Afraid is a smart and easily digestible summer horror movie from Blumhouse and Sony Pictures. The premise is pretty thin, and the dialogue is stale at times, but for a small no-frills horror flick, Afraid does its job.

Afraid may not be the best horror film to release this summer. And it probably won’t make the most money. But it is a surprisingly smart and well-realized film that deals with themes of technology and our relationship to it. Chris Weitz has done a great bringing his vision to light and produced a film that challenges how we think AI like Her did before him.

AI is Everywhere

Afraid starts off with an easy-to-understand premise and the audience knows exactly where the film is going. The movie starts by introducing us to a young family, a mom, a dad, and their daughter Amy. The family has an AI in their house named AIA, which they decide is too creepy to keep around. AIA, having ears everywhere, doesn’t take kindly to this request and through their daughter removes the family from the house. It’s a quick introduction but it gives the audience all the exposition we need to know when AIA is delivered to a new home. A home shared by John Cho, his wife, and three children.

The real crux of the story is the company behind AIA. There are some twists and turns throughout where we learn more about this corporation and how AIA really works but the film never overplays its hand. It doesn’t ask a lot of the audience and it doesn’t spend its time overexplaining. We all know how AI works. The words Alexa and Siri are uttered multiple times throughout this flick just to give the audience a reference point. And every time their names are said a character will interrupt with an abrupt “Yeah, but way smarter.”

That is really all the exposition we need to know exactly what’s going on and where this film will take us. The movie works a lot better if you don’t get too caught up in the logistics and just enjoy the ride.

The Fear of the Unknown

A major theme of the movie, as you may have guessed, deals with our relationship to AI. A technology that in many ways we don’t truly understand. And not just us the users, but the developers. In late 2021 court documents revealed that many software developers at large social media companies aren’t entirely sure how their algorithms determine what people see. That’s a huge problem and one we are still facing today. Afraid basically takes this same idea and cranks it up to eleven.

This fear of the unknown, what an AI can do, is the crux of this movie. Megan, another recent film to deal with AI gone rampant, hangs its scares on unsettling dolls and brutal kills. Afraid features some disturbing AI-generated imagery but focuses on the fear of the unknown. What we don’t know about our products, and what they do know about us.

The Themes and Ideas of Afraid

Afraid takes these fears and brings them to a smart place. It asks a lot of serious questions. Questions I wasn’t expecting a PG-13 Blumhouse movie to ask. Like what if your deceased father could come back from the grave and tell you how proud he is of you? Is that worth a technology we don’t understand? Or what if something could instantly change the online narrative surrounding the most embarrassing moments of your life? Is that a willing tradeoff to all of your privacy? Afraid makes a lot of bold statements and smartly realizes them.

And that is what ends up being so refreshing about Afraid. Just how smart the movie is. Yes, it is a basic PG-13 thriller, but it also asks us to question the devices we bring into our homes. It doesn’t do so in a preachy manner either. It truly paints the AI in a generous light until AIA has its inevitable evil turn.

Living Life With AI

The film begins to flounder a bit in the third act mainly because there is no real way to stop a fake monster. The scriptwriters seem to write themselves into a corner that they can’t really get out of. The final conflict ends on a bit of an odd turn before the film does another reversal and leaves our heroes in a strange place. But it’s the place we all are with technology. There are tools we have to use even if we don’t fully understand how they are using us.

Early on in the film, John Cho explains the pricing structure for this new AI device stating it may be a “freemium” price plan. His daughter Iris, played well by Lukita Maxwell, quickly retorts with “If the price is free then the product is you.” That sentiment succinctly sums up the conflict of the film and its major themes. It’s a conflict that we all deal with now and one we don’t really know how to resolve. And neither does the film.

Afraid won’t set the world on fire but I hope it finds an audience. A ton of horror movies have been released this summer, some great and some not so great. But few of them have been this smart in their execution. Afraid is a solid seven and a surprisingly well-realized cautionary tale.