Move over Siri and Alexa… AIA is here to help. Unfortunately, there’s not much any kind of artifical intelligence can do about this Rotten Tomatoes score. AfrAId is receiving some unbelievably frightening reviews, and the latest Blumhouse production currently registers only 19% on the Tomatometer against 16 critiques as a result. The horror film’s review embargo didn’t lift until the very last minute, which is always a glaring warning sign. Typically, a studio arguably does something of this nature in order to keep terrible word of mouth from spreading, and in this case it seems they were right to wait. The New York Times’ Elisabeth Vincentelli writes:
This scenario’s predictability could be forgiven were the movie effective on any level, but it just isn’t, from Cho and Waterston’s wooden performances to jump scares that would not startle Scooby-Doo.
Charlotte Simmons of We Got This Covered gives AfrAId a 1.5-out-4 rating, and the assessment delivers perhaps the most entertaining and hilarious lines of all the reviews available online:
Alexa, send this underbaked, untethered failure back to the cutting room; AfrAId locks a genuinely fantastic idea behind a firewall of abysmal storytelling.
Dennis Harvey of Variety adds:
When crises start occurring at the halfway mark, they pile on too quickly to underwhelming effect, sacrificing credibility for excitement that never really materializes.
At least A.A. Dowd of IGN found some cinematic solace thanks to the film’s stars, which is led by Harold & Kumar’s Cho and Fantastic Beasts’ Katherine Waterston. Dowd, who scores AfrAId 4 out of 10, says:
The stars are about the only reason to boot up this preposterous thriller, which ends up playing less like a critique of AI technology than another daydream about its power.
Afraid Still Has Legit Chance at Box Office Success
AfrAId is one of a handful of new and underwhelming titles opening on the final weekend of 2024’s summer movie season. But John Cho and Katerine Waterston’s big-screen battle against the dangerous in-home artificial intelligence assistant known as AIA has more than just dreadful reviews and a poor Rotten Tomatoes score to overcome. The latest Blumhouse production also stumbles out of the gates financially, too.
On Thursday, August 29, advance screenings of AfrAId dropped in theaters long before today’s review embargo lifted, and the results are not good. Blumhouse’s latest dip in the horror genre pool only brought in $400,000 during its preview showtimes (per The Numbers). For a film that was predicted to make between $7 million and $12 million over the holiday weekend, AfrAId is off to a horrific start.
By comparison, Blumhouse’s Night Swim started its theatrical run back in January by making $1.45 million during its Thursday previews. Director Bryce McGuire’s horror flick went on to make $54.7 million worldwide. And another Blumhouse production, Imaginary ($725,000), didn’t fare as well as Night Swim, but it still made more than AfrAId did from its previews.
Imaginary went on to amass $43.6 million globally. Now, this is where things take a turn toward the light. While AfrAId didn’t perform well on Thursday, it could still rebound over the four-day holiday weekend. Much like AfrAId, both Night Swim and Imaginary received scathing reviews from the critics, which resulted in 20% and 24% Tomatometer ratings respectively.
So, the film could still become a profitable production despite the poor reviews, RT score and Thursday previews. But, even if AfrAId makes a killing at the box office, though, its doubtful anybody will ever regard the diabolical artificial intelligence story as one of Blumhouse’s best movies.
AfrAId
is now playing in theaters.