AfrAId

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AfrAId
Starring John Cho, Katherine Waterston, Lukita Maxwell, Isaac Bae
Directed by Chris Weitz

Back in 2002 a horror movie called "Feardotcom" was released, centering on the fears people were having of the Internet in its infancy, and it became one of the worst films of the oughts due to its sheer stupidity. It didn't really touch on anything important about real-life fears and instead settled for generic scares and a mismatched story that didn't make a lot of sense. Now, in 2024, "AfrAId" will carry on the tradition of being one of the worst films that center on a newfound technology: Artificial Intelligence. If you told me that not only the script - but the entire movie as a whole - was made by AI, I wouldn't be surprised - it's soulless, pointless, devoid of scares, and is ultimately a Frankenstein's Monster mixture that doesn't make a lick of sense.

Curtis (John Cho) is selected to test a new form of Artificial Intelligence called AIA that will revolutionize the modern family, making Alexa and Siri obsolete. His wife Meredith (Katherine Waterson) is struggling with her children - teenage Iris (Lukita Maxwell), rebellious middle son Preston (Wyatt Lindner), and youngest precocious son Cal (Isaac Bae) - while also trying to get back in school. When AIA is installed, she sets out to take over the mundane events of the family, including ordering healthy foods, helping kids with their homework, and basically just being the best helper it can be. The whole family is thrilled. Then Curtis has doubts when he learns some sinister stuff about the company behind AIA, and believes that it will eventually take over his family, and sets out to get rid of it for good - but AIA has different plans.

To be honest, there was moments in the film I wasn't paying attention at all, because it failed tremendously to keep my attention. Everything was so generic and bland I resorted to playing on my phone (fortunately I was the only one in the theater), looking up every now and then to make sure the movie was still as garbage as I thought - and thankfully at least it maintained its downward trajectory to mediocrity and stupidity.

John Cho and Katherine Waterston deserve a lot better than what they've been given here, as the entirety of the film is dull, lifeless, and void of human existence. Their emotions and actions are robotic, the script is lazy, and there's no scares whatsoever to be had. It could've been interesting if they went deeper into the idea of Artificial Intelligence taking over our lives, but here it's an afterthought, with mindless subplots that go nowhere - like Iris facing backlash when her boyfriend uses a Deepfake picture of her in a sexually compromising situation and sends it to the school, only for AIA to fix everything in a way that's way too magical to believe (well, except for her slimy boyfriend, but even that is met with a shrug) - or the middle child learning what "swatting" means, and the youngest just being annoying, with another subplot between him and AIA that literally makes no sense, especially the ending.

The ending...while I was thankful it ended, it had the most convoluted, nonsensical ending I've seen in awhile. It's like they had AI write the script then it went off the rails, and they didn't bother to turn it off and on again, but shrugged and went, "well, that's that" and put it in there. Seriously, it's the worst, and for a movie this bad, that's saying something.

The Score: D-

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