Film Review: AFRAID (2024): Chris Weitz’s Blumhouse Horror Movie is Passable but Undermined by its Shortcomings
Afraid Review
Afraid (2024) Film Review, a movie written and directed by Chris Weitz and starring John Cho, Katherine Waterston, Keith Carradine, Havana Rose Liu, Lukita Maxwell, Ashley Romans, David Dastmalchian, Wyatt Lindner, Isaac Bae, Bennett Curran, Greg Hill, Riki Lindhome, Ashton Essex Bright, Mason Shea Joyce, River Drosche, Todd Waring and Rogelio Douglas III.
Writer/director Chris Weitz brings the intriguing Artificial Intelligence-themed Blumhouse production, Afraid, to the screen. However, the film feels cheaply made despite its smart premise and adequate performances. Despite these problems, though, the story is captivating enough in its initial stages to carry the audience along for a while until the mediocre ending arrives. The film opens with a little girl walking away from her parents and disappearing. This child character has a lot of similarities to the film’s plot as both eventually fade away only to return at the picture’s conclusion. The original title of this film was AfrAId (note that the A and the I have been capitalized) which may have been a good title to keep and could have drawn more audiences to this horror picture.
John Cho stars in the film as a family man named Curtis who is married to the good-hearted Meredith (Katherine Waterston). Their lives change forever when Curtis brings home an AI thingamajig that is reminiscent of Alexa and seems to have Siri similarities. This device is a glowing ball named AIA. Curtis and Meredith have three kids- a teenage girl, Iris (Lukita Maxwell, whose performance is, perhaps, the best thing about the film), and two young boys, Cal (Isaac Bae) and Preston (Wyatt Lindner). Imagine Meredith’s happy surprise when she learns AIA can pay her bills on-line for her and order easy to prepare lunch meals for the kids.
Keith Carradine serves as Curtis’s boss, Marcus, who says the people who are using Curtis and his family to test this AI device (known as AIA’)s money is “just as green as anyone else’s.” Curtis wants to support his family. But, AIA has the exact personality of Megan from the hit movie, M3gan. She’s just not in a doll’s body. Expect all hell to break loose in a similar fashion to M3gan.
Havana Rose Liu of last year’s hit movie, Bottoms, plays a young woman named Melody who plays a big role in the story line. She comes on and asks Curtis about his marriage and his kids and what it’s like to raise a family. Curtis has an interesting answer that Melody plays off of. Liu does okay here but she’s certainly not up to the level of her performance in Bottoms in terms of the physical part of her performance here. She also serves at the voice of AIA. That she does well.
Afraid has some fun treading on some familiar horror movie territory. For example, Iris gets into trouble when a boy at her school posts a provocative video of her on-line. AIA doesn’t play and even knows the kid is 18 and can be in serious trouble with the law for his actions. What else goes on? Well, AIA plays both sides. She lets one of the kids play video games past his bedtime and betrays the trust of the parents. The story line takes some twists and turns that eventually lead to bizarre situations that may have needed a polish in the writing department.
The film’s star, John Cho, always plays an average Joe with appeal but, this time out, he lacks the personality that would make the role more relatable. Curtis is in over his head with AIA and tries to figure out a way to free his family from the nightmare he finds himself living in. Cho is occasionally on-point but lacks true leading man charisma here. Katherine Waterston is a great actress but she’s also restrained by the limitations of her own role. Lukita Maxwell has the most appealing role here and she is more than capable of creating an intelligent young character. Keith Carradine has his moments too and it’s great to see the veteran actor working again.
The ending of Afraid is rather open-ended. Conversations in the movie feel trite and the movie is only scary in spurts. However, the premise itself is rather frightening. Imagine that AI is taking over the world by reading and interpreting information on the internet. What if AI turned the tables on human beings and managed to phase out the need for humans? The movie touches on a lot of that and AIA wants to be a friend to Curtis’s family but if a conflict were to happen, the film suggests AIA could probably take him and his family out of the equation altogether. Pretty terrifying, isn’t it?
Despite its less than lavish production values and some mediocre acting sprinkled in, Afraid is interesting and could appeal to horror movie fans who like a little thought put into their scary movies.
Rating: 6/10
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