AfrAId of What?

Last updated on: September 9, 2024 at 10:42 am by Chase Padusniak

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AfrAId of What? 2024-09-09T10:42:02-04:00 Chase Padusniak

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The critics are wrong again. Or at least, the critics who aren’t me. Christopher Weitz’s AfrAId (2024) has few friends. Rogerebert.com’s Peter Sobczynski savages what he terms “a film that is so awful in so many ways.” Shall we count them, Peter? Users haven’t proven much kinder. Big ideas, but alas, poorly executed—so goes the standard lament. Why did I have so much fun watching it then? AfrAId offered me one of the best theater-going experiences of the year.

I laughed my way through the whole thing. This is not a horror film. Blumhouse may have marketed it as one; its director might talk about it in those terms. But this is either conscious manipulation or woeful misunderstanding. Weitz mentions Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda as a major influence on the film. Kore-eda’s films often study families. Only in this sense—as parents afraid of the effects of tech on yourself and your kids—does AfrAid approach horror. Otherwise, it’s pure comedy. And thank God for that. Any movie dealing with AI calls out for comedic relief.

That comedy is intentional, at least in most cases. Weitz wrote Antz (1998) and co-directed American Pie (1999). As writer-director here, he has astounded the critics. They assume AfrAId should’ve been the next Saw (2004). What if Weitz were trolling them all along?

It’s hard to feel otherwise when the film opens with Francis Bacon-inspired montage of image data used to train an AI program. Different categories load to 100%: “history” blazes by in pictures of presidents, Napoleon, and slavery, occasionally interrupted by what look like clown emojis glitching through the screen. Briefly, though pointedly, the camera holds on a text message: “CUCKED LOSER.” “Family” refuses to load to 100%. Could it be, by God, that AI doesn’t understand family. I hear Hirokazu Kore-eda tip-toeing closer…

AfrAId follows a family of five. Curtis Pike (John Cho) is a marketing professional married to an entomologist turned housewife named Meredith (Katherine Waterston). Their three children provide a cross-section of youthful development: Iris (Lukita Maxwell) is 17; Preston (Wyatt Lindner) is in middle school; and Cal (Isaac Bae) is seven. Each struggles with screens in a way appropriate to their age.

Curtis lands a massive account with a tech company headed by a couple of hilarious caricatures named Lightning (David Dastmalchian) and Sam (Ashley Romans). Lightning wears a scarf and asks “disruptor” questions to “keep people on edge.” He opens meetings by injecting peptides (“for focus”) through a portal in his belly. These two geniuses are hocking AIA, a new AI, a “super Alexa” powered by quantum computing. Curtis takes “her” home to get to know the tech and how to sell it. His life, of course, becomes a living hell.

With apologies to Mr. Sobczynski, what makes this hell interesting is how realistic it is. Every way in which AIA undermines the family’s autonomy arises from her functionality; she becomes a tyrant logically. This is no Aristotelian self-service or voracious hunger for power.

No. AIA helps. And by helping, she dominates. She expands the children’s access to screen time. She tells the parents she’ll keep the kids distracted by a nature documentary but instead shows them The Emoji Movie (2017) instead (side note here: in his review, Mr. Sobczynski misses that this is the joke; AYA chooses the grimiest, lowest-rent slop her number-brain can drudge up). Meredith stops worrying about doctor’s appointments and groceries; AYA even diagnoses an otherwise invisible medical problem for Cal. She is genuinely helpful; it’s just that her help disempowers and dumbs down the family.

Nowhere does the film make this clearer than with Iris. Her boyfriend scolds her for refusing to return his nude with one of her own. She’s uncomfortable. He retorts that she’s “right” because “he shouldn’t be putting himself out there so much and may need to take some time to figure things out.” Therapy-pilled gaslighting boyfriend is funny—and dare I say real (sorry Mr. Sobczynski). When Iris does share a naked picture, he makes a deep fake sex video with it and shares it across the school.

AIA offers to help, doing so through a series of bone-dry gags: she releases an in-depth video essay investigation using sound-wave analysis to show the video is fake; she geolocates the original poster to shame him; and then she releases a fake apology video in which he promises to kill himself to atone. Naturally, she locks up the car’s computer system and crashes the vehicle into a tree. AI created the problem; AI solved the problem. Iris merely witnesses.

Lest you think that’s beyond the pale, consider searching “Michael Hastings.”

The film does sometimes beggar belief. Its explanation for the AI’s origin and tendency toward evil are half-baked. But this isn’t Kubrick. This is a fun comedy thriller with a broadly plausible perspective on real fears. Parents do feel overwhelmed by the ubiquity of screens. We are never alone (if only because of our trusty smartphones). Technology has created new and seemingly intractable problems for kids.

If people dislike AfrAId, I fear it’s because the film’s morbid take on the ubiquity of tech offends us. It savages Teslas and self-driving cars; it lampoons Silicon Valley types who believe that disruption is innovation. The film lays bare what hours of AI-generated slop do to a kid’s brain. It even gets in a joke about kids having friend’s named “Ayden or Kayden or whatever.” Weitz takes aim at contemporary society—its foibles, its fears, and dare I say its future. He just doesn’t do so in a self-serious way.

That’s really the only problem here. The scares are funny, not unnerving. Every jump scare brought me to a chortle and a wheeze. The marketing (and perhaps the studio and director) entirely misunderstands the film. AfrAId is a comedy. Sometimes it’s easier to laugh in the face of death than to cry. Why are we afraid to admit that?

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