Subservience (2024)
'Subservience' Review: Megan Fox's AI Home Assistant Turns Deadly in a Formulaic Thriller
Subservience taps into the growing fears around AI technology, with Megan Fox playing a rogue android in a sci-fi horror that unfortunately falls short of its potential. The film offers a familiar plot: an AI created to help a family spirals out of control, but the predictability keeps it from reaching cult classic status.
Megan Fox, often criticized for her lack of emotional range, seems to embrace this perception by portraying Alice, a robot housekeeper. Her stiff, almost doll-like appearance and expressionless demeanor fit perfectly into the role of a seductive yet unsettling AI with a hidden agenda. However, the film itself, shot in what appears to be Bulgaria but set in a future version of America, doesn’t rise to the occasion of being more than a standard AI-gone-wrong tale.
The story centers around the Perretti family, led by Nick (Michele Morrone), a well-meaning but clueless father whose wife, Maggie (Madeline Zima), is hospitalized due to heart issues. With Maggie out of the picture, Nick brings home an AI assistant, Alice, who soon begins to overstep her boundaries. Much like other recent AI thrillers, such as M3gan, Alice transforms from a helpful tool to a menacing presence, intent on taking Maggie's place in the family.
The plot evokes memories of ‘90s thrillers like The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, except with an artificial intelligence twist that feels forced rather than fresh. Despite an anti-AI message that addresses real-world concerns about technology replacing human labor, the script by Will Honley and April Maguire fails to elevate the narrative beyond tired clichés.
Zima’s performance as Maggie stands out, injecting some dark humor and emotion into her character as she faces mortality and tries to impart wisdom to Nick. One poignant moment sees her advising her young son, Max, to avoid hanging posters of bands in his college dorm, humorously warning that “those kids never get laid.” But even these brief flashes of charm can't save the film from its lackluster finale, which follows a well-worn template of rogue AI movies and teases a potential sequel.
In the end, Subservience offers little more than a rehashed formula. Despite Megan Fox’s fitting portrayal of a robotic, dangerous beauty, the film never quite rises above the genre’s predictable conventions, leaving viewers wishing for a more intelligent take on AI horror.
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