Review: AfrAId

Director:  Chris Weitz

Stars:  Katherine Waterston, John Cho, Havana Rose Liu

It’s a testament to Katherine Waterston’s consummate professionalism that she goes wholeheartedly at the character of Meredith in AfrAId, summoning an emotional resonance beyond the call of duty for this entomologist turned stay-at-home-mom still reckoning with the death of her father. She’s a guttering flame of sincerity in a film that is otherwise so astonishingly, quantifiably bad that her existence within it feels like some remainder from an otherwise tidily balanced algorithm of shit. An improbable inevitability to rival Neo in The Matrix. So, kudos, Katherine. You at least meant that this 84-minute detour to the bottom of the barrel didn’t feel totally worthless. 

AfrAId, then, is the latest wide release from the once effective Blumhouse machine, of late better known for apathetically pushing out a succession of tepid PG-13 misfires, cornering the market of the uber-generic. Inauspiciously helmed by Chris Weitz of – checks notes – Twilight: New Moon fame, this effort is a lumpenly literal slice of technophobic hokum. A kind of Black Mirror for Dummies, brought to screen from a script that, when spoken out loud by its stable of actors, sounds like the work of a faltering early ’00s chatbot.

Kicking off with a pre-credits pop-up scare so risible that all goodwill is vanquished for the remainder of the running time (I nearly walked out on principle), AfrAId introduces us to Curtis Pike (John Cho), his wife Meredith (the aforementioned Waterston) and their brood; 17-year-old Iris (Lukita Maxwell), early teen Preston (Wyatt Lindner) and youngest Cal (Isaac Bae). They’re your typical Blumhouse family unit, living in an improbably lavish middle-class home. 

We’re constantly bombarded with subtext-free warnings on the perils of parenting in the modern age. Screen time is a constant negotiation. Internet access and smartphones are a no-return vortex into a cesspool of online predators and radicalisation. Weitz lets no opportunity go by without portentous finger-wagging, so we’re already well ahead of the curve when Curtis’ boss Marcus (Keith Carradine) signs him up to test a new in-home AI system named AIA. Hell, we all already saw M3GAN. But M3GAN had wit.

Voiced by Havana Rose Liu who also appears throughout as a poorly written PR rep named Melody, AIA quickly wins the family over with her easy-win efforts to assist them, taking over everything from medical bills and food shopping to entertaining the kids. It’s pretty insane how quickly Curtis and Meredith turn their children over to this jumped-up Alexa, actually, leaving them alone for – seemingly – hours on end. On day dot. 

Of course, things are bound to go off the rails. There’s an RV of weirdos with screens for faces hanging around outside, and Curtis is having dark dreams of someone or something busting down the door. Ultimately we’re left marking time until things escalate. When they do, the moves are often arbitrary and nonsensical, all gearing toward a giddily incoherent finale that undermines the logic of most of what comes before. Along the way we’re introduced to David Dastmalchian’s tech-hippie Lightning; possibly a satirical caricature who’s supposed to look like an alien from Star Trek, but its honestly difficult to tell what the intention is there. 

Dastmalchian. Cho. Carradine. Waterston. How did this cast of seasoned, respected and dependable names end up in this humdrum and confused mess of a movie? Waterston, as articulated, actually makes a lot out of a thinly sketched character, but Weitz’ dialogue and dramatic choices undermine her good work at every turn. Meredith’s manic response to an AI-generated facsimile of her deceased father is unrealistic in the extreme. Efforts to suggest some kind of sexual tension between Curtis and Melody, meanwhile, feel about as graceful as footage of crash test dummies collapsing into each other. 

In combination, these elements coalesce into a movie that’s a lot like one of the uncanny-valley pieces of AI art so brazenly lambasted in the vomit-inducing opening titles. At the most basic level it resembles a simple, recognisable form (a movie), but each feature is crudely smooth, simplistic or out of proportion. Looking at the whole is like taking in some nasty, amorphous grotesque. So thoroughly off-putting that one yearns to decimate it from memory by returning to something earthen, something genuine, something with an ounce of integrity. 

I have incredibly grave concerns about the proliferation of AI and equally misanthropic expectations re our collective apathy toward it, worries that AfrAId addresses so flatly as to achieve nothing. It is so thoroughly, disappointingly remedial and humourless in its approach, and so thoroughly un-futureproofed as to feel dated on the day of it’s release. Weitz is all thumbs. There’s no spark or ingenuity here. Nothing that doesn’t feel like a first draft thought borrowed from better work. At it’s core, AfrAId feels like the panicked daydreams of a Boomer overcome with a paralysing fear of self-driving cars and Kids Today. It almost made me ashamed of my quite rational misgivings. 

Horror fans will be let down by the movie’s toothlessness. Kids will likely find it condescending and cringeworthy. Adults with a modicum of sense will simply feel ripped off. 

Somebody, please, give Katherine Waterston something better to do.