MOVIE REVIEW: SUBSERVIENCE

 

When his wife becomes sick, a struggling father buys a lifelike AI android named Alice to help with the housework. Things seem fine until Alice suddenly becomes self-aware and wants everything its new family has to offer, including the affection of its owner.

Director: S.K. Dale

Cast: Megan Fox, Michele Morrone, Madeline Zima,  Matilda Firth, Andrew Whipp

Release Date: September 13, 2024

Genre: Sci-Fi, Thriller

Rated R for sexual content/nudity, language, some violence and brief drug material.

Runtime: 1h 35m

Review:

Subservience traffic in a bevy of well-worn tropes dealing with androids and AI in a B movie mashup of M3GAN paired with The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.  S.K. Dale delivers a slick looking film that displays a nice bit of confidence behind the camera.  He does a solid job of creating a tangible near future world where these androids have become integrated into nearly every aspect of life.  Anyone who's familiar with the British show, Humans, might feel a sense of Déjà vu since both entities deal with similar conceits and themes.  It’s a consistent issue since the story rarely covers any new ground with thread having been done before making everything fairly predictable from start to finish.  There are a handful of intriguing ideas such as job specific androids being used in all aspects across everyday life and their effect on the human workforce, but it never engages with that in any meaningful way.  The domestic angle with Alice and her new family plays out exactly how you'd expect with some of it delving into some old school Cinemax territory.  Megan Fox is tasked with carrying large portions of the film something she does ably in a role perfectly suited for her.  Fox is clearly in her wheelhouse and she channels her Jennifer's Body character less the demonic possession.  This is the sort of role she could have easily coasted through on her looks, but she adds enough wrinkles to her performance to make the whole thing entertaining.  She's clearly having a great time and seems to have issue embracing some of the sillier elements of the story.  Unfortunately, everyone else plays it straight with dead serious performances which would work better if the story and characters weren't so painfully clichéd.  Subservience would have been better served if it'd followed M3GAN's lead and leaned into its campiness since it's not bringing anything fresh to the genre.  

C