AFRAID
Starring: John Cho, Katherine Waterston, Havana Rose Liu, Lukita Maxwell, David Dastmalchian, and Keith Carradine
Director: Chris Weitz
ADRIANO
As someone who believes AI is a true danger, AfrAId is not helping. It makes the bare-bones case against it, but never goes beyond "it's bad" and surface-level mockery. Plus, ironically, a lot of this movie feels like an AI-generated horror flick considering how lifeless, generic, and, above all, artificial it is. There is potential for an effective horror movie that takes a grounded stance against AI and its scary implications for humanity, but bad acting and weak scares make this yet another bland horror film, sadly.
KATIE
AfrAId badly executes a potentially strong premise, making a one-sided, definitive judgement on the increasing presence of artificial intelligence whilst ironically relying heavily on cheap-looking AI-generated imagery. AI has so many possibilities in terms of the surreal and uncanny imagery it can create, which is genuinely creepy when used sparingly and combined with real life. Although this is hinted at early on, the film ditches that approach and sets up multiple ideas without re-visiting and exploring them effectively. Fortunately, the performances are actually good, particularly John Cho and Katherine Waterston, whose talents elevate the film to watchable.
