Afraid | Film Review

 

When a family are selected to test a new digital assistant, they soon find that AIA is more dangerous than they ever thought possible.

This premise feels like it's been done upwards of 10 times in the last two years. But I happen to find the idea of AI perfect for a horror film, so I'll always come back for more!

I didn't love this movie, and can definitely see its flaws, but I did actually have a good time with it. 

For a start, the opening scene felt really silly and unrealistic, but it did have a lot of potential and was an interesting watch. However the tone of it felt a bit off compared with the rest of the film.

I thought the main family felt really authentic, and they all worked well together. I'm particularly a huge fan of John Cho, so it was nice seeing him in this. And he was great!

While the idea itself seems stupid and unrealistic, there is an undercurrent of fear knowing that if this product was marketed correctly, it's not crazy to think that people would buy it. It reminded me of a hyper-intelligent version of 'Alexa'. So even though the film didn't play out the idea as well as it could have, the prospect probably isn't that far from reality.

But even if you loved the film up to a point, it was completely let down by the third act.

The last 20/30 minutes of the film just came out of nowhere! Everything felt really rushed, unnecessary characters were brought in, and honestly it probably would have been more interesting and fun if AIA had just killed everyone.

And that includes the ending itself, which I thought was just really bad.

So overall, while I did enjoy myself watching this one, I completely get why it's rated so low and why people don't like it.

4/10