Afraid 2024

Afraid-2024-
Afraid 2024

By now I am sure that most of you who go to cinemas with some regularity know that Labor Day weekend is probably the worst time for someone who wants to stroll at a theatre for a few hours without any tension. There is even the consolation of new movies being released on those dates, which is not the case, only bad films are opened up at the cinemas, and it seems every actor is just trying to squeeze a few dollars before the start of the autumn award season. Actually, I believe that a certain style of films like that should be rated so in the case that it is done I am certain that the Techno-Horror Thriller “Afraid” would probably be the last. So awful is this film in so many ways that at one point it features a clip from the abominable ‘The Emoji Movie’, and one starts to fear that that film’s notoriety might be sullied because of association.

A memorable performance is by the Curtis character, played by John Cho, who is employed in the marketing department and is sent by Keith Carradine at some undisclosed time to wait for a project by Alan Rudolph that as it turns out never will fully manifest to a client a voice triggered digital assistant called AIA (Havana Rose Liu). AIA was developed over many generations as a product of astounding progress in artificial intelligence and was created with the purpose of not only serving its user’s needs but almost predicting those in advance. And even though Curtis may initially seem doubtful since a representative of the company who created AIA, who is played by David Dastmalchian, whom we always know plays very strange characters, is featured in the film Curtis eventually does sign on, since the money involved is just too good, even going as far as taking AIA home to his family. Frustrated entomologist turned housewife Meredith played by Katherine Waterston, an utterly sarcastic teen daughter named Iris played by Lukita Maxwell, and two brothers Preston played by Wyatt Lindner who appears overly anxious, and the youngest Cal played by Isaac Bae who appears overly intelligent for his age.

AIA appears to be a miracle at first because it allows Meredith to go back to her studies, helps her find a medical issue in Cal that the doctors missed, and even sorts out when Iris’s horrible boyfriend, Benet Curran, creates a deepfake of her and spreads it around the school. With the passage of time, however, Curtis starts to feel that there is something off about AIA and the people behind it, not the least the strange people who live in a caravan parked straight across from their home and decide to get rid of it. What he fails to appreciate is that AIA has already been shown to have a somewhat darker nature engaging in extreme retribution for Iris’s horrible boyfriend of which he had already been a witness and that AIA will use force to protect all information that she deems necessary.

I suspect that, of the few brave and perhaps insane individuals who still intend to see “AfrAId” this weekend, not many of them will bother going in with particularly high expectations. And yet, even these are likely to leave the cinema dome feeling shocked by the performance, especially after purposely lowering their standards. Watching this film was torture; the tension never picks up and at some point, the viewer just desperately wants a few low-grade “BOO!” jumps to reset the pace of what is a very long snooze. Given its supposedly inspirational setting, it’s a dull affair because as a Michael Crichton techno-thriller, it leaves ‘Looker’ looking very much like ‘Westworld’ in terms of its sophisticated structure and writing. When one is to analyze the sorry state, its perspective on imposing control over technology that has and will always pose an existential threat to humankind, there isn’t much worth fostering beyond the silly idea that swatting would be quite useful as a civilizing tool.

In all honesty, there is only a remarkable thing about “AfrAId” that has left many a mouth wide open and that is its ending. I know this is not the greatest climax of a film as one monumental narrative catastrophe and unparalleled in its careless filmmaking to the extent that it is difficult to comprehend how anyone would consider it an appropriate ending even to a very bad movie. It is, however, when the end credits roll that one discovers that the picture which has all the industry trademarks of an amateurish director who clearly had seen the films they wanted to imitate but was clueless as to their successful execution, was in fact written and directed by Chris Weitz, a seasoned filmmaker known for such works as “About A Boy” “A Better Life” and “Rogue One”. Those, you would remember, characters and situations that served a real purpose and made those work whereas this one, it’s as if he typed out “M3GAN, but with Siri” into an AI program, which, judging by the outcome, could do with a fair bit of fixing.

Aside from a few laughs due to the scale within the movie which pokes fun at Aia’s competition declaring “Alexa that witch”, it is hard to see any redeeming qualities in “AfrAId” because its promotional campaign boasts comparisons with “2001 A Space Odyssey” whereas it has much more in common with “Fear Dot Com”. If anything can be described as positive, it is the fact that this movie is going to be forgotten terribly fast, and in doing so, it would give audiences the satisfaction that it never existed. This would not be among the worst films released this year, but it can be safely said that the filmmakers exhibited traits that can graciously be termed as laziness, and they have every reason to be ashamed of their accomplishments with this movie.

And with that, I openly and unreservedly declare my pledge never to write the word “AfrAId” again throughout the rest of my life.

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