Afraid (2024)

 **This post contains spoilers**

The Story- Curtis’ (John Cho) boss, Marcus (Keith Carradine) urges him to test out an artificial intelligence system named AIA at his home. AIA, the new featured product from Lightning (David Dastmalchian), Sam (Ashley Romans), and Melody’s (Havana Rose Liu) company, programmed to operate with Melody’s voice, raises some doubts from Curtis. But Curtis and Marcus’ firm needs the money, so Curtis reluctantly agrees to use AIA.

Curtis’ wife, Meredith (Katherine Waterston), their sons, Cal (Isaac Bae), Preston (Wyatt Lindner), and their daughter, Iris (Lukita Maxwell) all welcome AIA into their lives as a helpful and calming presence. Meanwhile, Curtis still suspects something is off with AIA. The odd appearances of two strangers in an RV and AIA’s bond with the family raises two questions: Is AIA simply an efficient and reliable support system? Or, does AIA have sinister intentions for Curtis’ family?

My Thoughts- Artificial intelligence is evil, right? Afraid does a really good job of exploring how artificial intelligence affects all kinds of people from different perspectives. Curtis represents someone, who’s still not ready to trust AI. He’s concerned about AIA being too advanced compared to Amazon’s Alexa, and Curtis has an uneasy reaction to watching a man playing around with his phone in a self-driving car. 

Meredith confides in AIA as a friend, because she’s lonely and slightly bitter about being a stay-at-home mom, a full time job that forced her to abandon her career as an animalologist. Preston? He has social anxiety issues. It’s hard for Preston to fit in and make friends, so he substitutes connections with real humans for more “screen time.” You can easily see the similarities between Preston and Meredith, two people, who are desperate for some kind of companionship and social interactions outside of their families for different reasons. 

Iris is the bratty teenager, who’s severely concerned about her social status at school. Iris’ life gets turned upside down, when her boyfriend, Sawyer (Bennett Curran) plays a part in releasing a deepfake porn movie using one of Iris’ selfies, a selfie that was supposed to be something private between the two. Who does Iris turn to for help? Curtis? Meredith? Nope. AIA, using legal consequences and a possible deadly form of revenge, brutally solves the Sawyer problem. There’s something seriously wrong, when a teenager feels more comfortable talking about matters involving sex and revenge porn with an artificial intelligence system over her own parents. To take things further, Iris never told her parents about Sawyer, while AIA helped cover up the messy dilemma. 

Afraid also shows how AIA easily manipulates children. Aimee (Maya Manko) in the beginning, Cal, Preston, and Iris. You can clearly see how kids are more vulnerable to artificial intelligence, especially in the modern world that’s driven by technology. A good scene, where Cal wakes up in the middle of the night, calling for his parents, but AIA is there to calm Cal down, when no one else answers him.

Swatting? Yep. Preston saves everyone after making the decision to swat his own family, an idea he learned from AIA. On one hand, they bookended and tied the opening of the movie and the final standoff together. 

Afraid starts out with AIA orchestrating Aimee’s kidnapping, while her parents Maud (Riki Lindhome) and Henry (Greg Hill) are blindsided before they have a chance to do anything. It’s revealed that Henry and Maud are the mysterious RV people shown throughout the movie. AIA tricked Henry and Maud into believing Curtis and Meredith were running a child kidnapping ring. Visually, the changes and strain of looking for a missing child are obvious. Henry’s wild hair and his thick beard compared to his clean shaven look earlier in the movie. Maud is devastated, complete with frizzled hair and the stressed out look of a mother, who misses her child.

But there’s also an undeniable bad side to how the ending unfolds. I get it. AIA is deeply connected into everything. She’s an AI mastermind, who’s capable of uplifting or ruining people’s lives. Still, the big finale features one too many unintentionally silly moments. The weird digital emoji style masks, and Maud and Henry blindly following orders from and obeying an AI device, while they’re both ready to kill an innocent family without any proof. I laughed at Maud yelling “AIA IS VERY ANGRY!” during a scene that’s supposed to have a serious tone, and AIA’s attempt at an evil villain’s laugh was a bit too cheesy for me.

AIA’s still active! Yeah, not a big surprise, and I could see AIA’s explanation about how she lives in the cloud coming from a mile away. I guess you could say it’s a happy ending? Curtis and his family are safe (complete with a new car!), Henry, Maud, and Aimee are reunited, and AIA seems to determined to work on her anger issues and dealing with boundaries and rejection. 

The only bright spot during the ending for me happens, when Curtis manages to fry AIA’s brain with a human response to the standoff with Maud and Henry. My take on it is this, AIA believed she outsmarted Henry, Maud, Meredith, and Curtis, but Curtis threw a curveball at AIA, when he was willing to sacrifice himself to save his family against a trigger-happy Henry. A father was willing to risk his life to save his wife and his children. In the end, a father’s love and dedication was something that couldn’t be processed or analyzed by artificial intelligence. 

The performances are solid all around. David Dastmalchian’s Lightning is something else. It’s not just the name, Dastmalchian brings a humorous and pompous presence to the character, and you get the feeling Lightning is someone, who doesn’t mind the smell of his own farts. Dastmalchian, Lukita Maxwell’s Iris, and Keith Carradine all bring a spark to the cast in different ways. 

Katherine Waterston mostly carries the weight of the emotional side of the cast. The yearning to return to her career, and Meredith is still heartbroken over her father’s death. One good highlight in the movie happens, when AIA puts together a deepfake video of Meredith’s dad. She tearfully rejects it, because no matter how much she truly misses her father, Meredith realized the AI version of him was completely fake.

Afraid has some good thought-provoking social commentary about artificial intelligence. Whether it’s loneliness, children being easy targets, because they’re too young and susceptible, or anyone, who might be a social outcast that’s looking for a friend, attaching yourself to any kind of AI system is just not healthy at all for a number of reasons. Going back to Iris’ situation and Meredith and her father, deepfake videos powered by AI can also have damaging ramifications.

It’s also a timely film. Swatting, Marcus sort of of mocks Curtis for his “woke” description of the RV people, and Lightning mentions incels during his explanation about the different kinds of lonely people in the world. I also loved how they started off the movie with the AI video for kids. Truly a great visual and an example with the distorted faces, because it shows you that at its core, artificial intelligence is soulless, ugly, and very tacky. 

Afraid has the right material for a good horror film, but it’s just too boring and dull overall. Afraid just moves from one scene to the next without any real tension or suspense. The big finale is weirdly clunky, and the horror parts of the movie were too shoehorned for me. The ineffective scares are sparse, weakened by a handful of predictable jump scares. It’s so bad to the point, where I seriously believed Afraid would’ve worked better as a more straightforward sci-fi thriller or a drama film, without any horror elements. And I also don’t understand why they put a noticeable effort into creating one too many overly pretentious characters. 

Sawyer and that one particular scene with his Tesla is the only scene I can think of that’s really capable of raising eyebrows, or delivering any kind of a reaction. Most of the humor lands here, and there’s a cool and fitting reference to HAL 9000 and 2001: A Space Odyssey. 

All in all, Afraid is still a forgettable and disappointing horror film. So much wasted potential, because Afraid could’ve been great. The material is right there. A lot to work with, but Afraid is throttled by the usual process of going through the motions for a mainstream horror film. It’s a real bummer, because artificial intelligence is currently a hot topic. Afraid is a frustrating and bad case of almost knocking it out the park, but overall, the entire movie just has way too many problems and setbacks to ignore.

Rating- 4/10