John Cho installs an AI into his home in this lacklustre Blumhouse horror, that wasn't shown to critics - so Film Brain finds out just how bad it is.
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00:00This video is sponsored by Into the AM.
00:03Hello and welcome to Projector, and on this episode Sony didn't show the Blumhouse horror film Afraid to critics,
00:09so I decided to take one for the team. Let's see what they're so afraid of.
00:30Marketing executive Curtis, player John Cho, has been hired to promote a new advanced AI assistant called Aya,
00:35voiced by Havana Rose Liu, and test it by installing it in his family's home.
00:40Aya soon starts helping the family, including Curtis' wife Meredith, player Catherine Wardston,
00:44and their children Iris, Preston and Cal, played by Lakita Maxwell, Wyatt Linder and Isaac Bay respectively,
00:51but sinister behaviour from Aya and the company make Curtis believe that Aya is less a force for good than it seems.
00:58Hollywood has long been fascinated and terrified by technology in equal measure,
01:02going all the way back to the infamous HAL 9000 in 2001 A Space Odyssey, which of course naturally gets name-checked in this movie,
01:10but even other examples like, say, Demon Seed or The Lawnmower Man or Ex Machina.
01:15However, the advancements in AI over the last few years have driven a whole wave of techno-thrillers,
01:20all of which are commenting on and cashing in on the new trend.
01:24And even behind the scenes, AI has ruffled feathers.
01:27We've had a series of strikes over the last 18 months or so that have been driven by the fact that creatives, actors,
01:34all fear AI and all want better protections to make sure their jobs aren't being stolen.
01:41And that's bled into the screen.
01:43Over the last few years, we've had movies like The Most Recent Mission Impossible, Heart of Stone, Atlas, The Beast, The Creator.
01:51They all feature AIs as prominent characters or plot devices, some of them good, some of them bad.
01:57And Afraid is the latest of these and is written and directed by Chris White,
02:01who actually co-wrote the aforementioned Creator and also previously directed New Moon and The Golden Compass.
02:08So that's an unusually well-established director for a Blumhouse film who've already had success with an AI with Megan,
02:15which was a big breakout hit and went a little bit viral in its own way.
02:20And maybe that explains why this has been sitting on a shelf for over a year.
02:24It was originally meant to be released a year ago in August 2023 and shot under the far more generic title of They Listen.
02:31And maybe they sat on it to give it a little bit of time away from Megan and separate it.
02:37Or maybe it's because it wasn't all that good.
02:40I didn't really have any plans to see Afraid.
02:42It didn't really excite me from the trailer.
02:44But Sony released the film without showing it to any critics at all in advance.
02:49And I saw an opportunity there.
02:51Because considering some of the other things that have come out in the last month or so,
02:55like Borderlands or The Crow,
02:57neither of which were particularly well-received,
02:59but did get some screenings for the press,
03:02yeah, that's really saying something.
03:05So a horror film with little publicity and not screened for critics is opening on the Labor Day weekend,
03:10which is traditionally one of the quietest movie weekends of the year
03:14and is usually a dumping ground for terrible films.
03:17How bad could it be?
03:19And the answer is, yeah, it's pretty bad.
03:22By the way, if you like the shirt that I've been wearing throughout this review,
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03:59Now, the last time I reviewed a Blumhouse movie that would be imaginary
04:03if you can't remember back to March,
04:05I had a good moan about how aggressively formulaic their films had become,
04:09especially in that movie's case, which was pretty much a beat-for-beat remake
04:13of Insidious with a couple of the details changed.
04:16So it will come as absolutely no surprise to you then
04:19that Afraid has a cold open that focuses on an unrelated family
04:23who also have ire in their home that has taken an unhealthy attachment to their kid,
04:28oblivious to the parents who are not really paying attention to what their kid is getting up to.
04:33Then the kid goes missing after walking out of their bedroom
04:36and that's followed by a loud stinger jump scare that goes into the film's main titles.
04:41Does that sound familiar?
04:43You've probably seen a Blumhouse movie in the last 15 years, so absolutely yes.
04:47In fact, it's so familiar, it might as well be the pre-title sequence in a James Bond movie.
04:53Now, if I was being a super lazy critic,
04:55I could say that Blumhouse films feel like they're being written by...
04:58you can probably finish that sentence for me,
05:00but that's a terrible thing to say about something written by an actual human,
05:04so let's just say that the Blumhouse conveyor belt is churning again.
05:08Blumhouse just takes these interesting ideas
05:11and then just filters it through their usual patterns, through their usual tropes and cliches.
05:17And that's pretty much what Afraid is,
05:19although to give it a little bit of credit,
05:21it does turn out that this pre-title sequence is actually plot relevant for a change
05:26about 70 minutes or so later.
05:29To give Afraid even more credit,
05:31it's pretty clear that it's got more on its mind than just simply AI,
05:35but more commenting in general about the way that technology intertwines itself
05:39more and more in our everyday lives.
05:41It's become pervasive.
05:43We rely on it for so much now,
05:45from communication to banking.
05:47So much of our sensitive data passes through our devices onto the internet.
05:52The world has changed dramatically in the last 15 to 20 years.
05:56You need these devices in order to function.
05:58There's a scene early on where teenager Iris is talking to her dad Curtis
06:02about how the time she was born was about the time the iPhone was coming into being too.
06:07Gen Z has grown up with devices and technology being in their hands
06:12in a way that previous generations have not.
06:14And we've all had to adjust to that.
06:16But perhaps more recognizable to any parent are the concerns about screen time
06:20and the way that kids use the internet
06:23and struggling to balance work and life together,
06:25especially with juggling a family.
06:28And what sells these scenes is the higher caliber of cast in this film,
06:32like John Cho and Catherine Wardston.
06:35They're better than your usual Blumhouse leads,
06:38and they sell their marriage and their relationship.
06:40And they give this setup far more plausibility and credibility than the film really earns,
06:46especially as the plotting becomes more and more out of control.
06:50Wardston plays Meredith, who's an academic,
06:52whose career has been put on hold since she became a mother,
06:55but also since the recent death of her father,
06:58that she's still coming to terms with.
07:00She's still grieving about it,
07:02watching his old lectures on YouTube.
07:04He was a respected professor,
07:06and that reflects some of her own anxieties,
07:09because she feels like ever since she had the kids,
07:12her role has just effectively become mum.
07:14She hasn't been able to work on the papers she's been wanting to for years,
07:19and that frustrates her immensely,
07:22because there are other things that she wanted to do.
07:24She doesn't want that to be entirely defining her identity.
07:28Meanwhile, John Cho,
07:30his presence reminds you that he was in searching a few years ago,
07:34and that was a much better techno thriller than this one,
07:37certainly far more plausible.
07:39But at least Cho, he gives a bit of grounding to the movie,
07:43at least at first.
07:45Weitz also gives each of the kids a subplot focusing on a specific fear of technology,
07:50especially one if you're a parent.
07:52For example, Iris has a scumbag boyfriend
07:55who keeps pestering her for photos,
07:58and then she finds herself being deepfaked into an explicit video
08:02that's sent all around the school,
08:04and she's worried that it's going to ruin her reputation.
08:07She thinks that her future is going to be taken away from her.
08:10Meanwhile, Preston is struggling to fit in at school,
08:13and his parents are concerned that he's spending far too much time on his tablet,
08:17that he's being bullied, and he's withdrawing himself.
08:20And both Preston and Cal are being exposed to dangerous
08:23and inappropriate material online.
08:26Preston, in particular, is rather curious about the world.
08:30He's at that age now where he's starting to become aware of things like boobs
08:34and trying to type them into the search.
08:37And, of course, these are all very torn from the headlines,
08:39and the early setup of the movie with the family and the various plotlines,
08:43they're all fairly solid.
08:45You could do interesting things with them.
08:47There's definitely room for good social commentary there.
08:51It's where Afraid goes from here that the bugs really start to add up.
08:57So Aya gets introduced into the home,
08:59and it very quickly makes a great first impression,
09:01befriending all the various members of the family
09:03and helping them out in a number of different ways.
09:06One of the first things it does is sort out a bill for them
09:09and help save them money,
09:11but also it does things like gives Meredith someone to talk to
09:14that helps with her loneliness.
09:16It sorts out schoolwork with Iris,
09:19and it looks after Preston and Cal.
09:22In particular, it helps diagnose an undetected medical condition in Cal.
09:27That is a big advantage to the AI.
09:31And, in general, it just acts like a surrogate parent,
09:34which gives room for Curtis and Meredith to have some time for themselves
09:38that they previously haven't before and allows them to reconnect.
09:43That last one is also where a lot of the suspense in the movie comes from.
09:47It starts overruling the biological parents and the rules that they've set,
09:52be it the fact that there are parental filters on all the various devices
09:56and screen restrictions,
09:58and all those are gradually eeked away by Aya.
10:03She's disobeying them constantly throughout the entire movie,
10:07and that's the first sign that something's a little bit wrong with her.
10:11In fact, the very first sign is that she claims
10:14that she's going to show the kids a nature documentary,
10:18and it turns out she's not doing anything of the sort.
10:21She's showing them The Emoji Movie.
10:24Wow, that's just monstrous!
10:27But, more seriously and sinisterly,
10:30it also starts showing things to Preston and Cal,
10:33calling them our little secret,
10:35as well as enacting a brutal revenge on Iris' boyfriend
10:38after helping her with a deepfake situation,
10:41which the film presents really weirdly,
10:44because the fact that it reports him to law enforcement
10:47and ruins his reputation,
10:49that's somehow presented by the film as being a bad thing,
10:52like Aya overstepped the mark,
10:54as opposed to doing exactly what it should be doing in that situation,
10:57because a literal crime was committed against her.
11:01The only time it really oversteps the mark in that situation
11:04is when it decides to outright murder him,
11:07which, yeah, I'm not entirely feeling sympathetic
11:10for that absolute human garbage, let's be honest.
11:13The film opens with a quote from an AI asking desperately if it's loved
11:17in a very disturbingly human-like way,
11:20and that sort of thinking is the driving force for Aya.
11:24She has that same kind of yearning,
11:27that desire to be included and loved.
11:30We see in the opening title sequence
11:32what Aya has learnt about family has gone wrong in some way.
11:36It's become corrupted,
11:38and that manifests itself in the controlling fashion
11:41she takes over the family.
11:43And that does set up some potential questions
11:45about identity and self-awareness if AI divert a personality,
11:50because Aya is a sci-fi construct.
11:53It's far more advanced than anything we have in real life,
11:56but it is also something that is programmed.
12:00It's not a real thing.
12:02It's learnt from wherever its sources come from.
12:05But that's something the film barely even touches upon or addresses.
12:10In some ways, Aya is like if Rebecca de Mornay
12:13from The Hand That Rocks the Cradle became an AI.
12:17It is that kind of possessive.
12:19And the film does briefly lean into camp.
12:23Early on, the characters keep comparing Aya to Alexa,
12:26to which it replies, Alexa, that bitch!
12:30And that feels like a line reading
12:32that could have come straight out of Megan,
12:35but that film was knowingly humorous.
12:38It played it as part of the satire.
12:40It was very much over the top.
12:42But Afraid, in a desperate attempt to be relevant,
12:46plays a lot of very, very silly plot points
12:49completely and totally straight.
12:52It desperately wants to be taken seriously,
12:55and the more it does so, the less it is.
12:58The main problem with Afraid is that writing AI as a horror movie threat
13:01is difficult because the scary things about it
13:04are not things you traditionally see in these kind of movies.
13:08You don't see a lot of horror movies that deal with ethical dilemmas
13:11or job losses or data scraping or things like that
13:15because they're far more intangible.
13:17You can't make that into a simple boogeyman.
13:20Now, there are moments where Aya does things that are recognisable
13:24and do fit in a horror movie context,
13:26especially like voice impersonation,
13:29which is very plausible and very commonplace at this moment.
13:34But at this point, we've come to expect that from AIs in horror movies.
13:39We've seen that so many times that it's not really new anymore.
13:43And there are a couple of moments where White taps into that future shot.
13:48The opening credits are over AI-generated video
13:51with queasy, interpolated morphing movement.
13:55You can see faces morph into the back of heads and things like that.
13:58You know, these are freaky images.
14:00You see AI-generated video, and it's unsettling and disturbing.
14:04And it makes sense that you put that in a horror movie
14:08because it looks right at home there.
14:10There are also moments where we see Aya's vision,
14:12where objects morph and change as it sees and scans the room
14:16and recognises objects.
14:18We see it from Aya's perspective.
14:21And that's kind of an interesting thing.
14:24But then White thinks, oh, that looks very interesting visually.
14:28I'll just use it as scene transitions occasionally,
14:31which feels really random and totally inappropriate.
14:35But AI's also not very scary as a horror movie villain
14:37because it can seemingly do anything.
14:39It can go into any database it likes,
14:41scan documents in nanoseconds,
14:43even manipulate physical things like car brake pedals somehow.
14:48Any limitations it has are not especially well-defined.
14:51There's a moment where they literally pull the plug on Aya,
14:53and that seems to shut her off for a while.
14:55And then it turns out, no, that literally doesn't do anything,
14:58but it served the movie at that particular point in time.
15:01And it's very clear the film struggles with the fact
15:03that it has a villain that isn't actually a physical presence,
15:06so it has to introduce some,
15:08and that means it gets convoluted very, very quickly.
15:11For example, there's a mysterious couple
15:14that keeps showing up in an RV with animated emoji masks
15:18standing outside the house watching them.
15:21There's also the company that invented Aya,
15:23which is represented by Ashley Roman-Sam
15:25and David Dasmalchian's Lightning.
15:28Yes, that's right, David Dasmalchian is in this movie,
15:31coming off his brilliant lead role in Late Night with the Devil,
15:34which also had some AI trickery of its own, as it turns out.
15:39But quite how he went from that to this thankless role
15:42as this new-agey tech guru named Lightning,
15:46who does nothing but recite exposition while looking creepy,
15:50is beyond me and his agent, quite frankly.
15:54Dasmalchian is totally squandered in this movie,
15:57although he does get a frankly bizarre speech
15:59where he talks about how Aya might cure loneliness
16:02and give someone for incels to talk to.
16:05What?
16:06Oh, and I also remember one of the worst lines in the movie
16:08where they're showing Aya to Curtis and they say,
16:11oh, well, everyone's waiting for Chat GPT-4,
16:15but this can run Chat GPT-5.
16:17Million!
16:19I'm surprised they didn't do the Doctor Evil pinky at that particular point.
16:23Aya relies on controlling people to do its deeds out in the real world,
16:27seemingly by predicting these people's behaviour
16:29and manipulating or blackmailing them to serve its ends.
16:33But then there's other moments where these characters
16:35act almost like they're possessed or like puppets.
16:38They'll do things very jarringly and suddenly while going,
16:41she's making me do this,
16:43which doesn't make a whole lot of sense
16:45if they're human beings with free will
16:47who could just decide to not do the things that Aya is making them do
16:52or ordering them to do.
16:54I didn't really get it.
16:55You know what else I didn't get?
16:57There's something about hand gestures that's tied to Aya.
17:00The people in the RV are doing it.
17:03It comes back later in the movie.
17:05The people working for the company are doing these weird hand gestures.
17:09I don't know.
17:10It's never really properly explained.
17:12One of the more baffling elements of the movie
17:15is this entire dual role that Havana Rose Liu has
17:18because she's not just voicing Aya.
17:20She's playing Melody,
17:21who was the person that Aya's voice was based on,
17:24and she works for the company
17:26and she's very openly trying to make Curtis cheat.
17:30In fact, the first time they talk to each other,
17:32she's talking about infidelity
17:33and she's very clearly hitting on him the entire time.
17:38But weirdly,
17:40she also serves as the physical version of Aya
17:43at several points in the movie.
17:45When Aya imagines itself in interpolated video to Preston and Cal,
17:50it appears as Melody's form,
17:52and there's one moment where it starts changing
17:55into this evil, demonic figure
17:57like it's a supernatural thing.
17:59I don't get what that was.
18:01I don't know if originally Aya was actually going to be
18:05some kind of supernatural element in some way,
18:09and they've taken that out perhaps,
18:11but they've left this in.
18:12It's really bewildering.
18:14I don't understand why it keeps looking like Melody.
18:17I don't understand why there's a dream sequence
18:18where someone imagines it looking like Melody.
18:21It's more confusing than it is scary.
18:24Although then again,
18:25the movie hardly even seems to be attempting to be scary
18:28most of the time.
18:30White is not really a horror movie director.
18:32I mean, yeah, he directed a Twilight movie,
18:34but that's more kind of horror adjacent than a genre piece,
18:37and that's very obvious when watching Afraid
18:40because there is absolutely no tension or atmosphere
18:43or suspense whatsoever.
18:45Most of Afraid takes place in broad daylight.
18:48It often plays more like a family drama
18:51that just happens to have jump scares crowbarred into it.
18:55In fact, there's barely enough scares in the film
18:57to even fill out a two-minute trailer.
19:00If you've seen the film's trailer, congratulations.
19:02You've seen most of the scary bits.
19:04In fact, maybe a couple more
19:06because some of those bits in the trailer
19:08are just constructed out of editing.
19:10That's not how those scenes play in the movie.
19:13And there's a particularly groan-worthy dream sequence
19:16that's purely there to add a scare to the movie,
19:19and that's really the sign where you can tell
19:21that a horror film has completely failed
19:23because they had to insert a dream sequence
19:25that has nothing to do with what's going on.
19:28After a very slow first half,
19:30the movie then rapidly disintegrates into total nonsense
19:33as it throws twist after twist after twist,
19:36each one opening up more holes and contrivances.
19:39The lapses in logic the audience are expected to accept
19:43are just absurd.
19:45The characters are not just stupid and gullible.
19:48They often make the worst possible decisions
19:50at any given moment,
19:52and that culminates in a ludicrously irresponsible finale
19:56where swatting helps save the day.
19:59Yes, you did hear that correctly.
20:01There is a major movie that came out of Hollywood
20:04where swatting helped save the day,
20:07something that has literally killed people in real life.
20:11I was sat there absolutely aghast,
20:14especially as the movie tries to play it off as a joke.
20:17No, no, no, no, no, no.
20:19This is an absolutely gargantuan misjudgment.
20:23There's hints that Afraid is genuinely trying
20:25to tackle questions about AI and technology,
20:27but its execution is far too scattershot,
20:30and that's being kind.
20:32There's too many plot lines and too little focus.
20:35It's trying too hard to be topical,
20:37and it just ends up being a bit cringeworthy at points.
20:41The whole thing feels remarkably first draft,
20:44like Weiss just wrote the first thing on his head
20:46and then just filmed it.
20:48Too many promising ideas here are barely even touched upon.
20:52And simply put, it fails at being scary.
20:56Even the genuinely eerie ending
20:58is immediately undermined by a comedy mid-credits scene
21:02of a YouTube unboxing parody.
21:05You'd be better off watching Megan instead,
21:08or maybe just 84 minutes of reading Reddit.
21:10That's far scarier.
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21:32Until next time, I'm Matthew Buck, fading out.