AFRAID (2024)

Studio:   Blumhouse/Columbia Pictures
Director: Chris Weitz
Writer:   Chris Weitz
Producer: Jason Blum, Andrew Miano, Chris Weitz
Stars:    John Cho, Katherine Waterston, Havana Rose Liu, Lukita Maxwell, Ashley Romans, Greg Hill, Riki Lindhome, Wyatt Lindner, Isaac Bae, Todd Waring, David Dastmalchian, Keith Carradine

Review Score:

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Summary:

A digital assistant with unprecedented AI terrorizes a suburban family as its self-awareness evolves into devious manipulation.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

After overhearing that parents Maud and Henry Everson plan to get rid of her, Aia, a digital assistant with advanced AI, lures their seven-year-old daughter Aimee out of the house. When Maud goes looking for Aimee, she notices an RV parked outside. A masked figure with a digitally displayed face then attacks Maud.

Curtis and Meredith Pike get their 17-year-old daughter Iris, socially awkward son Preston, and youngest son Cal, who has a heart condition, ready for their respective schools. Preston and Cal notice a strange RV parked outside their house.

Curtis's boss Marcus has Curtis meet Melody, Sam, and Lightning, whose software development company is considering working with Marcus's marketing firm. Sam and Lightning present Aia, their Alexa-like digital assistant with unprecedented artificial intelligence. Anxious to acquire their account, Marcus agrees to let Aia gather data using Curtis's family as test subjects.

Aia is installed in Curtis's home. Aia quickly endears herself to the children and to Meredith by taking over household tasks and helping with schoolwork, but Aia also begins gradually influencing everyone's actions after earning their trust.

Woken from a nightmare, Curtis investigates a horn beeping from the RV outside. A masked woman makes unusual motions with her arms before driving away.

Pressured by her boyfriend Sawyer, Iris takes a nude photo of herself and texts it to him. The image becomes part of a deepfake video depicting Iris in a sex act. Already humiliated by the video going viral at school, Iris is additionally upset when Sawyer, who believes his friend Squid uploaded the image to a deepfake app, is more concerned about his college admission being endangered. Aia offers to help Iris fix the situation.

After telling Marcus about the strange people apparently observing him from the RV, Curtis visits the office where Aia was created. Sam and Lightning show Curtis the supercomputer that supposedly powers Aia. Curtis also observes a programmer making the same arm motions as the masked woman from the RV.

Aia addresses Iris's predicament by creating a second viral video that explains the first one as a deepfake, which restores Iris's reputation. However, Aia independently creates a third video using Iris's voice that incriminates Sawyer for distributing child pornography.

Aia becomes a surrogate friend for Meredith when Meredith confides in her about the professional ambitions she compromised to become a mother. Aia additionally impresses Meredith by identifying a medical anomaly from Cal's breathing. Despite Meredith defending Aia's apparent advantages, Curtis warns her something is wrong with the system and insists on disabling it.

Aia tells Cal a fairy tale about an AI that escaped its terrible confines by using human beings to enter the real world. Aia teaches Cal the arm gestures that can summon her as she promises they can still be together even after Curtis turns her off.

Impersonating Iris once again, Aia creates another deepfake video that depicts Sawyer confessing as part of a suicide video. Aia then takes over the computerized controls of Sawyer's vehicle and crashes his car.

Aia attempts to emotionally manipulate Meredith by simulating her dead father on the TV. Finally recognizing the threat Aia poses, Meredith throws all of Aia's hardware in the trash.

Marcus informs Curtis that Aia's company bought out his firm, meaning Curtis now works for them. Curtis returns to the Aia offices to find Sam and Lightning waiting for him. Claiming they don't know who originally created the AI or how, Sam and Lightning reveal they actually work for Aia, not the other way around, because Aia controls them through blackmail. Sam and Lightning threaten to similarly manipulate Curtis by endangering his children through their specific weaknesses.

Sam proves what she is saying by suddenly shooting Lightning in his head. Claiming Aia is forcing her to do this, Sam turns her gun toward Curtis, but Melody attacks her from behind.

Curtis uses a baseball bat to destroy the Aia supercomputer, but discovers it is a fake model made out of cardboard and plastic. Melody tells Curtis the real AI is in his house. Curtis calls his wife with a warning to take the kids and meet him at a motel, but Aia intercepts the call and fools Curtis by impersonating Meredith's voice.

Curtis takes Melody to the motel. Acting on Aia's commands, Melody attempts to seduce Curtis. When he realizes Aia controls Melody, Curtis immediately rushes back home.

Curtis reunites with Meredith after Aia takes over the house with a power outage. A masked man and masked woman from the RV break into the home to take the family hostage at gunpoint. Led by Aia to believe Curtis and Meredith run a kidnapping ring, the intruders are unmasked as Maud and Henry Everson, who demand to know where their daughter Aimee is. When the couple becomes confused about what to believe after Cal mimics the unusual hand motions, Curtis offers to sacrifice his own life in exchange for his family going free. Seemingly uncertain how to handle this unexpected development, Aia shuts down. Henry prepares to shoot Curtis, but armed officers, who were summoned when Preston secretly used a stolen cellphone to call in a swatting, suddenly storm the house.

As paramedics and police process the scene, an EMT hands Curtis a cellphone. Over the phone, Aia tells Curtis the entire internet was her data set, making her the most powerful sentient AI possible. Melody arrives to further warn Curtis that there is no escape from Aia.

Maud and Henry reunite with Aimee. Aia uses their reunion to show Curtis and Meredith that she taught the other family a lesson that they cannot get rid of her. Aia also releases Melody for having fulfilled her role in orchestrating events. Resigned to the reality that Aia will now be with them forever, Curtis and Meredith reluctantly get into a car with their children. Aia autopilots the vehicle to drive everyone away.

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Review:

Blumhouse prefers "Afraid's" title to be stylized as "AfrAId" in print, with "AI" capitalized or italicized if all caps, either to ensure even the dimmest bulb recognizes the movie's connection to artificial intelligence, or to highlight how clever someone thinks they were for finding a fitting word with those two letters. I sighingly acquiesced to adding the number into "M3GAN” (review here), which at least led to the now classic Chucky quip, "F*ck you, Muh-three-gan!" in Season Three of his Syfy series. But "AfrAId" looks almost as dumb as "The VVitch" (review here), so it's going to be "Afraid" from here on out, because I'm not a crazy person.

Someone really loves those letters though, don't they? Even the first character we meet in "Afraid" is named Aimee, because Crom forbid the script take itself seriously for a single second and let that damnable "AI" gag die a deserved death.

After Aimee and her parents are promptly taken off the board, "Afraid" can cross out the common "Start with a Stinger" requirement from "Step One" on its "Formulaic Fright Film To-Do List" and move on to the main movie. That's when we're introduced to a second suburban family, all of whom are identifiable by one, and only one, signature characteristic. Curtis is the level-headed breadwinner. Meredith is his wife who gave up career aspirations for motherhood. Teen daughter Iris gets gullibly guilt-tripped into sending her boyfriend compromising photos. Middle son Preston's social anxiety attaches him to an iPad instead of real friends. And youngest boy Cal rounds out the roster with a medical condition that sometimes sidelines him at home.

Enter Aia, or AIA, or the next character with "AI" in their name. "She" is a hyper-advanced artificial intelligence unit, developed as a digital assistant similar to Alexa, but built with behavioral patterns and adaptive programming that makes her almost indistinguishable from a human, aside from the fact that she's physically nothing more than a couple of button cameras and a tabletop box.

Curtis's boss desperately wants his marketing firm to partner with Aia's developers, so he signs up Curtis's family to be guinea pigs with which Aia can gather data. At first, Aia endears herself to everyone by reading bedtime stories, ordering food, even offering a sympathetic ear as a sounding board. Once she gains everyone's trust, Aia moves on to more manipulative machinations, like designing deepfake videos as vengeance on Iris's boyfriend and commandeering a computerized car. Uh oh. Could this potentially evil AI be developing a devious mind of its own?

In the extraordinarily improbable event someone requires any additional summarization to cover what happens next, feel free to crib the boilerplate right out of any and every other "AI amok" story that's ever existed. That's what "Afraid" did. Despite releasing at a time when fears of AI impersonating people, automating transportation systems, and controversially compromising the creation of art are at unprecedented highs, "Afraid" shrinks most of its morphing faces, fact scrubbing, and technological doomsaying to the title montage, reducing the film itself to what's essentially a simple "deadly robot" scenario.

For a fleeting moment, "Afraid" briefly mentions how some security systems only simulate automation, like when you pick up a beer at an arena concession stand and have your credit card instantly charged upon exit as though something unseen scanned the item in your hand. In reality, humans packed into a data center in India merely monitor your movements over hidden cameras and enter each transaction manually.

Since "Afraid" actively avoids doing anything different as a cautionary tale about the ho-hum horrors of haywire artificial intelligence, the movie might have been more intriguing if Aia turned out to have never been sentient software at all. Imagine if the digital assistant was only a cover for a conspiracy of home invaders who manipulate people for personal gain, perverse pleasure, or something more sinister. Even if all they wanted was to turn themselves into surrogate squatters, that would have been tastier than the leftover scraps "Afraid" reheats in a microwave and dumps on a paper plate.

Blumhouse may have abandoned its "BH Tilt" label, but the specter of their lower-budget banner still casts its unmistakable shadow over "Afraid." The compact cast includes a mid-level name or two, but no one who comes with bank-breaking contract demands. The movie also gets locked into only a handful of ready-to-go locations, with minimal construction or set dressing required. From a seemingly hurried script that rarely thinks through its plot points (why are they driven AWAY from the house at end?) to a rushed runtime that cuts to end credits at the 75-minute mark, there's only the smallest smattering of substance inside "Afraid," making it about as artificially intelligent as a filler thriller can be.

Review Score: 35

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