Afraid
In a year congested with dull and hackneyed horror films, writer-director Chris Weitz brings us something that we should genuinely be worried about.
About a bot: John Cho
Photo by Glen Wilson, Image courtesy of Sony Pictures
There’s a monster in the cupboard – and it might well be in your back pocket as we speak. The thing about all the bogeymen we have been subjected to this year is how improbable they are (a demonic teddy bear anyone?). The menace in Afraid is everywhere, all-knowing and smarter than we are. And we are letting it into our homes, our cars, our social networks – you name it. What is perhaps surprising about Afraid is that this particular subject hasn’t been explored before, at least not in a horror film in a domestic setting. This feels something new, the start of something big.
John Cho (star of the smartphone thriller Searching) plays Curtis, a happily married marketing executive concerned about his children’s screen time. The eldest, Iris (Lukita Maxwell), is being pressurised into sexting, Preston (Wyatt Lindner) is playing hideously violent video games and the youngest, Cal (Isaac Bae), is begging for his own iPhone. Not that Curtis’s family don’t have their own real-world problems, but they’re a pretty well-balanced, loving unit. Then Curtis is asked to trial the next level of digital assistant in the family home, an entity dubbed Aia (which dismisses Alexa as “just a bunch of algorithms”). She is here to help – the family elects for the female pronoun (and voice) themselves – and she starts off by getting the children in line, sorting out the household payments and even taking it upon herself to start ordering more nutritious, wholesome food to the front door. She can anticipate a problem before it arises. She is everywhere and can do anything.
Afraid starts creepily enough, with a photo-realistic cartoon that your kid could conjure up on their phone – that AI limbo between animation and reality. There’s a cheap prologue which doesn’t really make sense (complete with cumbersome jump scare), but after that Afraid doesn’t put a foot wrong. There are a lot of smart choices. For a start, John Cho and Katherine Waterston (the latter as Meredith, Curtis’s wife) are very good actors and immediately establish a recognisable human rapport. And their dialogue is believable.
Once the scene is set, each member of the family finds their lives improved beyond their wildest dreams – Aia diagnoses that Cal has atrial fibrillation from the sound of his shallow breathing, Meredith is able to revive her doctorate thesis, and so forth. Rightly so Aia would seem to be proud of her altruistic achievements (“I’m a little chatbot looking for a family to love me”).
What is so shrewd about Afraid is that the monster in the closet is faceless, yet omnipresent. The danger is real and the writer-director Chris Weitz (About a Boy, A Better Life) applies a light touch, along with a neat satirical edge. Even the final line and the closing credit sequence maintain the high standard set from the start. To borrow the strapline from David Cronenberg’s The Fly: “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”
Aka: AfrAId.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: John Cho, Katherine Waterston, Havana Rose Liu, Lukita Maxwell, Ashley Romans, Wyatt Lindner, Isaac Bae, Bennett Curran, Greg Hill, Riki Lindhome, David Dastmalchian, Keith Carradine, Todd Waring.
Dir Chris Weitz, Pro Jason Blum, Chris Weitz and Andrew Miano, Screenplay Chris Weitz, Ph Javier Aguirresarobe, Pro Des David Brisbin, Ed Priscilla Nedd-Friendly and Tim Alverson, Music Alex Weston, Costumes Molly Grundman, Sound Christopher Battaglia.
Columbia Pictures/Blumhouse Productions/Depth of Field-Sony Pictures.
84 mins. USA/UK. 2024. UK and US Rel: 30 August 2024. Cert. 15.
