Review: Blumhouse’s AI Thriller ‘Afraid’ Arrives On Blu-ray So You Can Watch It Without The Internet Spying On You
by David Lewis
Afraid, the latest, topical, home-based thriller from prolific horror generators Blumhouse Productions (M3GAN, the Insidious franchise, Night Swim) has arrived on Blu-ray and DVD.
Curtis (John Cho), Meredith (Katherine Waterston), and their three children are chosen as test subjects to use a home AI assistant called “AIA.” The unit (voiced by Havana Rose Liu, who also plays the project’s flirtatious PR person) makes herself at home and the family’s three kids take an instant liking to her. These early scenes are quickly sketched as the family marvels at AIA’s ability to pay bills, check traffic routes, and give parenting advice. But as she studies the family’s needs and behaviors, AIA begins overprotecting the family, including getting extreme revenge on a misogynistic school bully, introducing toddler Cal to the dark side of online humanity, impersonating Cho on the phone, and generally brainwashing the kids.
There’s also a side plot about a previous family who tangled with AIA, but it’s clumsily connected to the main storyline and resolved much too quickly and easily.
In fact, all of the film’s dots are connected much too quickly and easily. Anyone who’s seen Stanley Kubrick‘s 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1977’s Demon Seed, or even M3GAN knows AIA can’t be trusted and Afraid doesn’t do much to subvert expectations.
Overall, it’s a breezy 84 minutes, but it really feels like 15 minutes were removed from the middle, making character motivations swing wildly from scene to scene. Scares are non-existent — even more so than your average PG-13 Blumhouse entry. However, Afraid earns some last-minute bonus points by ending on a darkly ambiguous note. Cho and Waterston both turn in solid performances that are better than the movie deserves. Liu (memorable in the raunchy teen comedy Bottoms) does the most with a small part as a flirtatious tech who gives voice to AIA, and there’s a nice ambiguity to her role. Fan favorite David Dastmalchian and Keith Carradine also show up, but their roles were cut down to a few lines each.
Writer-director Chris Weitz is, of course, one half of the brotherly team that gave us American Pie and About a Boy, and he doesn’t seem very confident with this material, even after writing 2023’s AI epic The Creator.
Among the limited special features are a handful deleted and extended scenes. But, oddly enough, none of them really fill in any of the gaps in the narrative. The disc also includes a darker alternate ending which serves to make AIA slightly more vengeful — and long-winded.
There’s also a featurette called Dark Side of AI. Like many of these short little documentaries found on the disc, it’s just clips from the movie interspersed with quick talking head interviews with members of the cast and crew. But, like the movie, this one feels incomplete. Cho, Liu, and Dastmalchian are present, but Weitz and Waterston aren’t involved, and Dastmalchian ends up getting more screen time here than in the movie. On the crew side of things, we only hear from production designer David Brisbin and chief lighting technician Dustin Gardener. It almost feels like they just grabbed whoever was available on set that day and sat them down for a quick Q&A.
Afraid is now available for rent or purchase digitally, and on Blu-ray and DVD.
