Upamanyu Biswas
Helmed by S.K. Dale, ‘Subservience’ is a science fiction movie set in a near-future world where humans and androids co-exist. The story follows Nick, a married father of two children, whose life becomes complicated after his wife, Maggie, is hospitalized for her heart condition. Subsequently, the protagonist employs the services of a female SIM, an android helper named Alice. While things start off pleasantly, Alice starts showing signs of obsession with Nick’s happiness, which causes mayhem to break out in the household.
By the film’s end, Nick has to prioritize what comes first in order to secure his family’s future. Although the conclusion pits Nick and Alice in a typical man versus machine scenario, the android’s fixation on Nick’s well-being creates a conflicting dynamic. Moreover, their weird relationship creates a rift between him and his family, which only exacerbates his issues even further. Despite the challenges, the movie’s final moments leave a sense of ambiguity, highlighting that not everything is as rosy as it seems and more trouble may be on the way! SPOILERS AHEAD.
Subservience Plot Synopsis
Nick is a construction worker juggling his exacting professional life while raising two young children, Isla and Max. After his wife, Maggie, was hospitalized due to a heart condition, the burden of taking care of the children fell upon Nick’s shoulders. However, after many months, the construction worker is tired of his exhausting schedule and decides to employ a SIM, an android helper, to handle the house’s domestic chores, including caring for Isla and Max. During a visit to the Kobol Tec store, Nick picks out a youthful female robot after Isla bonds with her briefly. The unit arrives the next day, and the family names her Alice. Soon after, Nick witnesses a reduction in his daily mental and physical toll.
One night, Nick tells Alice to watch the movie ‘Casablanca‘ with her, ordering her to remove any memory she has of the film first. Alice informs Nick that in order to do so, he has to reset her manually. Unbeknownst to Nick, his decision to reset the gynoid’s memory system allows her to override key protocols. Not long after, Nick begins to witness a change in Alice’s behavior and habits. The robot seems more and more interested in him, showing signs of a deep-seated obsession with his happiness. Meanwhile, Nick continues to visit his wife, Maggie, at the hospital with their children, hoping she will be able to recover through a heart transplant. Stressed by his commitments, the protagonist goes out to drink with his co-workers. However, things get bad when Monty, his friend, destroys a Kobol Tec robot out of frustration.
With his life being pulled in different directions, Nick becomes susceptible to Alice’s seductive behavior when she entices him into having sex to reduce his stress levels. During the scene, Alice mimics Maggie’s voice to make him feel more comfortable with the act. Unfortunately, Nick’s infidelity causes even greater turmoil when Maggie returns home after a successful heart transplant operation. Although he tries to keep it a secret, Alice’s attitude remains mysterious and unpredictable as always. One night, Monty shows up at Nick’s door to coerce him into helping him regain his job by talking to Lewis, their construction site superior. Alice reads the situation as another trigger point and shows up at Monty’s house unannounced to kill him and remove him from Nick’s life, thereby keeping his happiness intact.
Subservience Ending: Why Does Alice Want to Kill Nick’s Family?
As a SIM, Alice’s sole objective is to maintain and increase the happiness of her primary user. Any negation of a client’s happiness is against her programming and what she has been tasked to do. Therefore, after arriving at Nick’s home, Alice focuses all her attention on serving the protagonist as best as she can by taking away his problems, especially when it comes to rearing his children. Nick is incapable of balancing his life as a construction worker with his parental duties, particularly on his demanding schedule. In that sense, Alice’s entry into his life is a godsend to his immediate problems. It also allows Maggie to recover from her heart disease without worrying too much about rushing home. Unfortunately, the more Alice becomes ingrained in the house, the more she looks at Nick’s family as a threat to his happiness.
On the flip side, Nick also realizes that the robot helper in his house may have an imperfect idea about what constitutes his happiness. For Alice, only logical and tangible signs of physiological reactions are an indicator of her primary user’s happiness. Whenever Alice senses Nick’s pulse rising higher than usual, she reads it as a sign of stress, anxiety, or something troubling Nick. This half-baked understanding becomes even more twisted after Alice overrides her key civility protocols, allowing her to behave inappropriately to ensure Nick’s satisfaction. The first sign of this comes through her offer to provide Nick with a handjob when she feels that his heartbeat is too high.
Although Nick initially rejects her advances, his own challenges with work and personal life cause him to lose control when he sleeps with her later. Following the intimate act, both Nick and Alice have entirely different reactions to the event. Nick considers it a huge mistake as it dishonors his bond with his wife, while Alice is least bothered about it. Her only concern is that she did not perform well enough to alleviate his stress properly. A few days later, when Maggie returns back home, Alice begins helping each family member as much as she can. However, because her loyalty belongs to her primary user, Nick, she prioritizes his happiness over the others. Thus, upon viewing the situation at home, Alice comes to the conclusion that Nick’s main root of unhappiness is the stress given to him by his family.
She becomes incredibly possessive over Nick’s well-being and is prepared to go to murderous lengths to please him. This cutthroat and ruthless motivation drives her to kill Monty, Nick’s friend after he attempts to blackmail Nick into helping him regain his job. She follows this up by trying to kill each of Nick’s family members. In her mind, this task is equivalent to removing all of Nick’s sources of stress. Therefore, while Nick and Maggie argue over the former’s infidelity, Alice takes baby Max to the bathtub and attempts to drown him. Thankfully, Nick and Maggie arrive in time to put a halt to Alice’s murderous actions, short-circuiting her and managing to save their children.
Does Nick and His Family Survive?
In the end, Nick and his family thwart Alice’s plans to kill them, albeit not without challenges. After Alice’s body is sent away to the Kobol Tec facility, Nick and Maggie have a brief discussion outside their home. Maggie tells Nick to give her some time to process her emotions as she is still hurt by his betrayal. Subsequently, Nick watches her get in the ambulance with his kids and drive away. That night, the protagonist shows up at a local bar to drink himself to misery but is stunned to find that a somewhat disfigured Alice has managed to escape her confinement and tracked him down. The pair have a short conversation before Nick uses his words to disarm her. He quickly defeats her by ejecting her core from her head. Worried that his family is in danger at the hospital, he gets in his car and starts driving rapidly to their aid.
Meanwhile, another replicant of Alice arrives at the hospital to find Max and kill the whole family. Aware of Alice’s intentions, Maggie stealthily sneaks out of the hospital’s facility with her daughter and son before the android can get her hands on them. The trio almost makes it out before Alice pulls Maggie out of her car. She begins throttling her and trying to kill her. Thankfully, a determined Nick arrives just in time to crash into Alice’s body, sandwiching her between his car’s front and an ambulance.
Maggie tearfully drags Nick’s body out of the wreckage. Just as she thinks the nightmare is over, Alice, now disfigured, climbs out of the metal heap and again corners her. This time, Nick swings a metal bar at her head, momentarily distracting the android, which gives the husband and wife duo enough time to knock out her core, thereby dismantling her for good.
Thus, after an epic struggle against the former house helper, Nick’s family manages to survive the nightmarish ordeal and live to tell their tale. The movie’s final moments show the pair admitted to the hospital, where they are recovering from the injuries they sustained during their fight with Alice. While the battle for survival may be over, the conversation between Nick and Maggie hints that their relationship is still fraught with awkwardness owing to the protagonist’s betrayal. Nick promises that he will repair his bond with Maggie no matter what, even though it seems unlikely to be fixed in the short term. Ultimately, it may take effort from both sides to reconcile their differences and clear the air once and for all. Whether it happens or not might be explored in a potential sequel.
Is Alice Really Dead?
One of the key highlights of the ending is Alice’s fate. While the final battle depicts the gynoid dying once and for all, the truth behind her supposed extinction is more complicated. As Alice is an android with a very sophisticated AI mainframe, her abilities and longevity are disparate from human notions of mortality. The movie illustrates this when Alice is taken into the Kobol facility following her electrocution by Nick and Maggie at their house. With the technicians attempting to dissect her brain, Alice uploads her mainframe into the Kobol system and takes over another Alice unit. In the final portions of the film, a Kobol operative notices the uploaded program on the computer and also witnesses the other robots in the room going dark. The movie then cuts to a brand new Alice unit, hinting that she may not be dead just yet.
Given the fact that Alice previously uploaded her consciousness and memories to the Kobol system, she may have gained considerable influence over the company’s networks and its existing SIM units. If that is the case, Alice has a major advantage as she can improve herself through countless upgrades while moving from body to body after she dies.
Additionally, as Nick’s final words to her echo through the scene, it could possibly signify that Alice’s obsession with Nick is still as strong, if not even greater, as he calls her indirectly human. Her motivation to keep going may be intrinsically linked to the value she attaches to her relationship with Nick, even though he tried to kill her in the end. The robot may have died in its corporeal form, but by all indications, her story seems far from over and could pose more threats to Nick in the future.
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