Virtual Mary Poppins Becomes Vengeful HAL

Though it was hardly the first thriller to portray domesticity imperiled by an artificially intelligent “helper” (you may recall trapped Julie Christie in 1977’s “Demon Seed,” for starters), the runaway success of 2022’s “M3GAN” certainly lent that concept new commercial appeal. Unsurprisingly, Blumhouse isn’t waiting for next summer’s “M3GAN 2.0” to capitalize on its own success. Writer-director Chris Weitz’s “Afraid” (recently retitled from the announced “They Listen”) stars John Cho and Katherine Waterston as a married couple whose home is selected to test a new “digital family assistant.” Needless to say, it soon develops a dangerous mind of its own. 

This less tongue-in-cheek traipse through formulaic sci-fi horror terrain works well enough to a point, its setup nicely handled by Weitz and his cast. But when crises start occurring at the halfway mark, they pile on too quickly to underwhelming effect, sacrificing credibility for excitement that never really materializes. Opening without press screenings, the disappointing thriller seems destined for a brief stay in theaters before finding its berth as a slow night’s disposable home entertainment.

Curtis (Cho) and Meredith (Waterston) are devoted if harried suburban parents to three subadult offspring with problems typical for their age. High school student Iris (Lukita Maxwell) is anxious to please a boyfriend (Bennett Curran as Sawyer) who’s willing to exploit that to his advantage; Preston (Wyatt Lindner) experiences social anxiety around the horrors of middle school; 7-year-old Cal (Isaac Bae) is a bit clingy. Despite mom and dad’s attempts to limit screen time, they’re all illustrations of that very 21st-century problem: addiction to devices.

Dad runs a marketing firm with mentor-turned-partner Marcus (Keith Carradine). Things aren’t going so well that they can afford not to snag a big new account from tech company Cumulative, which is on the verge of a major product launch. Fortunately, Curtis charms its representatives, the rather creepy Lightning (David Dasmalchian) and more personable Sam (Ashley Romans), into winning the job. An unforeseen wrinkle is that they insist he install their product in his own home to better understand it, and give it a test run.

That thing is AIA, a “next-generation digital assistant” that is a sort of “super-Alexa.” Speaking in the relatable vocal tones of Cumulative employee Melody (Havana Rose Liu), it has the world’s knowledge at its fingertips, and makes short work of figuring out this family’s needs, both practical and psychological. While everyone is skeptical at first, AIA soon impresses with a Mary Poppins-like effect on the household. “She” comes up with clever incentives for the kids to do chores; encourages Meredith in completing the doctoral thesis she’d abandoned to be a stay-at-home mother; and proves adept at shoring up individual insecurities. When Iris makes a terrible judgment call, pressured by Sawyer to send him a nude pic, it is AIA that turns a potential malicious viral disaster into a win.

But AIA was only able to do that because it had already infiltrated all the family members’ devices, monitoring their activities and even making decisions for them without consent. While it appears to operate beneficently, there is an unsettling edge to a force so pervasive, uncontrolled, sometimes deceiving and occasionally vindictive. 

Once Curtis decides something sketchy is going on, “Afraid” abruptly drops any effort toward narrative deliberation or character nuance. From about the midway point, the film becomes hectic without much actual suspense, implausible without being particularly imaginative. A home-invasion climax falls awkwardly flat, and while the fadeout’s conceptual leap might’ve worked in a more ambitious framework, this literal-minded Blumhouse programmer lacks the satirical bite, metaphorical weight or physical scale to pull it off. 

That’s too bad, because early on Weitz provides enough texturing for what’s never more than a familiar genre exercise to seem like it will be at least a cut above average. But in vanishing into a half-baked muddle of borrowed ideas from better movies, executed with slick impersonality and strictly PG-13 scares, “Afraid” ends up a cut below that median — a film that’s in a hurry to wrap up before it’s developed its themes, or found a groove. 

While the performances and design contributions are perfectly fine, there is surely something lacking when a thriller’s most distinctive element is that the production designer (David Brisbin) actually makes this family’s home looked lived in. Their clutter, at least, is one aspect that feels thoughtfully rooted in the real world.