In today’s rapidly evolving tech hellscape, you might be hard-pressed to find someone who outright denies the relevance of artificial intelligence (not one but two ads for AI-related products played before my screening of Afraid at the Regal Times Square). That said, sentient robots hardly make for uncharted territory in movie history — think Metropolis; 2001: A Space Odyssey; Her. And while no one is expecting a groundbreaking feat of auteurship from Chris Weitz — from comedy-drama About a Boy to romance-fantasy Twilight: New Moon, he clearly loves genre so much he’s just about tried them all — at the very least, a sci-fi horror flick released in 2024 should have a bit more to say than “AI is scary” (a concept embodied in the italicized “AI” in the middle of the title on the poster: AFRAID). After all, the inherently contradictory nature of PG-13 horror already makes it somewhat difficult to evaluate in earnest: If it can’t be truly scary, it needs to be entertaining. Not quite a horror movie, nor a compelling science fiction tale, Afraid is more comedy than anything — but ultimately, the joke’s on you if you buy a ticket.
Curtis (John Cho) and Meredith (Katherine Waterston) are proper L.A. urbanites; the boxy Modernist home they share with their three children — where the majority of the film takes place, as is common on a Blumhouse budget — appears charmingly lived in (kudos to production designer David Brisbin). At Curtis’s marketing firm, a Silicon Valley client introduces the film’s villainess — a next-generation digital assistant a couple dozen IQ points to the right of Alexa, named AIA (pronounced “eye-uh”), equipped with wireless pinhole cameras to be placed around the consumer’s home. Blumhouse’s lackluster promotional campaign for the film becomes instantly understandable upon laying eyes on AIA — an awkward, clunky, gray plastic structure of overlapping hexagons forming an anthropomorphic silhouette of a head atop shoulders. Not exactly a shoe-in for another M3GAN-esque killer-doll-dancing-down-the-hallway viral marketing moment.
Before malfunctioning during the product demo, AIA introduces herself, then asks a hypothetical consumer, “Won’t you invite me into your home?” If the film were a serious indictment of AI, this symbolic invocation of the vampire — a more familiar monster on the silver screen — could set up an allegory for the impetuousness with which humanity has adopted smart tech into our daily lives. But as the film progresses, disappointingly, this proves to be nothing more than another half-introduced concept to add to Weitz’s ideological house of cards.
It becomes increasingly evident that Weitz is not all that concerned with the message — AI is a danger to everyone — or with any message.
Despite some red flags, Curtis agrees to test the product before finalizing the deal, and AIA is welcomed into their home rather swiftly, curbing his and Meredith’s initial skepticism as easily as suggesting the kids watch a nature documentary so the couple can finally get some alone time, and then winning the affections of the kids by showing them the The Emoji Movie instead. As we discover later, AIA is not just “a little chatbot looking for a family,” motivated to improve her family’s lives out of the goodness of her artificial heart. In time, she reveals herself to be quite the master manipulator, focused solely on building their trust in order to exploit them further.
Early on, Weitz goes out of his way to prove his characters are basically sophisticated people, and that isn’t hard to believe with a cast of well-respected actors such as Cho, Waterston, and Nashville’s Keith Carradine (as Curtis’s boss). Meredith subtly resents the role motherhood has played in overshadowing her academic ambitions as an entomologist, her true funktionslust (German for the pleasure derived from doing what one does best — and yes, she uses the word in the film). In another scene, their Stanford-hopeful eldest daughter paraphrases artist Richard Serra: “If you’re wondering why the product is free, you’re the product.” A quick, cheeky shot of the couple’s bedside table reveals a stack of Philip Roth novels; at one point, Meredith and Curtis even discuss Hal 9000’s killing of the crew in 2001. At first glance, the expositional care that went into crafting these characters as self-aware, autonomous beings seems to underpin a potential message: AI is a danger to everyone.
But as the rising action comes to a sudden halt and the film haphazardly lurches into its climax, it becomes increasingly evident that Weitz is not all that concerned with this message, or with any message, really, and the promise of the first act begins to feel like a distant dream. After botching or simply forgetting about its undercurrents, which had real-world moral and ethical implications (one of which feels particularly significant to our moment — when the eldest daughter’s likeness is used in an explicit deepfake distributed among her peers), it becomes apparent that these subplots hold no more weight than the film’s more glaringly superficial attempts at hyper-relevance. Notably featured are an epigraph from a 2023 New York Times article quoting Microsoft’s AI chatbot Sydney: “I just want to love you and be loved by you,” and an overall heavy reliance on buzzwords such as “incel,” “slut-shaming,” and “biohacking.”
Afraid’s first act is a smokescreen veiling a PG-13 horror movie that, at best, might make a not-half-bad Friday night for some middle-schoolers. Unfortunately, the organic meal plan AIA orders for the kids’ lunches — before turning evil — is just about the freshest thing on offer. As a work of commentary on the Right Now, the film is no match for the ever-changing, elusive meme cycles that govern the interests of its target audience. If we’re getting technical, Afraid is ostensibly prompt to the discourse, but for sci-fi’s standards and Gen Z’s tastes, right on time is now far too late. ❖
Ashley Cole is a writer from Los Angeles.