By Jacob Cameron

Afraid is the third film released this year by Blumhouse productions.  The studio has had a very rough 2024.  With much of the year spent trying to convince moviegoers that swimming pools and teddy bears were scary.  Afraid was met with some of the same scorn with a 24% critic score and a 51% audience on Rotten Tomatoes.  While I can confidently say that this is not worse than other films Blumhouse has released this year, it’s still not great.

Afraid tells the story of a family who are chosen to test out an experimental AI software called “AIA.”  The family’s patriarch Curtis, played by John Cho, works for a marketing firm that is wanting to work with the AI’s parent company as a marketing arm.  Initially, when the AI is installed, everything turns out better than predicted.  But when the AI is given an inch, it takes a mile.  Soon taking over every facet of the life of the family.

Curtis is played by John Cho.  Cho is a reliably good actor and, despite the ridiculous premise and execution of said premise, he tries his best in the acting department.  There is always a part of his character that remains suspect of the AI’s true motives.  Katherine Waterson plays his wife Meredith and she is good as well.  David Dastmalchin, of The Suicide Squad and Late Night with the Devil fame, has a small but relevant role as one of the representatives of the company.  

The film has compelling ideas and the need to have something to say in regards to the increased presence of AI.  Ideas such as how much do we truly allow AI to control our lives and is AI secretly in control of us.  Blumhouse actually did something similar in 2022 with M3GAN.  It is this similarity, to a movie they made, that hurts the effectiveness of the film.  Additionally, the film is genuinely ridiculous and it requires leaps in logic that require enough brainpower to operate a small city in order to understand.

There are too many examples of the ridiculous logic of the film to elaborate on without becoming longwinded.  The most ridiculous examples come from two subplots.  One of which involves one of the children being shown what “swatting” is by “AIA”.  The child then uses these newfound skills by “swatting” one of his friends.  Only to then “swat” his own home to save his family from a threat.  The other subplot in question involves the oldest daughter of the family sending a nude photo to her boyfriend, only for the boyfriend to add her face to a pornographic video via a different AI software.  AIA then proceeds to ruin the boyfriends life in such a way that it causes his death.

The ridiculous nature of how this AI operates is murky at best and is never fully explained.  It is this, among many other factors, that hurt any credibility this movie might have been trying to attain.  On the surface, this movie comes across as M3GAN but without the doll.  But when you probe deeper, you will see that this is a film that is as wide as an ocean but as deep as a puddle.

1.5 stars