The negative implications of artificial intelligence (AI) are something that is becoming a greater concern in American life as it becomes more advanced. This is the perfect opportunity for a company like Jason Blum’s Blumhouse to capitalize on that and make a low-budget, high-concept horror movie out of it. It worked once with last year’s M3GAN, which managed to say a lot about how we live now, but was also a campy, energetic good time at the movies at a time where we desperately needed one, in January 2023. 

This weekend’s version of that is AfrAId (AI purposely capitalized), from writer/director Chris Weitz, who has previously directed About a Boy, one of the Twilight films, and most recently made the historical thriller Operation Finale. So, what I’m saying is this is a filmmaker who does not have a distinctive artistic voice of his own, and you never know what you’re getting with him. But you do know more or less what you’re getting with Blumhouse. Do the two make any sense together?

Curtis (John Cho) and his wife Meredith (Katherine Waterston) and their three children live the happy, chaotic, screen-filled life of your average American family. Curtis works for a tech company that sends him home with a prototype for a new AI smart home device, called AIA. AIA is so advanced and so initially helpful, all the family’s problems seem to disappear. And then AIA becomes a bit too involved in the family’s lives, and strange things begin to happen.

This was such a bizarre viewing experience, because AfrAId comes so close to saying something and never does. It’s also very short. I’m always advocating for shorter movies, because not everything I see in a movie theater needs to be two and a half hours long for me to feel like I’ve gotten my money’s worth. And it’s been a notable problem lately for movies to have a lot of padding. AfrAId runs about 76 minutes without previews or credits, and as a result it doesn’t feel like you’ve watched a full movie by the time we reach the end. It feels like there’s one or two sequences of AIA wreaking havoc in the family home that were cut from the movie, and I felt a bit cheated when I left. 

It’s also never scary in the ways it’s trying to be. It has nothing interesting to say about the implications of AI besides just ‘AI is bad’. One wouldn’t be ridiculed to assume this film itself was assembled using some kind of AI technology. I thought it was possible we were going into more interesting territory when the film decided to emphasize the good things AI can do. A lot of the family’s everyday problems are kind of fixed when AIA comes into their lives. The two young boys start to settle down, the 17-year-old daughter gets the upper hand on a cyber bullying situation (that later goes out of control) and the mother finally gets to finish the thesis she’s been writing, all thanks to AIA. But when this script remembers it has to be a horror movie, it delves into the most basic and uninteresting observations about the negative implications of technology. 

The cast here is trying, I’ll admit. John Cho is always very good, and I’ve enjoyed his work in the low-budget-high-concept thriller space before, with films like Searching. Katherine Waterston is slumming it here, but she’s giving it her all. Even the young actors playing the kids are engaging to watch. We have Havana Rose Liu from last year’s breakout comedy Bottoms, as a shadowy figure from Curtis’ workplace, and the great David Dastmalchian in a villain-ish role so silly it has to be camp, and Keith Carradine as Curtis’ boss. We have the start of a few interesting characterizations, none of them ever really come to fruition, however.

Overall, I feel like there are elements of AfrAId that could have led to something interesting, but to say this story isn’t fully realized is an understatement. This legitimately feels like an incomplete film, and it’s such a poorly put together piece of work, I could barely believe it. It feels like maybe the story Chris Weitz wanted to tell and the points the filmmakers wanted to put across were muddled by some horror elements that the producers at Blumhouse shoehorned in. Because when this film remembers it has to be a horror movie, anything somewhat interesting that was going on goes right out the window. And that makes it easier to sell a horror picture that isn’t really a horror picture, but I don’t see this being a hit or even a return on investment for Blumhouse.