I came across Afraid on Vudu/Fandango this week and it was a movie that I had missed while it was in the theaters. I had intended to go see it, but things just never worked out, so I was somewhat excited to see it show up on streaming.

However, this was a disappointment of a film with an ending that was wholly unsatisfying.

According to IMDB, “The Curtis’ family is selected to test a new home device: a digital assistant called AIA. AIA learns the family’s behaviors and begins to anticipate their needs. And she can make sure nothing – and no one – gets in her family’s way.”

We have seen this type of movie before. It is very much similar to the M3GAN film from a few years ago which was also produced by Blumhouse. Honestly, it was predictable and lacked any originality, although the switch up at the third act was different. Problem is that that same switch up was also really dumb.

I do like John Cho as an actor, even though he is really not given that much to do in this movie. He was considerably better in 2018’s Searching, which deals with an online search to find his missing daughter. This is a considerable step down from that much more intelligent and engaging script.

Even still, the first part of the film was decent enough, but it went off the rails very quickly. AIA became crazy very quickly and became dangerously unbalanced not too much longer after that.

I was not the only person who missed this in the theater (by looking at its box office), but I would not say that anyone needs to find this on streaming. Perhaps it is worth a view when it comes up for free on Netflix or one of the other streamers, because it is short and gets over in a hurry. of course, it does not do much along the way either.

2.45 stars