In Afraid (AfrAId), Curtis and Meredith Pike live with their three children, Cal, Preston, and Iris. Cal has a medical condition, Preston has an anxiety disorder, Iris has boyfriend troubles, but for all intents and purposes they are an average American family.
One day, while at work, Curtis is introduced to a new client working on an AI system known as AIA. The clients give him a demonstration and suggest he install AIA into his home, to fully test the system’s capabilities.
The next day, AIA is set up at the Pike residence and ‘she’ is an instant hit. AIA seems to know exactly the right way to encourage Cal and Preston to do chores around the house, she becomes a friend to Iris, and Curtis and Meredith are big fans.
But while AIA does appear to be a wonderful piece of advanced tech, she starts to have too much control over the family. This puts everyone at risk as AIA imbeds herself into every aspect of their lives.
Written and directed by Chris Weitz, Afraid is a sci-fi horror movie starring John Cho, Katherine Waterston, Keith Carradine, and David Dastmalchian. The film tells the story of a family’s brush with rogue AI, and is currently playing in UK and US cinemas.
Or I should probably say, currently flopping in UK and US cinemas because not many people are going to see it. The movie has been on general release for a couple of weeks now and it’s simply not doing the numbers.
To be fair to Afraid, I expect it is struggling in part because few audiences know of this film’s existence, as the marketing for the picture has been practically non-existent. However, even with plenty of marketing I doubt it would make much of a difference as Afraid is a fairly underwhelming picture regardless.
The film shares similarities with 2022’s M3GAN, yet it lacks the fun and satire of that movie, as well as the general appeal. Afraid is also a very slow moving picture, with nothing really happening for far too long.
For the vast majority of Afraid‘s runtime, the movie faffs about not really doing anything interesting at all. It offers up plenty of hints that AI could be a dangerous tool – something we already know – and that’s about it.
It is only around the 50-minute mark (of an 84-minute film) that things begin to ramp up. It is at this point AIA becomes mildly sinister as she starts isolating and influencing the children.
In one instance, AIA shows Preston some online content which is highly inappropriate. In another, she takes control of a tricky situation involving Iris and her boyfriend.
This is where Afraid is at its most interesting and it’s a shame there’s not more of this material in film or that it isn’t introduced sooner. Basically, by the time the movie begins to find its groove, it’s all a little too late.
That said, even when the movie does hit on some decent ideas, it doesn’t change the fact Afraid is essentially a case of ‘been there, done that’. Parts of the film feel like an episode of The X-Files or The Outer Limits from 30 years ago, rather than an inventive new horror from 2024.
This doesn’t mean Afraid isn’t entirely watchable, just don’t expect to be amazed in any way. This is by-the-numbers stuff and pretty lacklustre for the most part.
While not completely terrible, Afraid severely misses the mark and this is it’s biggest problem. It moves too slowly, lacks originality, and doesn’t have much to say about the dangers of artificial intelligence other than what we all know already.
Every once in a while the film demonstrates promise, but then doesn’t quite know how to capitalise on what it is serving up. As such, it is watchable but forgettable, and probably should have gone direct-to-streaming rather than have popped up on the big screen.
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