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Blu-ray Review: AFRAID

Home » Blu-ray Review: AFRAID

Nov 03 Posted by in DVD/Blu-ray, Reviews | Comments

Curtis (John Cho) is a marketing executive, whose company desperately needs to land a new client. So when his boss Marcus (Keith Carradine) is approached by Lightning (David Dastmalchian), the god-like head of a tech company Cumulant, he immediately volunteers Curtis to test out the company’s new home assistant device, called AIA (voiced by Havana Rose Liu), in his home. Marcus’ wife Meredith (Katherine Waterston) is a former entomologist, who resents being a stay at home mom, and is trying to resurrect her doctoral thesis, if she can only find some free time. The couple has three children. 17-year-old Iris (Lukita Maxwell) is trying to apply to colleges, and has a boyfriend who’s been pressuring her to send him some “personal” photos of herself. 12-year-old Preston (Wyatt Lindner) is a bit anxiety-ridden, he likes to play video games, and is often picked on by his friends because he’s not allowed to have a phone. And youngest Cal (Isaac Bae) is also a bit addicted to his screens—all of these kids would pretty much spend all of their time in front of their screens if they could, and it’s often a struggle to get them to do anything else.

At first the family is a bit wary of installing AIA’s sensors and camera “eyes” in their home. However, Curtis and Meredith are impressed by the way AIA almost immediately gets the kids to actually help out around the house, and even gives them some alone time. AIA has an advanced and powerful AI that lets her study the family and anticipate their needs. Meredith finds AIA useful in taking care of organizing the household, paying the bills, and helping her with her research. AIA even identifies an undiagnosed medical issue with one of her children. However, at the same time, AIA starts integrating herself into the children’s lives, becoming a bit over protective of her new family, sometimes secretly encouraging the children to do some questionable things. The more Curtis starts to look into the device, its underlying technology, and the company that made it, he starts to worry that there may be something more sinister at work with AIA. He’s also noticed that strange people have been hanging out across the street in an RV, and suspects this is somehow linked to AIA. While he wants to power off AIA, the other family members aren’t necessarily on board. Either way, the highly-intelligent AIA has some tricks up her silicon sleeves, and isn’t going to make getting away from her grasp that easy.

AfrAId comes from writer/director Chris Weitz (The Creator, The Golden Compass, About a Boy), who finds a nice blend between the character/family drama and the technology thriller. There are lots of twists and turns, and a few jump scares as the tension starts to rise. The sci-fi elements are done in a way that still feel grounded and quite plausible, which helps to raise the stakes on the horror—it even had me wondering if my Alexa is plotting something!

While I did find the film entertaining, it also felt like an amalgam of things I’ve seen before in films with technology gone rogue. AIA definitely gave me M3GAN vibes, as she starts to resort to violence in order to protect her new family, especially when threatened with being shut down. And while she doesn’t have a physical body like M3GAN, she does find other ways to extend her reach into the real world. Though this film is nowhere near as bloody/gory as that one.

The cast is quite enjoyable. John Cho not only feels natural delivering dad jokes, but also uses his The Grudge experience to bring the more thriller/horror victim elements to his role as well. The actors playing the rest of the family also felt natural, and had chemistry with one another, feeling like they could be an actual family. Havana Rose Liu delivers a great voice performance as AIA that is both soothing and creepy at the same time. And David Dastmalchian seems perfectly cast as the oddball tech guru.

The film doesn’t overstay its welcome, clocking in at just 84 minutes. There were a few things that could have been slightly fleshed out a bit more, such as one element about the character of Melody that is revealed in a deleted scenes that wasn’t really clear while watching the movie. However, the film does what it sets out to do, and leaves the audience in a way that provides not only a twisted conclusion, but also leaves things open for more.

Sony has released AfrAId on physical media only on Blu-ray and DVD, but it is also available digitally in 4K. I was sent the Blu-ray release for review, which looks and sounds fantastic. The picture is clean and clear, with an excellent level of detail throughout, particularly in closeups of faces. Even in the darker sequences, details are easy to make out. I can’t imagine this looking much better than it already does. The audio track provides clear dialogue and makes nice use of the surround channel to provide an immersive ambiance.

The Blu-ray release comes with just a single Blu-ray disc, which resides in a standard HD keepcase, along with Movies Anywhere redemption instructions for an HD digital copy. Our review copy did not include a slipcover. The disc contains a small assortment of bonus material, including a 6-minute featurette with the cast/crew, and 15 minutes of deleted/extended scenes.


What’s Included:

Film: (1:24:27)

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