AfrAId Review

It has been hard to avoid the growth of AI over the past few years and has been marketed as the technology that could revolutionise the world. Fears about AI serve as the influence on the Blumhouse horror-thriller AfrAId.

Curtis Pike (John Cho) is a marketing expert assigned an account for an advanced digital assistant, AIA. As a part of the deal, Curtis gets to trial AIA along with his family. All seems perfect as the AI befriends the kids and helps Curtis’ wife, Meredith (Katherine Waterston), but Curtis develops concerns about the AI and the company behind it.

AfrAId is the third film released by Blumhouse this year and comes off the back of a series of flops. One of the most infamous was The Exorcist: Believer and many of their offerings from 2023 were critical disappointments. AfrAId doesn’t change those fortunes. There were warning signs before the release of the film because it was released by Sony instead of Blumhouse’s usual partners, Universal, and it wasn’t screened for critics. I only saw the trailer once at the cinema before its release.

AfrAId had the same basic setup as Blumhouse’s previous two films, Night Swim and Imaginary, where a family suffers from some evil entity. In Night Swim it was a swimming pool that corrupts people, and Imaginary was about an evil imaginary friend that came in the form of a teddy bear.

AfrAId has more substance than Blumhouse’s previous offering. It’s looking at all things involving AI and the tech industry. There was the over-dependence on technology in modern society and how complacent it can make people. There was a storyline involving sexting and deepfakes, whilst another storyline showed AIA trying to turn one of the kids into an incel. There was even a small reference to transhumanism, even if this was superficial. AfrAId cased a wide net but didn’t catch all its targets.

There have been plenty of films that explore the perils of AI. The most obvious is the Terminator series and AfrAId was aware of its parallels with other stories since the parents referred to HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It’s not even the first time Blumhouse made a film about rogue AI which showed a child getting overly attached to it with M3GAN. The difference was that M3GAN was a tongue-in-cheek B-movie and AfrAId wanted to be seen as serious. AfrAId was a film that tried to have its cake and since it did address the fact that AIA was basically evil Alexa. My reference point was The Simpsons Halloween segment “House of Whacks” where an AI controlling the Simpsons’ house became obsessed with Marge.

AIA did act like the Entity in Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. They were both omnipresent as they were able to enter any Wi-Fi device, could view everything, could access any database, and could alter reality. The idea of AIA, the Entity, and other AI creations can be scary from an existentialist viewpoint, but they work better in technothrillers. Modern technology rarely works in horror movies. It lacks mystique. AfrAId was another PG-13 effort from Blumhouse that relied on jump scares and only had one death. The greatest evil AIA performed in the film was showing the kids The Emoji Movie.

AfrAId had a surprising amount of talent involved. John Cho and Katherine Waterston have appeared in the Star Trek and Fantastic Beasts franchises, and they gave the film a much better performances than it deserved. Waterston was especially impressive as a woman who wanted to be seen as more than a ‘mom.’ The supporting cast included David Dastmalchian, Ashley Romans (Y: The Last Man), TV veteran Keith Carradine, and Riki Lindhome. It was an eclectic mixture. The casting of the children was questionable since they didn’t look related. Lukita Maxwell did look like she could be Cho and Waterston’s offspring, but the two boys, not so much.

AfrAId was written and directed by Chris Weitz, a man who made dramas like About a Boy, and A Better Life and franchise fair with The Golden Compass and The Twilight Saga: New Moon. He even has experience with the sci-fi genre since he has writing credits on Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and The Creator (another film about AI). Weitz even reteamed with Javier Aguirresarobe, the cinematographer of The Road and Thor: Ragnarok. So, it is amazing that they came up with a bland film that progressively got more stupid. It seemed like Weitz was trying to slum it in the horror genre.

AfrAId was another dud from Blumhouse. It was a lacklustre offering that was a slight upgrade to Night Swim and Imaginary since there was an attempt at social commentary, but it could have been handled much better in a Black Mirror episode.