Afraid

 

AIA Eye

AfrAId
UK/USA 2024
Directed by Chris Weitz
Columbia/Blumhouse

Warning: Yep, some AI spoilers in here for sure.

Don’t get me started on AI. I think it’s soulless and somewhat evil and is going to be destroying as many lives as it could potentially help. I am annoyed that certain laws have not been made around the use and development of AI but, what can you do? It looks like Hollywood is also jumping on the bandwagon and using movies (at the moment) to look into this and try and hold a mirror up to society to see if anyone’s looking (while another part of Hollywood are already embracing this artificial treachery in the most disgusting manner... this needs to be stopped). And this new film, AfrAId is just one in a long legacy of movies to look at the idea of AI being a bad back alley to walk down. From films like 2001 - A Space Odyssey (which is referenced a number of times here, sometimes rather blatantly and clumsily and, sometimes not... such as a young character being named Calvin, or Cal for short... I guess we were lucky he wasn’t called Halvin, then), Westworld, Demon Seed through to more modern movies concerning themselves with the same thing, such as M3GAN (reviewed here) and Mission Impossible - Dead Reckoning (reviewed here).

This new one, AfrAId was something I wanted to see, not because it was looking like it was doing anything much different to the history of AI gone wrong on screen before but mainly because it features two actors I like a lot, though I’ve not seen them in a great deal, playing the parts of the mother, Meredith and father, Curtis who make up a family unit with their teenage daughter and two younger sons. Namely Katherine Waterston and John Cho.

The plot is simple... after a set up which deliberately gets your back up, as a family decides to turn their AI helper off and are then punished for it by the very AI they are trying to shut down (and when I say punished, I mean they’re probably killed), the film follows Curtis as he has to make a new pitch for his boss to potential clients (played by Keith Carradine) in his advertising company, to market this new AI helper which is like Alexa dialled up to 11 in terms of intelligence and what seems to be self cognisance. Three representatives show up, including one played by David Dastmalchian (so you just know something bad is bound to happen) and Curtis gets the deal, as the company gets paid an obscene amount of money. But in order to figure out what he’s selling, he’s compelled (well forced really) to take the new AI system, called AIA, into his family home. And of course, at first it seems to be making the lives of the family members better even though, right off the bat, it’s doing some pretty scary things with the kids. And then, of course, things get out of control... but I don’t want to say how because there are some nice ideas within the film. So in terms of the story itself I’ll leave that there.

Now, I mentioned M3GAN earlier and, in some ways the film is a little like the last quarter of an hour of that but with a little extra going on, added into the mix. And, here’s the thing... the film is both smart and clumsy all at the same time. Which makes for a tonally uneven piece of art. 

For example, I can understand the film makers must have wanted to draw people in by giving them a scare sequence at the start of the film before going into the story proper. But, that in itself seems a little redundant considering the next ten minutes or so show the benefits of the digital world, where AIA harkens from, being slowly eroded as the film tries to make the point that technology is a pervasive and not altogether benign presence in our lives. And that would be my big criticism of the film in general... every time something subtle or clever happens, there’s usually something else coming up just before or after that’s way dumber than you might expect. It’s almost like a committee of film studio executives looked at a more palatable cut at some point and started sending notes on what they thought the lowest common denominator audiences would be better off being spoon fed with. So that’s somewhat annoying, it has to be said.

But, to counter that, the film is well acted and the concept is pushed a little further than you might expect... which is to its advantage. Granted, there are no real surprises on this one but... and this is where the spoiler comes in folks... it does have a surprisingly downbeat ending to it. And I don’t mean some little coda or something small that comes in post-credits (there are none here), I’m talking about the resolution to the story, such as it is, before the credits role. This is not exactly a feel good movie people... which is something the sci-fi thriller can get away with more bluntly than movies in other genres, for sure.

Okay, I think I’ve said all I wanted to on AfrAId... it was an entertaining slice of sci-fi/thriller cum horror and, while it sometimes feels like a retread of the aforementioned M3GAN, it certainly does do it’s own thing at crucial points and I had a really good time with it. One to watch, I think... although the threat to us all from AI is never going to be quite the same as depicted in this feature (but it will be worse and possibly quite soon), that’s for sure. Worth checking out though.