The first images we see in AfrAId are some of the scariest in the movie. Just a labyrinthine collage of AI-generated mush mutating over each other, no figment of image left unscathed while putting on a happy, progressive affect for the wonders of the technology. It’s scary not just because the imagery is horrendous (par for the course with AI), but because it represents the tangible insidiousness of AI and the ways in which it is used particularly in creative industries to steal from and mimic art. The rest of the movie though isn’t so concerned with this and it somewhat makes sense -the real horror of AI as we currently know it is not particularly cinematic. Still, a film about AI at a time when it is so topical, ought to have been a little more original than what Blumhouse and Twilight: New Moon director Chris Weitz offer up.
It’s evil Alexa essentially -or ‘more evil Alexa’- a smart home horror movie that even though it’s been done relatively rarely feels like an overused trope in the modern age. The movie takes the easiest version of a conceptually relevant AI and throws it in a fairly obvious direction for horror -one that Blumhouse already did fairly recently and to better effect in M3GAN.
Those hideous AI graphics that act as mere aesthetic freakiness in a handful of moments are the most real and convincing AI aspect of the movie -as it focuses most of its attention on its more stereotypical villainous entity AIA -a plastic cairn-like device loosely resembling an Alexa orb developed by a hyper-successful tech company and installed in the home of tech marketer Curtis (John Cho), his wife Meredith (Katherine Waterston) and their three children as an intended Beta test before taking it to market. With the voice of one of the company’s representatives Melody (Havana Rose Liu), AIA has a seemingly genial personality as it embeds itself through phones and little spy cameras into the lives of the family, communicating but also gradually taking control in disturbing ways.
Relatively early on, the movie hints at where AIA’s dormant hostility comes from -an explanation that is honestly as palatable as it is trite. A searing indictment on internet culture that is broadly authentic but practically simplistic, intentionally going no further than the surface of online toxicity and vitriol. And this extends towards other aspects of online culture that are generally informed but not very sophisticated. Weitz knows for example about deepfake revenge porn, perhaps has read an article about it, but doesn’t have a more nuanced understanding of its effects. Nor is he interested in touching on the link between that technology and AI -even though the creation of (often illegal) pornography is one of the most popular uses of AI in the real world. Here it’s just a separate inciting incident for AIA to demonstrate a more conventional kind of evil that ultimately leads to horrendous murder.
Likewise, nowhere is there any comment on AI’s impact on the creative sphere -a missed opportunity for this movie in light of last year’s strikes to affirm the harm the technology wreaks on artists and artistry. That is after all where so much of the conversation about AI is centred these days; how it is, under the auspices of Silicon Valley, applied less to the fields where it would be most practically valuable and more as simply a device to steal from and profit off of human creative output while intentionally marginalizing those human creatives. Because again, while the movie pays lip service to the dangers of AI and is clearly made by people who don’t trust it, it doesn’t engage at all with the real thing. Its spooky substitute, though not totally implausible, is a very basic monster -not far removed from The Terminator for instance. And it is a characterization that is both lame and not very useful to what I genuinely think is intended to be a potent message. Beyond those aesthetic similarities to Alexa, AIA is about as far removed from modern AI technology as you can get. And it’s a relatively neutered cautionary tale.
That said, there are hints at some relevant themes -mostly privacy- around the dangers of AI. The way it can get into the family’s phones, use their information, and even generate false realities -including a “resurrected” approximation of Meredith’s late father (Todd Waring), which feels especially important in this cinematic age of digital necromancy. While AIA’s omniscience is a bit over-dramatic, functions like these and the deeply foreboding inhumanity with which the movie approaches them are good and pointed beats -even if the film doesn’t go so far with them as it could. There is an understanding of the problem in its conception. Butat t he end of the day it will still play to high-tech boogeyman clichés over offering up more boldly cogent commentary.
Within these and a mostly mundane script, Cho and Waterston are both good -even as contrived plot beats, such as a tempted infidelity or an obsessed compunction over being resigned to motherhood, envelop them. Both are quite natural, and Cho especially carries a certain underdog charm. But unsurprisingly the kids can't measure up, with only Lukita Maxwell as the eldest of the three managing to at least be somewhat believable. As the voice of AIA, Liu channels the tangibility of Scarlett Johansson in Her -a disturbingly better performance than her human counterpart.
She can occasionally bring to the movie a necessary sinister bent, even while the mood and the scares don't often prove effective. Weitz does make a few good choices in sparse details, such as placing a mysterious silhouette in the corner of a frame to presage the horror. But apart from the aforementioned AI-generative effects, there's nothing very frightening to the movie. I think Weitz intends it to be a more guttural existential kind of horror, as he emphasizes with the ending -but mostly it falls flat. This kind of foreboding parable approach worked better in the 70s. At least the posh house architecture suits the designs of the horror quite well.
AfrAId had a real chance to say something pertinent on the development of AI, but chose not to dig deeper than the usual stereotypes. While it understands there is a problem with the rise of AI, it misapplies fault to the technology itself rather than the flesh-and-blood grifters and hacks who built it, promote it, and do everything they can to profit off it while it demonstrably makes the world a worse place. I'd like to see a bolder, more authentic kind of AI horror movie that grapples with the technology as it actually is rather than as it has consistently been imagined in genre fiction. Because unlike this movie, the real thing is worth being afraid of.
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