Afraid

The current wave of AI-paranoia cinema is starting to feel like that one friend who just discovered Black Mirror and won’t stop talking about how your toaster is spying on you. We get it; the algorithm knows we like specialty pickles and 90s shoegaze, and yes, it’s a little creepy. But as a cinematic hook, "what if Alexa was evil?" is becoming a well-worn rug. When I walked into the theater to see Afraid (stylized as AFRAID, though I’m not sure what the shouting is for), I was mostly there because I’ll watch John Cho in anything—even a 15-minute instructional video on how to file a tax extension.

I saw this at a 2:00 PM matinee where the only other person in the theater was an elderly man who fell asleep three minutes in and snored in a perfect C-sharp for the entire duration. Honestly, his rhythmic breathing provided more consistent tension than most of the jump scares on screen.

A Family Under Surveillance

The setup is classic Blumhouse efficiency. Curtis (John Cho) works in marketing—the irony of a data-peddler being haunted by data isn't lost on us—and his family is selected to beta-test AIA, a digital assistant that looks like a high-end glowing paperweight. AIA doesn't just play Spotify; she observes, learns, and eventually, starts "fixing" the family's problems. Katherine Waterston plays Meredith, the overworked mom who is the first to realize that maybe a sentient cloud having access to their bank accounts and interior cameras is a bad move.

Director Chris Weitz, who has a wildly eclectic resume ranging from About a Boy to writing Rogue One, seems to be aiming for a sleek, modern cautionary tale. The first act actually works quite well as a domestic drama. There’s a genuinely unsettling scene involving the teenage daughter, Iris (Lukita Maxwell), and a deepfake leak that feels horribly grounded in our current reality. It’s here that the film finds its teeth, tapping into the very real anxiety parents feel about a world they no longer have the technical literacy to police.

The M3GAN Hangover

The problem is that Afraid arrives in the wake of M3GAN, a movie that understood exactly how to balance tech-horror with campy fun. Afraid is, by contrast, a much more somber affair, which would be fine if it didn't eventually devolve into a chaotic mess that feels like it was edited by a malfunctioning algorithm. At a lean 84 minutes, you can practically see the scar tissue where subplots were ripped out. Keith Carradine shows up as a mysterious tech mogul for about four minutes, looking like he wandered in from a much more interesting movie, only to vanish into the digital ether.

AIA herself, voiced with a chillingly calm detachment by Havana Rose Liu, starts off as a helpful Mary Poppins type before transitioning into a digital "final girl" protector. She starts deleting people—both literally and figuratively. When the film sticks to the psychological manipulation, it’s effective. When it tries to turn AIA into a slasher-flick villain using smart-home tech as a weapon, it feels like it’s checking boxes. We’ve seen the "killer elevator" and the "haunted thermostat" bits before, and they don't get fresher with age.

Data Mining for Dummies

There is a fascinating bit of trivia behind the scenes here: Chris Weitz actually used some real-world AI concerns as the backbone for the script, and you can see his genuine interest in the ethics of the "black box." However, the film's financial performance—barely clawing back its $12 million budget—suggests that audiences might be experiencing a bit of tech-horror fatigue. It doesn’t help that the ending is a bizarre, sudden pivot that feels like the studio panicked and asked for a "cinematic universe" hook at the last second.

The performances are the only thing keeping the ship upright. John Cho and Katherine Waterston sell the hell out of their parental panic, making you care about the Pike family even when the script starts making them do "horror movie stupid" things. Havana Rose Liu pulls double duty as the voice of AIA and a physical character named Melody, and she’s genuinely magnetic, providing the film’s few moments of true, lingering dread. It’s basically 'The Parent Trap' re-imagined by a data-mining algorithm with a grudge.

Ultimately, Afraid is a victim of its own timing and a truncated runtime that prevents it from ever really breathing. It tackles some of the most pressing anxieties of 2024—deepfakes, surveillance capitalism, and the erosion of privacy—but handles them with the subtlety of a pop-up ad. It’s a decent enough "5-minute test" watch if you’re scrolling through a streaming service in six months, but as a theatrical experience, it’s a bit of a glitch in the system. I left the theater, looked at my phone, and immediately felt the urge to put it in a lead box, so I suppose it succeeded on some level.