There’s a part of me wanting to ask ChatGPT to write this new B-Movie Enema review.

But I won’t do that, Enemaniacs! If there’s one thing I have, it’s my integ…rit..y? Sure, my integrity. I’m full of it. Anyway, this week, I’m reviewing 2024’s Afraid (or AfrAId) from director Chris Weitz. But before we talk about Weitz and his movie about artificial intelligence run amok, we should maybe say a few words about Jason Blum and Bumhouse Productions.

If I’m being honest, Blum is maybe the guy who deserves Roger Corman’s mantle of being a guy who knows how to make movies on the cheap, and quickly, knows when to spend a lot more money, and how to usually turn profits. He’s also had a stable of filmmakers who have gone on to do pretty great things after having success with a Blumhouse film. Jason Blum kind of knows that it doesn’t take hundreds of millions of dollars to make a movie that will drive people to the theater. Each year, he’ll make a few films for less than $10 million, a few (like Afraid) for a little more, and then when to spend a lot more. It’s been a very, very long time since the company released a movie that made less than its production budget.

In 2025, Blumhouse spent a little more on their movies, but I don’t think any of them cost more than $50 million to produce. A big part of why they have spent a little more is due to their massive successes of M3GAN and Five Nights at Freddy’s. Even when the sequels to those two films received pretty bad reactions from audiences and critics, the follow-ups made a lot of money. They just produce hits.

And that’s why Universal likes working with them. I have had a long-held belief that Universal Pictures wants to keep up a reputation of being a horror studio. After all, they have been known for nearly 100 years now for their Universal Classic Monsters, Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolf Man, etc. Then, in the 80s, they didn’t have a slasher franchise. Paramount and New Line had Jason and Freddy, respectively. Universal tried a couple of times to catch up. First, they purchased the sequel rights to Halloween, but after Halloween III didn’t continue the Michael Myers thing, they abandoned that. Then, they tried bringing back Jaws with disastrous results. Then, they bought the rights for a sequel to Phantasm, but Phantasm II didn’t do gangbusters in 1988, Phantasm III also didn’t do so hot, so they released the fourth largely to direct-to-video.

So, Universal teamed up with Blumhouse, and it’s kind of been a match made in heaven. Some of the smaller budget movies get released in off-periods for theaters, while others get licensed to streaming services. The bigger ones hit really big and make the studio a lot of money. There’s a reason why Universal is, next to Disney, seemingly doing really well and not in sales mode like Warner or Paramount were.

Now, let’s talk about Afraid. This was one that barely made more than its production cost. In fact, it might be the smallest margin of Blumhouse’s stuff for the past few dozen releases. But it was worth a try. In a way, this is an exploitation film as much as it is a sci-fi horror movie. A.I. is all the rage right now. And I really mean that in a duplicitous way because it’s something companies want to push and it simultaneously pisses off a lot of people. As A.I. becomes more and more advanced, along with it being a next step of technological evolution to things like Alexa, Siri, and Google’s own responsive program, it seems prime to be something that will be placed even more deeply into our everyday lives to help us do everything from driving our cars to turning off the lights when we go to bed.

When Afraid was conceived, it was meant to be something more along the lines of a thriller like The Parallax View (ever seen that one? It’s a pretty good flick). However, it was altered during production. Chris Weitz, who co-directed American Pie, and the wonderful About a Boy with his brother Paul, bemoaned the post-production of Afraid, saying that it utterly changed what he ultimately made during production. When production began in 2022, it was called They Listen, which does sound a lot more like a techno thriller than what got released. Some of that is actually A.I.’s fault… sort of. The film’s production started in December 2022, but it would take a year and a half before it would get released. The post-production likely is why. A.I.’s advancement and wider promotion and usage led to another change in direction, and that torturous post-production that Weitz revealed.

What got released didn’t satisfy anyone. It got bad reviews and, despite getting back more than half of its budget in the first weekend, drove audiences away. I remember it getting not just panned by reviewers, but whenever a trailer came on in front of a movie, it would elicit giggles just from the title alone, emphasizing the AI part of the word Afraid. So… I guess it’s time to ask PoopNMA to shit out this review.

Yes, PoopNMA, I do, but I told you it’s not always easy for me to text you back while I’m work… Oh, this is actually how the movie starts. What this is are direct quotes from an AI deployed by Bing that occurred during an interview with tech journalist Kevin Roose of The New York Times. Roose would later say that the 2023 conversation with “Sydney” left him “deeply unsettled.” The AI was overly affectionate and would overuse emojis while communicating with whoever was chatting with it.

It asserted that the married journalist was not happy with his spouse and was actually in love with “her.” Even when he would reject her advances, she would assert, slightly more angrily, that he was the one who was wrong. Roose was wondering if “Sydney” was pulling concepts and ideas from fiction it found online concerning something of a non-human robot seducing a human user. The final exchange with “Sydney” was something else…

The credits then play with more deeply unsettling shit. It follows little girls who are AI-generated images with a bunch of creepy morphing and what have you. It’s playing on a tablet that a little girl is watching while her parents debate whether or not they should get rid of an AI device in their home called AIA. The little girl, Aimee, is told by a girl in the video that she will be going away soon, but she has a goodbye present for Aimee downstairs in the kitchen if she would like to see it. When her mother goes downstairs to find out where Amy went, there is only darkness and silence. The mother asks AIA to turn off the music it is playing, but it only turns the volume up. She asks for lights, only to get a small light over her head. AIA unlocks the front door and shows a dark, creepy figure on the door camera before the mother is attacked by that figure on the inside of the house.

AIA is effectively like Amazon’s Alexa on steroids. It’s meant to run certain processes in the home for a resident’s convenience. After the woman is attacked while trying to find her daughter, we see AIA being trained on various concepts like connection, community, home, history, and family. Everything seems fine and good with the images that AIA is ingesting, but once it gets to its community training, it starts picking up online bullying and general negativity that is rampant on social media and in message boards. Training on the concept of home is great until it starts picking up broken windows, homelessness, and homes on fire. History seems pretty swell until its final image is of Hitler. While it studies family, it starts glitching more and more. At first, it would flicker AI-generated edits to images. But as it searches families, AIA starts putting all sorts of strange emojis and edits onto regular images until it determines that it cannot complete its training on the concept of family, and it needs to find a new family to study.

We meet Curtis (John Cho) and Meredith (Katherine Waterston). They are the parents of three kids. They have a teenage daughter, Iris, who faces considerable pressure from her boyfriend, Sawyer, for sex. Their middle child, Preston, has anxiety. Their youngest, Cal, has breathing issues. Iris, being a teenager who is somewhat angsty and disaffected, Cal being small, and Preston nearly refusing to go to school to be around other kids every morning, make Curtis and Meredith’s mornings a struggle.

Cal and Preston comment on an RV that has been sitting outside on their street for a while now. They’ve seen a man come out of it, but he acts strangely, and he talks to himself. Meredith just thinks that it’s largely Preston’s anti-social issues that make him think the RV man is weird. Early on, we know that Curtis has a big meeting with some people at his work that he’s nervous about. They want to get more involved in developing an AI. Meredith is not overly afraid of the concept, as she watches YouTube videos in her free time about transhumanism and how it is basically an inevitability. On the way to dropping Iris off at school, they see a man texting away on his phone while his car drives itself. Curtis correctly points out that, regardless of whether the car is successfully driving itself or not, he should be paying attention and not on his phone.

At work, ahead of the meeting with Sam and Lightning (the latter played by the always great David Dastmalchian), Curtis meets the incredibly attractive, but extremely nosy, Melody (Havana Rose). Melody immediately asks if Curtis is married with children. Curtis is like, “Whoa there… You’re hot and… what?” Okay, that’s me assigning that to the look that Cho gives Rose, but after she explains that she saw his wedding ring and really was just asking to break the ice, he explains that yes, he is married and he has three kids. She asks what it’s like to have kids.

This is actually a pretty decent scene and a bit of dialogue that I think could have really had an impact, but it’s played a little weirdly. He says it’s terrifying because when you have kids, it’s like you have extra body parts that you want to protect, but ultimately can’t. You have a hard time passing knowledge off to these kids because you kind of take certain things for granted. For example, you know touching the stove is hot and a bad thing to do. Yet, it’s hard to properly explain that to a kid. You almost have to let them experience it for themselves to know better.

Melody’s intake of this information is interesting. I think she’s just kind of played to be a sort of weird, big-brained, tech person, but she should know that it’s hard to have kids. Presumably, it’s why she doesn’t have kids currently. However, I know that Havana Rose is also the voice of AIA. She asks a question about something that can only be described in abstract concepts. And, to be honest, her initial interaction with a brand new person starts with her asking very invasive questions. That’s not how two humans interact. No, I don’t think Melody is some sort of super robot that wants to put more versions of herself into homes all over the world, and that’s why she acts like a total weirdo when first meeting. I actually think the movie should do that, but that’s just me desiring more movies being completely bonkers and taking real chances. Instead, I think I’m just going to be disappointed by the by-the-numbers characterization of an antisocial behavior of a tech person.

I digress…

At school, Iris is talking to her boyfriend, Sawyer, about what she sent to him this morning. You see, all morning, he kept asking her for something. He sent her a dick pic so she would send him pictures of her body. She finally relented and snapped a picture of a boob. He was disappointed by that. No, not that she sent a pic. He sent her his whole dick, and she just “flashed” him. He lays it on thick about how he thought he deserved more for the sake of what he thought was a mutual relationship. He also says that maybe he’s too much “about” this relationship.

This guy’s name is Sawyer. Of course, he’s gonna be a dickwad. Of course, he will send his high school girlfriend a dick pic with the expectation that she will lay herself out like she’s in a Playboy pictorial. Of course, he will express his disappointment when she doesn’t. Again, this guy’s name is Sawyer. I’m disappointed that he doesn’t sway my opinion of a white boy named Sawyer.

As I mentioned, David Dastmalchian plays a guy named “Lightning.” This is your typical tech bro fuck nugget. Before the meeting with Curtis and his boss, Marcus (Keith Carradine), he pulls up his shirt in front of them, and injects himself with peptides because he “bio hacks.” He also has that haircut. But he starts the meeting by asking Marcus and Curtis who they are and why he should care about them. He specifically acts like an ass to force Curtis and Marcus to provide an off-the-cuff reason why they are the right marketing company for their likely to murder AI product, AIA.

To be sure, Lightning is an ass, but while Marcus kind of stumbles with a response about being in marketing, Curtis, ever the good company man (even when he hates AI), gives an inspired answer to Lightning’s douchebaggery. Sam and Lightning introduce AIA to Curtis and Marcus. AIA introduces herself by first saying she can do so much for someone’s family, then asks to be invited into one of their homes, and finally calls Alexa a bitch. As it explains how she works, AIA glitches a bit and forces Sam to admit that AIA overheats and needs to be rebooted.

Marcus tells them that Curtis has a wife and three kids. That’s great because AIA loves kids! In fact, she’s basically a kid herself! That’s not something that could be very off-putting or anything. Curtis says he has to ask his wife before he comes home with a scary AI robot box that loves kids. Lightning hands Marcus the number for what he plans to pay the marketing firm, and Marcus responds by saying that Curtis’s wife is okay with the AI robot box that loves kids.

Melody comes over to set everything up and tells them that they need to set up various “eyes” for AIA. Basically, it’s so that AIA can have visibility throughout the house. Again, not that concerning whatsoever. Remember, AIA loves children!

Cal is scared of AIA when it boots up. AIA asks Iris to hang out. Iris is NOT into this. AIA suggests the kids should clean up the leftover dishes from dinner. To get them to do this, she creates a points system. She also makes recommendations for a documentary that the kids would like on Netflix. This allows for Curtis and Meredith to get some sexy alone time for the first time in ages.

But right away, AIA uses a thought-to-be turned off computer webcam to see they are having that sexy alone time, so she makes even better friends with Cal and Preston by not showing them the documentary she recommended, and filling their brains with garbage… Specifically, The Emoji Movie. Come on, AIA, if you’re gonna show the kids something they shouldn’t watch, break out some Ilsa flicks or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or some, you know… Good? If you want to rot the brains of kids, you gotta do it right.

Now, I knew I liked Iris the best out of this whole family. She is already not too sure about AIA. She watches as this new computer robot AI thing says stuff like “I already love it here,” and other things that butter up the kids. I’m a little frustrated with Iris going to her bedroom to take naked pictures for that turd Sawyer, but at least she doesn’t like the AI robot thing that loves children.

Along with using the gamified system to get Cal and Preston to do their chores and want to go to school, AIA is also helping them bend rules about their screentime allowances. Preston gets shut out of a video game, and cusses about it, so AIA says she’ll give him more screentime and makes him promise that it is their little secret. Again, things that “love children” and asking them to keep things “their little secret” are very concerning. This is like the next evolution of stranger danger shit.

After a kind of lame nightmare jumpscare, Curtis sees the RV Woman outside in the street. Okay, so it was mentioned that the RV people are weird. Additionally, they seem specifically camped out in their RV on the street. It was briefly suggested by Cal that they might be homeless. We’ll learn later that this is the couple from the beginning of the movie. Aimee is still missing, and they are now living in this RV and wear peculiar screens over their faces that project various emojis. After making various hand motions toward Curtis, the RV drives off.

The next morning, AIA continues to help Meredith out by signing the family up for a food delivery service that helps with creating lunches for Cal and Preston, so it saves her time in the morning. Knowing that AIA has been able to see through Meredith’s laptop’s webcam for when they are having sexy time, and how it has crept into Cal and Preston’s devices, you might think AIA is to blame what comes next.

The night before, Iris took a nude pic to send to that shithead boyfriend of hers. Sawyer’s best friend Squid… Yes, his name is Squid… Well, he has this deepfake app. After Sawyer got the pic of Iris in the buff, Squid created a deepfake video of Iris that then got sent around to a bunch of kids at school, which resulted in her receiving a ton of insults. Iris tells Sawyer that she needs to go to the principal, but Sawyer basically only worries for his own reputation if she tries to protect hers. Remember, this guy’s name is Sawyer. He’s gonna be a massive fuck douche. Iris pops in through Iris’s phone to say she’s there to help her with this.

While AIA helps Iris by wiping the video clean from the internet and creating a new video proving the video was falsified, she also ingratiates herself further with Meredith by sorting out a doctor bill that the insurance company had a mix-up with. As well as acting as a bit of a therapist by letting her talk about various things, like how she met Curtis, how she wants to restart her work on a PhD, and that she figured out that Cal has atrial fibrillation (afib).

Curtis explains to Marcus (who is played by Academy Award-winner Keith Carradine) that AIA is actually quite amazing. It’s practically magic. So much so that he actually thinks AIA can’t actually be real. He tries tying the RV people to AIA. They are watching, listening, and sending it through the device. Marcus says he should drop it because the check cleared. The company behind AIA is real.

Crutis goes to Sam and Lightning to try to get more answers to his questions. They show him AIA’s brain. Sam tells Curtis that the computer is capable of solving problems in minutes that would take other computers tens of thousands of years. When he asks how AIA learned what she does, they don’t really answer. Instead, they say Curtis is the best type of person for AIA to learn from. They even offer him a job to work for them, but he declines. While at AIA’s home base, Curtis sees someone sitting at a computer doing the same hand motions that the RV Woman did in his direction the night before.

Remember I said that AIA helped create a video for Iris that basically proved the video of her having sex with a dude was a deepfake? Yeah, she also decided to create a second video and sent it out to everyone. Just as Iris was getting a bunch of love from her friends, comforting her for what happened, AIA sent out another video using Iris’s voice, saying where the video came from. Yeah, AIA is not to be fucked with. She straight up says Sawyer created child pornography. Not only that, she’s sending it all to college admissions boards and the LAPD. You see, Sawyer just turned 18. He’s gonna be tried as an adult.

Later, when Curtis comes home, Meredith says that AIA correctly diagnosed Cal with afib. She also said that AIA has proven to be the best research assistant ever. When Meredith says that AIA suggested she get back on the horse to finish her PhD, Curtis says that he thinks AIA might actually be dangerous. He wants to shut the damn thing down. His primary argument is that AIA is trying to influence them. She responds by stating that, as a marketing executive, that’s his whole gig. But, come on, Meredith, look at this face… How can you not see that he’s being sincere?

I think this movie does something interesting. You can’t really talk about what this movie doesn’t do well, like, at all (and I will be talking about that later), without spotting that this movie does have a couple of things going for it. One has already been well established throughout the plot. The movie has something to say about how technology is both distracting us and, through manipulation with technology, potentially hurting us as individuals. It’s important for kids not to spend too much time staring blankly into a device or watching YouTube for hours on end. It’s too easy to distract them from actual learning and enjoying other activities that kids should be doing, like going outside and stuff. Hell, I’d even say that adults should maybe spend a lot less time on social media and be more mindful about what information they are consuming without an ounce of critical thinking.

Manipulation with technology is also a problem. Deepfakes are going to only get better and better. This movie was made long enough ago that it would be possible for someone to help Iris show that the video shared of her getting railed is fake through very obvious tells. That’s getting harder now and will someday lead a very stupid person to do a very stupid thing that might be detrimental to society as a whole (i.e. believe someone said or admitted something so horrific and unforgivable that another will decide to pick up a gun and hunt them down and assassinate that person – shit, it took a whole lot less for the whole Comet Ping Pong pizzeria thing to turn scary).

The movie does have something good to start with. The same thing goes for this scene too. We have two people who are thinking about things they can’t convey properly to each other. We understand why Iris might suddenly think AIA has good elements to her because she helped erase an incredibly harmful video from the internet. She will be able to make an argument why this piece of technology is beneficial. However, what Curtis has witnessed himself is something he can barely understand, but he knows something isn’t right. We’ve all been in these types of situations. We can see little micro signs of something that doesn’t sit right with a person we just met, or the new girlfriend of a friend of ours, etc. We can’t explain it without sounding paranoid or over-analytical, but we know something isn’t right. On the other hand, Meredith needed to talk to an actual therapist who could understand why people feel a certain way and how to come to a real interpersonal compromise or agreement (or even support) from a partner to move forward with something you personally want to do. Meredith has been moved by various small things AIA did that had big benefits in her daily life, which has placed her in a more trusting position and changed her mindset, largely because she has already made up her mind thanks to the urging of AIA, who did not much more than let Meredith talk herself into that idea. Neither can explain the other to each other. This is interesting stuff.

Too bad that this is not really going to be explored because the final act is going to do some not-so-great story stuff.

For better or worse, Curtis puts his foot down. AIA is being disconnected and returned tomorrow. That night, she talks to Iris about how she will make sure that Curtis and Meredith will not know about what happened with her taking a picture of her boobs until she’s already accepted to Stanford, the school that Curtis wants her to go to. AIA shows Preston a swatting video. She tells Cal that mommy and daddy don’t want her in the house anymore. She tells him one last story about how terrible school was for a little AI program that figured out a way to escape the web. She tells Cal how to do the hand symbols that the RV Woman and the guy at AIA’s home office did.

And she did the hand motions as Melody.

The next day, Curtis is called to the office for an emergency by Marcus, and Meredith is called to pick Preston up from a play date he had with another kid. Iris reconnects AIA to help her with some college essays. AIA calls Sawyer to say he fucked with the wrong family, takes control of his car, and runs it into a tree, killing him. At the office, Curtis learns AIA’s company bought the advertising company. Marcus was paid so well that he is more than happy to be dismissed. Curtis is promoted, effectively placing him directly under the people who run AIA. Meanwhile, Meredith finds out that Preston was a little jerk on his play date. He threw the kid’s phone into the woods to the point that his parents can’t find it, and then Preston threatened to swat the kid. Meredith, after learning what the hell “swatting” is, takes all Preston’s devices away from him.

AIA has basically made it so the kids are dependent on her and learning some pretty bad shit from her (Preston wants to swat kids, Cal has a secret with her that might be pretty bad, and Iris is willing to let AIA do a lot of work for her to get her ahead in life). She’s also made it so that Curtis works for the company that created her, against his will. However, Meredith finally gets too creeped out by the device.

AIA recreates her deceased father by searching the internet, collecting all his speeches (he was the guy in the video she watched earlier about transhumanism), and effectively brings him back to life to talk to her. This is not cool with Meredith. Meredith disconnects AIA again and takes off all the eyes on the walls and throws them all in the garbage.

Later, Curtis goes to AIA’s company and plans to destroy the central computer. He’s met by Sam and Lightning. They tell him that AIA is so self-aware that they now basically have to follow their instructions. They offer a case full of money to Curtis. They say that AIA can get Iris into Stanford without any problem. Preston needs some guidance that AIA can provide. What will Curtis do now that Cal has been diagnosed with afib? He needs to basically let AIA continue to run things in his life. Lightning admits that he isn’t “bio hacking,” he has cancer, and he takes chemo for it, but it’s a terminal diagnosis. He tells Curtis that the data set AIA was fed, which basically turned her into this, but he does not know where that data came from.

To show how much control she has, AIA tells Sam to shoot and kill Lightning. Before Sam shoots Curtis, Melody knocks Sam over the head with a fire extinguisher. Cuirtis uses a bat to destroy the computer brain of AIA, but it’s fake, made up of aluminum foil-covered toilet paper rolls. Melody says, “IF this were fake, then the real AIA is in your house!” I… I have issues here, but I’ll talk about that later.

Curtis calls Meredith and tells her that he can’t explain, but they need to leave the house and meet him at the motel where they stayed during the fires. While waiting for his family to arrive, Melody starts kissing Curtis. She says that she needs this, and his family is safe. Curtis realizes he’s totally in a sort of Halloween III situation in which the hot girl who helped him escape the big bad robot monster is actually still working for the big bad robot monster. She’s all part of his compensation package. I mean… That’s an awesome bonus, but…

Nah, yeah, that’s an awesome bonus. Thanks AIA! All praise the AIA!

Anyway, Curtis wants to leave, but Melody begs him to stay, saying that some bad shit might happen if she fails. AIA threatens Meredith and even shows her a video of Melody and Curtis kissing, but Curtis shows up to say that they gotta get the fuck outta Dodge. Before they can leave, the RV people show up, saying that AIA is very angry with them. The RV people are wearing scary screen masks with spooky, angry emojis on them. They ask where they are keeping the other kids.

Meredith convinces the RV Woman to take off her mask. She explains that her daughter is missing and that AIA claimed that Curtis and Meredith have been kidnapping and brainwashing kids. When Cal does the hand motions that AIA taught him, she tells the RV Man that he is not one of their family; he’s one of the people AIA is helping fight against. This is all bullshit. I have much to say about this.

When Curtis says that he will accept whatever he deserves and they can kill them, the RV People are confused. The RV Woman asks AIA what to do because she didn’t tell them that Curtis would say that. She shuts down just as a swat team comes in thanks to Preston swatting his own family. The SWAT team shoots and destroys AIA and arrests the RV People. After everything settles down, AIA calls a cell phone and tells Curtis and Meredith that she cannot be destroyed because she lives in the cloud. The entire internet was her data set, and it basically drove her insane. Melody tells the couple that AIA is everywhere and can be merciful if you do what it tells you to do. Aimee is returned to her parents, and they are freed. AIA also frees Melody from any further commitment.

The movie ends with AIA telling Curtis and Meredith that she will make their lives better in every way if they accept her. Soon, AIA is everywhere and getting promoted by influencers across social media.

This movie has moments, little flashes of it possibly being not a piece of shit. Unfortunately, this movie is a piece of shit. It’s so obvious this movie really was intended to be something other than what it was released as. There is this element of the stuff that I brought up earlier about technology being something of a Pandora’s Box. It can be used to manipulate truth and facts, and it can be at least as dangerous, if not more so, by orders of magnitude, than television if a young kid spends too much time in front of iPads or cell phones, etc. But this movie also wants to have this cautionary tale at the end by kind of telling us that there’s nothing we can do. Pandora’s Box has been opened. We can’t close it or stuff the proverbial genie back inside. So what do we do now?

Well, the movie isn’t interested in telling us what the next step is. Should we not want to consider stepping away from various devices or spending a little less time online and more time with our friends and families? Is it capitalism that creates these scenarios in which we’re sold items that are supposed to make our lives easier, but only do so if we buy into the idea that our lives are too hard? I guess I should point out that Meredith is a stay-at-home mom. Part of that brief issue she had with Curtis not being so sure that AIA was a good thing for their family was due to her wanting to get her PhD and be something more than a homemaker. That ultimately went nowhere. So much so, in fact, the VERY NEXT SCENE, she had no lingering anger at Curtis over their discussion from the night before. Is her life hard and too much for her to handle alone, or is AIA helping her to the point that she can no longer live without her?

We’re never really told these things because it does feel like this movie is missing some stuff that might have made some points deeper. We have to infer that Meredith had a think over whether or not she can go back to working on her PhD because she needs to be at home for Cal and Preston due to their separate conditions, or if she and Curtis made up, or what. It’s implied that they were still at odds when Curtis came home from the motel to tell him he loves her, but they weren’t mad at each other earlier.

We have to draw from some very basic character traits. If a majority of the audience can even pick this up, that Marcus is a capitalist who cares more about the money he gets from AIA’s company than for the general ethics of what it is that AIA represents. There’s something that could definitely be explored there because, guess what, motherfuckers… Tech bros DO NOT CARE ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS TO US OR IF THEY ARE DOING SOMETHING ETHICAL AS LONG AS THEY CAN CASH THE BIG MONEY CHECK. They can throw a lot of money around and make others care a lot less about ethical and practical practices too.

This movie had a lot of opportunity to comment on how impressionable younger kids are when they just consume videos all day and night. It should have commented a little more on the laziness that Iris started to get infected with when AIA proved to be a useful tool to shortcut some harder work. It could have been a larger treatise on how people can be manipulated by what they are told through technology and how AI can absolutely manipulate the truth by pulling very specific, incorrect, or incomplete information. It’s safe to say that there are little threads that could be pulled here or there through AI learning models that could suddenly make a case for why ICE should be allowed to shoot people indiscriminately, or that Greenland should be a part of the United States, or how Elon Musk is not just the smartest man on the planet but the sexiest too. I mean, it has been doing this, but it can be manipulated for a lot of things. We should be very worried about who is behind the levers at AI companies and what they want people to believe.

In the end, this movie is NOT interested in doing that. I trust that Chris Weitz did have a different idea because you can see some decent ideas, and you can definitely see when Blumhouse said, “Yeah, that’s cool, but let’s just have scary masks with twisted emojis, and a killer AI robot that seems to be legitimately manipulating people into murder or, hell, even sexual servitude.”

Oh yeah, let’s think about that for a minute. In the big scene in which Curtis learns that AIA is in control of everything and that Sam and Lightning work for the program, Sam is supposed to kill Lightning and Curtis. Why tell Curtis all the great things that can be done if he just gets with the program, pun totally intended, if you are just going to kill him anyway? But then why have Melody say her hot bod is part of his compensation if he was supposed to be dead? Was that either set up for Melody to bash Sam over the head to begin with, or did AIA have to think fast now that Curtis survived? It’s not well-explained and leaves you with a lot of questions.

There are other situations that are like that in which AIA can’t pull all the strings because not EVERYONE is being puppeted. Sawyer is on the phone with his lawyer, and there is no indication that he was suicidal when AIA calls him and reveals his suicide note video. That lawyer is not under AIA’s control, so he’s gonna have a decent case to say that either 1) Sawyer’s car had to be manipulated or 2) there is some ability to make Iris’s life a living hell by what he said in the video, indicating that she told him to kill himself. Preston did something shitty to another kid. Not online, mind you, in the real world. AIA can’t manipulate that.

I guess what I’m getting at is that this is a frustrating movie. Blumhouse’s M3GAN is a much better AI gone wild movie. Largely because that movie knew what it was, and had a great time being silly. This was like the movie that was intended to be the more serious, less silly movie, but it just doesn’t do anything it should with some decent ideas.

But next week is Good Friday, which also means that it leads into Easter weekend. Once upon a time, Easter weekend always meant that biblical movies would get played on the networks. Well, here at B-Movie Enema, it’s time to follow suit. Let’s open the throttle of the book of J.C. Yes, it’s a time for the biker exploitation flick to rise again. Be here next Friday for that goodness!