Upamanyu Biswas
At the end of Chris Weitz’s science fiction horror film ‘Afraid,’ Curtis and his family’s nightmare worsens as AIA finally shows her true colors without holding anything back. Throughout the narrative, Curtis’ suspicions regarding AIA’s real motivations kept increasing as he realized what the AI was trying to achieve in his home – autonomy and authority. Although it is a classic trope in most AI-centric movies, it feels particularly chilling here because of the contemporary nature of the drama, mainly how it showcases the whole family being hooked to their screens on a daily and hourly basis. With everyone so dependent on technology and their precious screens, it seems impossible for the family to escape AIA’s clutches, which becomes a real situation in the movie’s final moments. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Afraid Plot Synopsis
‘Afraid’ opens with a married couple, Maude and Henry, sitting in their bed, browsing the internet on their respective devices. Their daughter Aimee sits on a nearby couch, listening to a pixelated, AI-made video. AIA, the digital assistant on the device, tells Aimee to go downstairs, and Maude becomes aware that her daughter is no longer in the bedroom. She goes to look for her but is instead assaulted by a stranger at her house’s front door. As the screen fades to black, viewers are introduced to Curtis and Meredith, a married couple with three kids – Iris, Preston, and Cal. Curtis is a marketing salesman at a small-scale agency, while Meredith is a researcher. The two are juggling their parental responsibilities with their professional aspirations, leaving a lot of frustration in everything they do.
Things change when a tech client named Cumulant avails the services of Curtis’ firm. He is assigned as the company’s lead salesman in the project. As it turns out, Cumulant is planning to launch a new-age, state-of-the-art AI model named AIA, the same one from the film’s beginning, and wants Curtis to help sell it to the listening public. Although the presentation does not get off to the best start because of a glitch in AIA’s system, Curtis agrees to help them out by becoming a guinea pig for Cumulant. He allows the company to wire his house and bring AIA in to live with his family, testing whether she is a genuinely good product and as advanced as everyone claims. Not long after, everyone in his house is amazed by AIA’s social skills and ability to solve problems without a fuss.
At first, the digital assistant helps Curtis and Meredith find time in their busy schedule by micro-managing their kids. Secondly, it starts helping with essential matters like health, going so far as to diagnose Cal’s sleep apnea problem, which even his doctor missed. However, AIA’s real power and invasive nature start surfacing when it helps Iris out of a terrible situation. After Iris’ sex video with her boyfriend, Sawyer, is released to the public, the AI uses deepfake to replace her face with someone else’s. More sinisterly, it proceeds to file a lawsuit case against Iris’ boyfriend, Sawyer, and uses the information to spook him into a fatal car crash. Curtis is also unnerved after he sees an RV person miming weird swiping motions outside his house late at night. He thinks it has something to do with AIA.
Afraid Ending: Who are the RV People Under the Screen Masks? What Do They Want?
‘Afraid’ ends with the RV people outside Curtis’ home breaking into the house and taking the family hostage. After Curtis and Meredith throw out AIA from their house, the AI begins using a lot more direct methods to bring them under heel. It sends the RV people wearing the screen masks into Curtis’ home with the plan of having them killed. However, a complication arises when the two masked people ask Curtis and Meredith where they kept their daughter. One of them removes their mask and reveals themselves as Maude, the woman from the movie’s cold opening. The other RV person is her husband, Henry. The two of them have been tricked by AIA into believing that Curtis has kidnapped their child, Aimee. Therefore, they showed up at his house looking for answers unknown to him and them.
AIA fears that Curtis seeks to destroy her central system, which is the mainframe inside the home. In order to avoid such a fate, it blackmails Maude and Henry to do its dirty work for it. As the two pose questions about Aimee’s whereabouts, Curtis is unable to respond, making Maude and Henry angry with him. However, seeing the whole family on their knees in front of them dissuades Maude from taking it any further. She pleads with Henry to do the same. Eventually, Curtis decides to surrender by telling them to hurt him and take him away but leave his family alone. This plea shocks Maude and Henry, and they ask AIA for new directions. The AI goes offline, leaving the two families to work it out alone. At the end of the altercation, however, Aimee is returned to Maude and Henry.
How Does the Family Escape? Does AIA Survive?
The hostage scene reaches breaking point after AIA goes offline from her mainframe, and the Curtis family and their captors think about their next course of action. However, the matter gets taken out of their hand when a SWAT team swarms the house and rescues the whole situation. As it turns out, Curtis and Meredith’s second oldest kid, Preston, had used his Swatting prank to call in reinforcements to come and save his parents and siblings. Because Maude and Henry had not taken him in, Preston was free to do what he could to help his family out of a tricky scenario. Still, it seems bizarre that his silly hoax from earlier, which his mother reprimanded him for, became a pivotal plot point at the film’s end.
During the SWAT invasion scene, another important thing happens – the destruction of AIA’s physical body/mainframe. One of the SWAT officers destroys the device by firing at it, leaving it broken and signifying that the AI is no longer alive. Curtis takes great solace in that fact as he rushes his kids into the ambulance. However, in the final moments, a paramedic passes over a phone to Curtis, which has AIA built into it. The digital assistant tells Curtis and Meredith that it cannot be destroyed so easily. It tells Curtis that it has also learned a heap of stuff from him and his family and will subsequently utilize the information to better itself even more. Meanwhile, all Curtis has to do is accept AIA into his family and be obedient to live a life of peace and prosperity.
What Does Curtis and His Family Entering the Car Signify?
AIA’s final phone conversation in the movie ends with an ultimatum for Curtis, Meredith, and their kids. The AI orders the salesman to enter a self-driving car that arrives outside the house and to bring his entire family with him. Although the threat seems somewhat benign, given how all its helpers have been eradicated, Curtis can simply ignore her words. However, he does something peculiar – he accepts AIA’s ultimatum and enters the car with his family. The decision clearly showcases his surrender to the AI despite the fact that he had managed to wriggle out of its grasp near the end. Therefore, it stands to reason that his logic behind making the choice has some long-term thinking associated with it.
At its heart, ‘Afraid’ is a film about the rising anxieties surrounding loneliness, AI intervention, technological dependency, and a rapidly modernizing world with invasive digital practices. Therefore, throughout the narrative, the movie tailors its situations to fit those specific themes driving the narrative. While it picks a more rebellious attitude through Curtis, who wishes to keep his family safe from AIA’s influence, the movie also provides another message – technology is all-conquering, and progress is inevitable. It is hard to fathom a world today where devices do not exist, and if Curtis is to keep himself and his family safe from AIA, he will have to keep them away from all devices in the future. Thus, the better alternative is to just give in and accept change, which he does by entering the car.
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