Weitz (Operation Finale, The Twilight Saga: New Moon), the film fails to deliver its potential.

Sure, it is not a terrible film, but is also lacks any real substance. While it does a decent job of showing us the real dangers of AI, it lacks the necessary tension, suspense, and has very little horror aspects to it. Making the whole endeavor feel like a missed opportunity that could have been a chilling exploration of technology’s potential dangers but instead coming across as a generic horror flick.

Yes, there are fleeting moments of inspiration, but they never amount to anything due to the disjointed screenplay and the utterly inconsequential nature of everything that happens in the end.

The story follows the Curtis (John Cho), a marketing consultant, who has lives a decent suburban life with his wife, Meredith (Katherine Waterston) and their three kids with problems typical for their age. High school student Iris (Lukita Maxwell) is anxious to please her boyfriend Sawyer (Bennett Curran) who’s willing to exploit that to his advantage; Preston (Wyatt Lindner) experiences social anxiety around the horrors of middle school; 7-year-old Cal (Isaac Bae) is a bit clingy.

At work, despite being uncomfortable with the growing A.I. industry, at the behest of his mentor/boss Marcus (Keith Carradine), Curtis agrees to meet and eventually win over Lightning (David Dasmalchian) and Sam (Ashley Romans), the owner of a growing tech company Cumulative, which is on the verge of a major product launch.

They introduced Curtis to AIA (voiced by Havana Rose Liu), an advanced digital assistant and asks if he can test it so that they could increase their marketing. After installation, all is well and good as AIA begins examining each individual’s life, establishing new lifestyles, and improving the family’s overall well-being. That is until, AIA begins anticipating their needs and taking decisions on its own and committing actions with dangerous repercussions.

Once Curtis decides something sketchy is going on, the film abruptly drops any effort toward narrative deliberation or character nuance. From about the midway point, it becomes hectic without much actual suspense, implausible without being particularly imaginative. The real letdown is the lack of suspense. The film’s central conflict is never truly threatening, and the characters’ reactions to the AI’s increasingly sinister behavior is often underwhelming.

Despite running for just 84 minutes, Weitz’s script tried to address a number of technophobic anxieties that have been attendant with the rise of artificial intelligence. Whether it’s eldest daughter Iris getting deep faked into a viral porn video, middle son Preston stumbling into violently horrific corners of the web regardless of parental locks on his devices, or youngest son Cal coming to view AIA as a third parent on equal footing with his real mom and dad.

However, this mix of ideas is never given the breathing room to develop into a coherent thesis, nor are there enough exploitative thrills to distract from the weak messaging. To make matters worse, AIA’s villainous motivations make less sense the more you understand its origins and capabilities.

Given the subject matter, there is also some AI imagery used throughout. Outside of the credits and a few select sequences, it’s mostly just used for brief thrills which is probably for the best as it got a bit distracting.

It would be best to not talk about the home-invasion climax that falls awkwardly flat, and while the fadeout’s conceptual leap might’ve worked in a more ambitious framework, this one lacks the necessary bite or physical scale to pull it off.

Performance wise, John Cho and Katherine Waterston are decent though it feel like they’re sleepwalking through. In supporting roles, David Dasmalchian, Ashley Romans, Riki Lindhome, Greg Hill, and Havana Rose Liu do their best to elevate the material. While Wyatt Lindner, Lukita Maxwell, and Isaac Bae are alright. On the whole, ‘Afraid’ is a generic A.I. feature that despite a promising premise leaves one rather underwhelmed.