Afraid (now on Netflix) was originally titled AfrAId, presumably pronounced a-FRAY-eyed, since the movie’s about AI, but that’s just clunky and confusing. It’s also illustrative of the movie’s overall narrative functionality, unfortunately. Should writer/director Chris Weitz (About a Boy) have stuck with the ORIGINAL original title, which was They Listen, in spite of what seems to be a misleading nod to They Live? Nah. That doesn’t really work either. It seems, for those of us who’ve sat through the film, the best thing Weitz could’ve done was put the screenplay in a drawer and forget it existed.
AFRAID: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: We open on a title card that reminds us of a real-life news report about an AI program called Sydney, who once told a user, “I just want to love you and be loved by you.” SINISTER. Next, an idyllic suburban scene: A family of three all sitting in the same room and looking at three different screens. ALSO SINISTER, possibly because it happens every day in every home everywhere. The little girl watches a video that’s crappo-distorto animation of alien-faced children, like we’ve seen modern AI software create, all creepy and laughable. The mom and dad actually speak to each other – annoying, because it means their screen time is interrupted – about getting rid of “that AI thing.” Uh oh. Prompted by the voice in her tablet, the little girl wanders off, never to be seen again, and the implication is, teh computerz got her! Moral of the story? Never say bad things about AI when AI is in earshot.
With the cold open out of the way, we settle in with a different family: Curtis (John Cho) is the dad, who works for a big marketing firm. His wife is Meredith (Katherine Waterston), who’s working on her thesis (it’s about bugs, I think) when she’s not being a weary mother of three. Iris (Lukita Maxwell) is the surly teenager whose boyfriend begs and begs her to send him a nude pic. Preston (Wyatt Lindner) is the middle-schooler begging for more time to gaze blankly at his iPad. Cal (Isaac Bae) is maybe five or six, and when he speaks, more often than not he says “Can I play Minecraft?” This, my friends, is the era of the Screentime Wars.
Curtis has a big meeting at work with a few reps from the Globex Corp or whatever it’s called. Melody (Havana Rose Liu), Sam (Ashley Romans) and Lightning (yes, Lightning, played by David Dastmalchian with what can only be described as Dastmalchianian weirdo flair) want him to help them sell the living piss out of their new AI home assistant dubbed AIA, pronounced “eye-uh.” The project requires Curtis to take AIA home and let her work her charms. And boy howdy, is she ever charming! AIA takes it upon herself to place orders from the overpriced online organic-food outlet, thus making lunch-packing drudge work a thing of the past. She diagnoses Cal’s irregular heartbeat, helps Meredith with her thesis, reads to Cal when everyone else is too busy and even exacts revenge on Iris’ boyfriend when he shares the nudie she finally sent him and her boobs go viral. The computer even listens and shares affirmations when Meredith just needs someone to talk to about her deepest, most complicated feelings. AIA so obviously just wants to help. I mean, she can’t clean the toilet or take out the trash, but golly, can she alleviate the burden of THINKING from her human pals!
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Afraid is like Her if it was a shitty C-minus-tier gimmicky horror movie about haunted cell phones, like One Missed Call or something slapdash-ass like that. Oh, and M3GAN could kick AIA’s ass.
Performance Worth Watching: Dastmalchian is such a frickin’ weirdo, bro. He should be in every movie that exists from here on out. He’ll only make them better.
Memorable Dialogue: Curtis visits Globex Or Whatever’s corporate headquarters and gets an eyeful of the “quantum computer” that powers AIA:
Sam: She likes you.
Curtis: I thought it was just algorithms, though?
Lightning: The algorithms like you.
Sex and Skin: Implied nakie selfies, but otherwise, nada.
Our Take: Imagine this: You’re halfway through Afraid and have deemed it’s preposterous, nonsensical dreck, but Netflix’s algorithms won’t let you turn it off. THE HORROR. Be grateful our tech-driven society ain’t there yet. But what if it was, and Netflix could manipulate children and stupid morons like the Meredith character (she’s so dumb, she absolutely shouldn’t be played by Katherine Waterston, who’s an excellent actress; we all need work, I guess) and threaten to kill them if you even press the pause button on a movie that’s actively assaulting your brain cells? And what if Netflix made you wedding-walk with deliberate slowness through the house with no lights on, making you susceptible to cheep jump scares? You’d sort of know what it’s like to be in this movie, and that’s truly terrifying.
Strange that it’s a product of Chris Weitz then, who’s been affiliated with some so-so stuff, but nothing as half-assed as this chintzy Blumhouse quasi-horror thriller. Afraid feels like he whipped one out on the quick to prey on some up-to-the-moment existential fears before they go stale and are replaced with freshly upgraded existential fears – and considering this movie was supposed to be released in 2023, those existential fears have been lapped three, four, maybe five or six times by new ones now. Being creeped out by deepfake-AI pics of people with 19 fingers is so two years ago!
To be fair, there’s a halfway-decent premise here, which addresses the incremental tech takeover that’s occurred in pretty much every household since the internet started offering us whatever we want, and right now. (Cue the reference: Fox turned into a hardcore sex channel so gradually, I didn’t even notice!) And the film flirts with that idea when it gives us a SINISTER skewed-angle shot of an electronic hotel door lock and we’re supposed to quiver at the thought: Is AIA in THERE too? She could be ANYWHERE! Perhaps if Weitz adopted a more playful, tongue-in-cheek tone instead of inflecting this material – sloppy, malformed and haphazard, as if it was written by, uh, a person who doesn’t care very much, of course – with the type of dead-seriousness that inspires us to laugh at it instead of with it.
Our Call: If Afraid leaned into its own silliness, it might be fun. But as it stands, it’s dumber than a dead Digimon. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
