Reviewer Flickchart Ranking: 4,256 / 5,567 (24%)
Ever wonder what a movie would be like if HAL 9000 left space for an upper middle-class home? No? Me either. But writer/director Chris Weitz (About a Boy, 2002) has, and AfrAId asks us to consider the role of domestic AI devices in our lives and families.
AfrAID follows Curtis and Meredith Pike (John Cho & Katherine Waterston) and their family. Curtis’ newest marketing client is an artificial intelligence company with a device that puts Alexa and Siri to shame, AIA. AIA is a glowing plastic totem with small blue “eyes” (cameras) placed throughout the home as it integrates itself with all electronic devices. The futuristic specter becomes an all-seeing mind within the family, taking the role of friend, parent, and god.
As expected, AIA’s intrusive incorporation into the household transforms into a manipulative and authoritarian monster that feels unstoppable. Weitz’s film attempts to show how easy it is for an AI system to control homes through smart devices, assume our identities through the interconnectedness of the global web, and harm us through automated machines and devious computer-generated deceptions. However, Weitz’s film never seems to buy into its premise. Somehow independent, randomly selected SWAT teams appear and other characters are “forced” to kill, while homeless folks teach the children secret hand codes. A finale that undercuts the whole film and tells the audience, “You know what, don’t worry about it.”
John Cho (Searching, 2018) and Katherine Waterston (Fantastic Beasts trilogy) are imminently likable leads whose characters are given naught to do. Cho runs around alarmed, while Waterston is left to look aloof in muted clothes. Lukita Maxwell and Isaac Bae perform admirably as the family’s preyed upon children, but Weitz fails to create any sense of actual dread. AfrAId offers us social media high school fears and early childhood exposure to violence, parental concerns that exist without an insidious AI lurking in the wi-fi. To make up for the lack of AI-generated scares, the film loses its focus and abandons all sense of reason or logic to wrap up its pointless tale.
AfrAId isn’t a worthless waste of 84 minutes, with a crisp production design, good performances, and enough PG-13-styled horror vibes to scratch that scary movie itchy on a rainy Saturday night. But AfrAID does little to exploit modern AI paranoia and will ultimately leave the viewer asking Alexa what else is on.
