27/26
AIA learns the family’s behaviors and begins to anticipate their needs
Narrative
The Curtis family is selected to test a new home device: a digital assistant called AIA. And she can make sure that nothing—and no one—gets in the way of her family. Blumhouse Productions has been a major force in the horror genre since 2007’s Paranormal Activity became a worldwide sensation. Here’s how IMDb users rate all of Blumhouse’s horror films since 2007.
Cal: Ten points to Gryffindor!
In the trailer, when the family opens the box to reveal the AIA for the first time, it says, “Hello, world.” This is a reference to the first program most people write when they learn to code or start a new programming language. It’s one of the most basic programs a person can write, and serves not only as a first step for beginners, but also as confirmation that the development environment is set up correctly. In the kitchen, Maud visibly unplugs the AI, but seconds later, when she orders the AI to turn on the lights, the AI is somehow plugged back in and obeys. There’s a short scene in the end credits.
Features Emoji Film (2017)
I Love You, written by Chris Weitz and Alex Weston, starring Alex Weston. I wasn’t expecting much from Afraid, but it proved to be an entertaining watch, as long as you accept it for what it is – a short animated AI-related thriller and not a heavy-handed sci-fi. John Cho and Katherine Waterston are great actors who manage to portray a fairly believable family dynamic, despite not having much to work with in terms of character detail or backstory and the occasional moments of clunky dialogue. Between them, they manage to lift proceedings where lesser actors would probably have made it more likely to go straight to streaming or disc.
It wisely has a short runtime, so it doesn’t overstay its welcome
Where this succeeds is the undeniably creepy AI and the way it effortlessly relates to the characters. It got me thinking about other recent AI or technology-related movies like Megan, T.I.M, and Kimi, and if you liked any of those, I think most of you would enjoy it quite a bit. Fear. I was also thinking about House/Wife (formerly known as Ivy), the movie that Netflix completed but didn’t release for tax reasons.
Fear seemed to feature a lot of the plot details that were covered in this movie, and it would have been fun to see how many
Thanks Netflix.