Subservience (2024)
Spoilers ahead, because this movie isn’t worth you losing time too
Look, Subservience (2024), I’m not mad, just disappointed.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1961) introduced HAL; you’ve had 63 years’ worth of movies and TV shows full of “computer turns evil” tropes that you could have drawn from, and then you ignored all of it.
You are also a master class of absolute trash for world-building and character development.
Let’s break it all down for our dear readers, shall we?
Nick (Michele Morrone) and Maggie (Madeline Zima) were an apparently-average American middle-class family, along with their daughter Isla (Matilda Firth) and infant son Max. They lived in an unspecified, mid-sized American city with sky-scrapers, where Nick was a foreman for a construction team working on one.
Maggie had some kind of heart defect that necessitated putting her in the hospital and keeping her there for an extended period of time while hooked up to machines. The stress from Maggie’s heart attack, along with now having to solo-parent their two kids, drove Nick to Kobol Industries, one of many companies dedicated to making your life better with androids that have moved far past the uncanny valley and now just look like humans with glowing blue irises.
A Kobol representative immediately started trying to sell Nick on the idea of an android for his home.
Of course, Nick saw the android Alice (Megan Fox) and purchased her, right then and there.
Strike One.
In real life we’re in the middle of the first rush of AI software that can actually pass the Turing Test just enough to confuse the average American, and that a dozen tech companies are working on humanoid robots.
And do you know why you can’t just buy one of those Atlas humanoid robots from Boston Dynamics?
Because they’re expensive as hell!
Even in a world where androids became as common a household object as a car, there’s no way the price-break for manufacturing would result in Kobol selling models for less than $30,000, which meant that Nick functionally just walked into a car dealership, saw a shiny sedan, and walked out with the keys without even calling his wife to see if that was a fiscally reasonable choice.
Surely a human nanny would cost less?
It was also very clear that Nick couldn’t have bought Alice outright, because five minutes later we saw him throw down a stack of snail-mail with a bunch of red “FINAL NOTICE” stamps on the envelopes, which meant that Nick and Maggie weren’t doing that well financially.
But then again… who could be doing well financially in this world?
Almost every employed “person” we saw was an android, from the bar tender to the surgeons working on Maggie’s heart. Even Nick’s construction crew got replaced by androids as his company looked to cut costs.
If everything from trade labor to advanced STEM careers were actively being replaced with androids that didn’t need a paycheck, vacation time, or nights and weekends off, who had any money to buy the house-keeper bots?
Later, Nick brought Isla to the hospital to see Maggie, and Alice tagged along with baby Max in a stroller. Nick took Isla to get food and Maggie told Alice to “take care of Nick” and to “get rid of the hidden alcohol in the garage.” Maggie’s first statement was needlessly vague, and the second statement was never discussed or relevant ever again. Alice replied that Maggie was not THE authorized user and thus can’t give commands.
Strike two.
Why would this grade of advanced home-use robots not have an allowance for two authorized users? My iCloud account way back in 2017 had space for a second authorized user when I got married, let alone the entire ‘family’ component so I can add my kids in a few years as subordinate accounts.
And if it was an available setting, why didn’t Nick activate it and immediately add Maggie, and possibly Isla?!
In a later scene, Nick was watching “Casablanca” (1942) and asked Alice to join him. Alice pointed out (appropriately, given the context of her existence) that she didn’t need to watch it because she already knew the entire plot line, actors, score, etc., due to her knowledge database. Nick commanded her to forget everything she knew of the movie in order to actually consume it for the first time like a human would.
This necessitated a reboot of Alice, which was nothing more than holding down the power button at the base of her neck.
Later, Alice took Isla to a playground where another kid made Isla cry, to which Alice insulted that other kid. That kid’s android commented that Alice’s settings were set inappropriately by her owner, and Alice revealed that she simply changed her programming during the reboot.
Strike three.
Why would Alice know she can reprogram herself? Why would Kobol have written in a piece of software that would allow an android to edit it’s own programming? Why would a standard reboot be the activating factor for such a feature?!
At least in “Short Circuit” (1986) Johnny 5 was explained via a lightning strike.
Even in Martha Well’s “The Murderbot Diaries,” SecUnit couldn’t change its own software until a physical governor chip was destroyed.
Ugh.
As the days and weeks stretched on with Maggie still in the hospital, Nick got more and more stressed until one day Alice decided to wear Maggie’s lingerie and provide “stress relief” to Nick while mimicking Alice’s voice.
Let’s go back to when Nick bought Alice:
When the Kobol rep was making the sales pitch, he pointed out that the androids can come with “any kind of add on you can ask for.”
Which… yeah. Obviously. If you’re making robots that are flawlessly human-looking and endlessly submissive, of course you’re going to have add-on packages so that your customers can have sex with them.
But why would the base-model house helper have a functional vagina? Why wouldn’t the base-models of either gender be Barbie-smooth between their legs so that the customer must pay for the sex add-ons?
That’s just bad business, Kobol!
Eventually Maggie was released to go home home; days later she found out that Nick had sex with Alice. While she was appropriately enraged about her husband having an affair with the pseudo-sentient being, she did tell Alice to “take care of Nick” without any useful modifiers or limiters to that command.
As Nick and Maggie were fighting, baby Max woke up and started screaming. Alice decided that the next best way to take care of Nick was to remove the stress of having an infant… by drowning it.
Clearly this world never had Issac Asimov and the three laws of robotics.
A fight ensued and Nick and Maggie had to fight Alice and shut her down.
And… there’s more. The movie just kept going and kept getting more and more stupid, with everyone making the worst possible decisions and deus ex machina events happening to drive the plot forward. The final scene showed a deactivated Alice opening her eyes right before the screen cut to black, as painfully clear sequel-bait.
There should absolutely not be a sequel to this movie.
Megan Fox was the only actor I recognized in the cast list; that should have been my first tip-off when I decided to start watching this movie. She’s not known for her acting chops, which worked here because she was supposed to behave in inhuman manor.
Play to your strengths, I guess?
There weren’t any CGI special effects I noticed, and the few times when prosthetics were needed they looked good enough.
There was absolutely nothing to speak to regarding a soundtrack.
There are so many ways they could have had Alice turn evil and psycho and ultimately become a tragic antagonist simply because the humans kept giving her conflicting commands (a la HAL), but instead the director decided to just play “AI is evil!” tropes, which is boring and uninspired.
I love thrillers. I love psychological horror. The Trinity Killer from season four of “Dexter” (2006-2013) was a perfect example. I love the first three seasons of “Black Mirror” (2011+). I love everything in the “John Dies at the End” horror series by Jason Pargin.
This movie was none of the above.
If you want to media about murderous computers, watch “I Robot” (2004) or play “Portal” (2007). If you want to watch a movie about someone having sex with an android, watch the much funnier “Robots” (2023) with Jack Whitehall and Shailene Woodley. If you really, desperately want to see Megan Fox in lingerie for 27 seconds, then… I guess you could watch this. I promise you it’s not worth it though.
One Claw, for being a stupid waste of everyones’ time.
