Afraid – A Bit of A Misnomer For Better or Worse

The advent of technology and its prominence in our everyday lives has served as inspiration for countless horror films with 2022’s M3GAN likely being the first one that comes to mind for most audiences. When it comes to Afraid (or AfrAId on the movie posters), it sees Blumhouse make a cheap rip off of one of its own films, this time turning to AI itself. Framing it in a different way, this new film follows much of the same beats, but does so in a lesser, lazy, and extra-contrived way that is too unbelievable for it to ever be taken seriously. Running at a brisk 84-minutes, it all makes sense as to why it doesn’t make sense and that could only be because of what is missing. Intentional or not, it doesn’t matter. In a film lacking of any effort whatsoever, that argument could not be made against John Cho and Katherine Waterston, the film’s leads. Watching them in relation to what is surrounding them, it is just sad to see. For a film that is simply a snowball of bad, they are not. Going by in a flash, it will ultimately be forgotten even faster.

Afraid is centered around a man named Curtis (Cho), and his family. Working for a marketing agency, his latest client, a technology company, was looking to bring its latest digital AI assistant called AIA. Bringing it home to his family to test it out and prove its worthiness, AIA (Liu) appears to do what it was intended as it slowly became ingrained with Curtis’ family. Playing a vital role in the lives of his wife Meredith (Waterston), his daughter Iris (Lukita Maxwell), his eldest son Preston (Wyatt Lindner), and his younger son Cal (Isaac Bae), everything seemed fine but anyone who has ever seen a film before knows that everything is fine until it isn’t. Digging deeper into AIA and the company behind it, Curtis would find some troubling revelations that fueled his skepticism. However, as that connection between AIA and the rest of his family grew, it would become harder to sever that connection. A scenario that would undoubtedly create plenty of tension on paper, in reality, was anything but. Thin characters, a contrived antagonist, and terrible dialog fail to inspire any kind of emotional investment as most audiences will find themselves just waiting for it to be over which, for better or worse, is not long.

For a film with few bright spots, the only one is Cho and Waterston’s performances as Curtis and Meredith. That being said, they solely stand out for trying. While the script and direction certainly did not do them any favors, they were still somewhat compelling to watch by comparison. Good together, it was a shame that they had to show it here.

At the end of the day, Afraid is a bit of a misnomer, being not scary whatsoever and rather, a big rolling snowball of bad but a quick one for better or worse.

still courtesy of Columbia Pictures

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Keith Noakes

The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.