AfrAId (2024) review

written by: Chris Weitz
produced by: Jason Blum, Chris Weitz and Andrew Miano
directed by: Chris Weitz
rated: PG-13 (for sexual material, some strong violence, some strong language, and thematic material)
runtime: 84 min.
U.S. release date: August 30, 2024

Here’s a techno-thriller about the horrors of life with AI. Yes, that’s why the title is awkwardly spelled out: “AfrAId”, and that’s about as clever or original as this movie gets. Oh, wait, the antagonist is named AIA (pronounced eye-ugh), to drive home what’s being attempted here. The working title from writer/director Chris Weitz (“About a Boy,” “The Golden Compass,” and “The Twilight Saga: New Moon”) was “They Listen”, which wasn’t any better. That seems more like the sarcastic title of a self-help book for parents with unruly teens. I would be curious to know if the screenplay differed from the final cut before Blumhouse Productions and Sony Pictures backed Weitz’s production company, Depth of Field.

The story’s half-baked ideas and unexplored antagonist, not to mention over-reliance on jump-scares, led me to such curiosity. Considering the subject matter, which should’ve found me pondering the moral limitations and boundaries of using such technology, it’s surprising (and disappointing) that “AfrAId” isn’t offering anything of depth to mull over. Sure, the apparent threat is how AI can replace people’s responsibilities or talents to ” make life easier.” Still, this movie sets out to unabashedly take these notions into the painfully obvious territory.

As the opening credits show, something is visually askew and immediately off-putting. Weitz and company offer a montage of our current use of and reliance on technology, often erratically reshaping human forms into distorted figures that look like a senior citizen took a Photoshop class from a community college circa 1996. With their amateur hour-level visuals, these images pulled me out of the movie even before any characters were introduced, and that’s never a good thing.

Then, a strange cold opening serves as a prologue of what’s to come. A child is abducted from her home, terrifying distracted parents, Henry (Greg Hill) and Maude (Riki Lindholme), and then abruptly introducing viewers to the family we will be spending the rest of the runtime with. This tragedy involves a mysterious home invader and an RV, but it’s hard to get invested when we know very little about these people. It’s painfully clear they will factor in later on, but when that revelation drops during the third act, the audience has either forgotten or doesn’t care anymore.

The stereotypes are woefully apparent when we settle on a family of five somewhere in Southern California. Curtis (John Cho) is a marketing executive married to former entomologist Meredith (Katherine Waterston), who is exhausted by carrying the weight of parental duties for their three children: precocious young Cal (Isaac Bae), anxious preteen Preston (Wyatt Lindner), and eye-rolling teen Iris (Lukita Maxwell). Each kid is hooked on some screen, be it a tablet, laptop, or phone. This seems like a tired cliche that would’ve been timely about a decade ago, but our reliance on technology hasn’t changed much. Still, the kids here seem woefully one-dimensional because of it.

Curtis is experiencing pressure at work to land a big tech account for his company, and his boss, Marcus (a sadly underused Keith Carradine), is counting on Curtis to pull this new client in. The client is represented by Melody (Havana Rose Liu), and she introduces Curtis and Marcus to their latest product, AIA (voiced by Havana Rose Liu), an artificial intelligence that will potentially revolutionize everyday life. Melody introduces them to two eccentric AIA specialists, Lightning (David Dastmalchian) and Sam (Ashley Romans), and strongly encourages Curtis to take home an AIA model to use as a test run. Once plugged in at home, the digital assistant introduces itself to each family member with camera eyes on just about every first-floor area.

Soon enough, AIA learned everything about each family member, befriended all the kids, and made life easier for the parents. Meredith’s fun and quick mention of HAL-9000 got a chuckle out of me. Of course, we know something is off and will soon go awry. It’s also obvious that AIA will go too far, and Curtis will realize that it’ll require more than taking a baseball bat to the main chandelier-like AI structure (resembling an art tech sculpture) to sever all connections to AIA.

There is some unintentionally stupid fun to be had during AIA’s initial immersion into the family. It’s clear to viewers that AIA infiltrating any mobile app or electronic device in the home will lead to no good, and it’s amusing to see how long it takes for Curtis (and Meredith and Iris, at least) and his family to realize that.

An example of this can be found in AIA’s interference with each family member’s dilemmas. Regarding their relationship status, Iris feels pressured by her ghostlighting boyfriend, the punchable Sawyer (Benet Curran). He’s expecting her to reciprocate after sending her a “dick pick,” but she’s uneasy about all that. AIA gets involved and winds up getting the selfish, hormone-driven punk in legal trouble after a deepfake video showing Iris in compromising positions goes viral. While AIA makes things a little better for poor Iris, what’s disturbing is how, unfortunately, such real teen interaction is depicted here. It makes me grateful my high school years were long before the internet or smartphones.

AIA also helps Meredith with some medical billing issues she’s been having, and anyone working in the American healthcare system can attest this would be helpful. It’s a head-scratcher of a move on AIA’s part, considering it would have to break the law to get around security measures, but it’s a movie. While Weitz touches on how support from AI can be pretty helpful – it even orders a food service to be delivered to lighten Meredith’s load – the ramifications of how the device burns through information to help the family are never fully explored. “AfrAId” goes out of its way to establish how AIA provides support, as it listens eavesdrops on the family’s troubles. However, Weitz quickly has AIA moving forward with acts of online savagery. It all veers more into an oddly vengeful cautionary tale and a cheaply done one at that.

The second half of “AfrAId” includes left-field ideas that go nowhere to add suspense as AIA goes AWOL, relying on jolting imagery and confusing plot turns. There’s an explanation of SWAT-ing someone, which young Preston explains as a prank you make in which you call the police and have a SWAT team show up at someone’s house. Yeah, like that would ever happen. There’s also the inclusion of gun-toting intruders wearing lame digital emoji masks that wind up being characters that aren’t necessary.

Despite featuring some good actors, it’s a shame that the material they’re working with is woefully lacking. Overall, “AfrAId” doesn’t offer a new concept, including the fear and apprehension surrounding the use of AI in daily life, and it winds up being a lame horror flick attempt.

RATING: *1/2