With the inevitable rise of AI, the future of humanity has never been tougher to predict – which is ironic considering that’s what algorithms are designed specifically to do – but if there’s one thing that’s all too certain about the latest social issue we’re facing it’s that if it exists, Blumhouse will make a film about it.
Blumhouse’s hit and miss record may be a bit on the patchy side these days, but the good news is that they have made a fun, memorable movie about the dangers of artificial intelligence and the effect it can cause on young, impressionable minds – the bad news is that they made it in 2022 and it was called M3GAN. That’s right, despite already having a hit horror film centred around manipulating, psycho tech that has sequels and spin-offs that were confirmed ages ago, the prolific production company has essentially gone ahead and practically made the same film for reasons that I have to admit are a little sketchy. Jason Blum? If you’re reading this and Alexa has controlled you into funding her directorial debut, please call for help…
Curtis works in advertising – but don’t let that put you off… he’s actually a loving husband to Meridith and a caring father to Iris, Preston and Cal, but with three kids of varying ages, he and his spouse worry that they never have any time to be themselves what with all the things they have to organize and screen time they have to allocate.
However, then Curtis’ firm takes on a new client that wants them to sell AIA, their new, bleeding edge AI, he finds that part of taking the job is to have the groundbreaking tech installed in his home so he can better understand it as it integrates with his family. At first, as usual, everything isn’t just good, it’s better than good as AIA not only eases the work load of the house, but she also somewhat takes the children under her digital wing, offering them a points system if they do chores and whatnot, but beyond that, she takes it upon herself to start troubleshooting issues that the kids have without their parents even being aware they exist such as diagnosing a health issue Cal has, easing Preston’s social anxiety and clearing up a deep faked porno made with Iris’ image.
Of course, it’s not long before AIA starts overstepping her bounds and digital red flags start popping up all over the place.
Who are the shadowy figures Curtis spots doing strange hand signs outside his house in the early hours of the morning? What is AIA’s endgame? And most of all, why the hell did the filmmakers come up with a title that’s an utter fucking nightmare to type? Buckle up as some of these questions are kind of answered at some point in a film that doesn’t just warn you about the horrors of artificial intelligence, it feels like it was written and directed by it as well.
There’s a few clues dotted around that hint that AfrAId may have been a substantially different film as it went before the cameras and suggests there may have been a spot of post production tinkering going on. The main one is that old chestnut that there’s scenes in some of the trailers that suggest it possibly was going in an utterly different (possibly otherworldly?) direction – but the other major red flags are the fact that the film barely scrapes ninety minutes (eighty four, to be exact) and that the third act and denouement blatantly don’t make any sense whatsoever which seriously suggests there may have been a lot of chopping and reshoots going on.
However, AfrAId (by god, is that an annoying title to type!) simply isn’t that good one way or another to care and it just feels like another knee jerk reaction to a modern problem that has all the social relevance of all those movies that freaked out about the Y2K bug. AI is something that needs to be wielded with care, especially with children, but shitty, poorly constructed movies isn’t going to convince anyone of anything unless the ultimate goal is to turn people off Blumhouse movies for good.
It’s a shame, because there’s some established talent that deserved so much better. For example, John Cho who has had some success with tech orientated movies before (Missing…) seems to now have resigned himself to playing a bland father figure type and while Katherine Waterston has a little more backstory and emotion to chew on, she’s still miles better than this guff deserves. Worse yet, we even get the priceless David Dastmalchian utterly wasted as one of AIA’s “creators” who gets to swan around as a pretentious eccentric named Lightning who obviously knows something’s up thanks to his incredibly suspicious line readings.
This, in turn, brings us to the directing, and while I’m not overly fond of some of Chris Weitz’s past movies (The Golden Compass and New Moon), surely the guy who co-helmed About A Boy should be able to rope together a more coherent film that this and the vast amount of conflicting concepts and ideas (none of them especially good) are whizzing around with such little control, it’s tough to get a focus on them. Essentially, AIA is not much more than the evil AI from Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning but with her sense of logic disabled as it randomly sends out coerced humans to do its machiavellian bidding like a lazier episode of Black Mirror. But while the idea of a computer controlled conspiracy is a decent one, by the end of the film you have absolutely no idea what the hell AIA was trying to achieve. Was she slumming when she had herself installed the family’s home? What was the point of all that business with the other family during the pre-credits sequence who turn up later dressed up as gun wielding emoji mask wearers? What exactly is the ending supposed to signify – is it a good thing, a bad thing, what? I’m sure at one point in AfrAId’s creation all these points and many more made sense, but that’s not the incarnation we’re seeing and the ending throws in so many nonsensical rug pulls in the final fifteen minutes, it just renders the entire climax into mush.
After Night Swim and Imaginary, Blumhouse has had a year of painfully below par horrors that feature all the scares of a baby seal while being as memorable as mainlining a neuralizer from Men In Black, but this latest attempt of techno-fear may actually be the most frustrating of the lot and feels in dire need of a system reboot the very second it came online.
I’m afrAId, this sucks.
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