‘AfrAId’: Blumhouse Goes Bland With Bloodless AI-Themed Thriller That Fails To Scare

Alci Rengifo

Everyone is supposed to be afraid of the machines. We just sense that AI is threatening to take over jobs and our very perception of reality. It is a no brainer that new horror films will tap into our tech paranoia. That is how it’s supposed to work with a genre that tends to also work as a time capsule. In that sense, a movie like “AfrAId” is to be totally expected. What the audience is not anticipating is how safe this movie plays around with its idea. Blumhouse should know better. Instead of going for its trademark, B-movie wildness, the studio here drops a well-shot but rather sleepy thriller. 

There is usually a family in peril. This time, it is the household headed by Curtis (John Cho) and Meredith (Katherine Waterston). Curtis is a marketing expert. Meredith is an entomologist with her career on hold. Bottom line, they can afford the very nice house in suburbia with their kids, teen Iris (Lukita Maxwell), pre-adolescent Preston (Wyatt Lindner) and very young Cal (Isaac Bae). Naturally, the siblings are all living through their devices. Curtis gets tapped by his boss (Keith Carradine) to secure a client in a company behind AIA. The latter is meant to be a groundbreaking digital assistant. It’s big money so it’s easy to sign a deal. In addition, Curtis gets to have AIA installed at home. Now fully enmeshed in everyone’s devices, AIA becomes a digital buddy who can give advice, diagnose medical conditions, smack down bad boyfriends and eventually, try to take over your entire life.

We expect “AfrAId” to go nuts once AIA is in the house, yet this doesn’t seem to fit with director Chris Weitz. As a filmmaker, Weitz usually deals with fantasy (“The Golden Compass,” “The Twilight Saga: New Moon”) or personal dramas (“A Better Life”). These are all good movies with coherent narratives. Weitz, who wrote the screenplay as well, doesn’t seem to know what to do with this genre. Tension fails to build because the first half of the movie doesn’t feel at all like a build-up to any sort of scare. Much time is spent establishing everyone’s little side stories. Iris is dating a boring guy named Sawyer (Bennett Curran), who is disappointed at the quality of her sexting after he sent a dick pick. Meredith is frustrated over her stunted career and not living up to her late, famous scientist dad. As for Curtis, his great dilemma is that he’s being offered lots of money and an attractive co-worker, Melody (Havana Rose Liu, who also voices AIA), clearly wants to sleep with him.

AIA, mostly represented by a tacky-looking lump dumped at the family’s home, should easily tear through this family like hell. Alas, she’s quite the shy monster, like the demon in another Blumhouse dud, “Truth or Dare.” Among her most devious schemes is getting Meredith to pursue her career again, thus creating strain in the marriage. Little Cal is mostly distracted by weird, AI-generated images on his iPad. Weitz finally tries to have some of that classic, absurd Blumhouse fun with Iris. When Sawyer and his buddies spread a fake porn video using Iris’ face, AIA gets sweet revenge with the kind of tech terror antics from movies like “Unfriended.” Let’s just say she can not only prove the video is a forgery, but track down the guilty parties, spread the info to every student and then provoke a vengeful car wreck. That’s the kind of ridiculous, wrong brand of fun we want when the studio delivers better thrillers like “M3GAN” or “Upgrade.” The only decent one-liner in this whole movie is when AIA says, “Alexa? That bitch?”

The rest of “AfrAId” winds down to a completely ludicrous, confusing third act that quite literally makes no sense. We are grateful AIA introduced Preston to the prank known as “swatting,” since it becomes a convenient device to wrap up the final, anticlimactic standoff. Don’t bother to ask how the intruders who barge in with LD screen face masks got their gear. Weitz, who just doesn’t have it in him to go full ham (this has to be the most bloodless of all Blumhouse romps), lets the family ride off into the sunset with a brand new car. Iris will go to Stanford. AIA can’t ever really die because AI is here to stay and Goldfrapp’s “Utopia” plays over the end credits. To be fair, this concept is not bad at all. What was needed was the kind of execution that lets its horror freak flag fly. 

“AfrAId” releases Aug. 30 in theaters nationwide.