Subservience

Review by Mark Woodring

AI is quite the rage right now. From generative text and art to virtual assistants, it’s everywhere.

Add robotics into the mix and it gets even worse, obviously. There are countless cinematic examples of this, from I, Robot, to Westworld, and Ex Machina.

**NOTE: You can read Mark’s review below. Remember, you can listen to all our discussions of this and every other movie directly over on ACAST. Stay tuned.**

Subservience - Review
Subservience (Vertigo)

95 Minutes, Rated R

Written by Will Honley, April Maguire

Directed by SK Dale

Synopsis:

A struggling father buys a domestic AI to help run the household. But the situation soon turns deadly when the lifelike robot develops an obsessive attachment to her new owner. Driven by a twisted sense of loyalty, she becomes determined to eliminate what she perceives as the true threat to his happiness: his family.

Normally, these movies just focus on the whole “humanity has created a race of slaves and they’re pissed about it” point of view, though some try to delve a bit deeper into the issue.

Subservience manages to draw from all those examples, wraps it up in a Megan Fox-sized shell, then lets it loose on a suburban household.

Look, I can’t lie: this movie is going to live or die on whether or not people (read: men) want to watch Megan Fox have sex as a robot. That’s pretty much it.

Check out the trailer:

That’s not to say it’s not fairly well acted or conceived, but this movie exists for one purpose.

Our leading man, Nick, is played by a guy (Michele Morrone) probably most known for his leading role in some of the most maligned Netflix films ever: 365 Days and it’s sequel, 365 Days: This Day, and the cleverly-titled The Next 365 Days.

The twist is on him this time, though; instead of kidnapping a woman and giving her 365 days to fall in love with him, he’s effectively held hostage by Megan Fox’s SIM, Alice, who desperately tries to convince him that she can solve his unhappiness.

They still get to have sex, though, as she seduces the drunk husband while his dying wife lies in the hospital waiting for a heart transplant. Sexy time and a simulation of her voice leads to sex on the toilet.

Yes, I wrote that correctly.

Look, HER brought up the idea that virtual interaction can lead to genuine emotion on the part of a human being. I mean, if the voice acts like a human and responds like a human, the human thing to occur is to eventually accept that.

Don’t believe me? Do a search for “virtual girl/boyfriend” or “virtual assistant” and see how many variations show up. With deepfake technology and voice simulation, a video component is being added to those basic, text-based AIs.

Robots will, eventually, reach the level of realism required to push humanity to overlook the knowledge that they are machines.

And so we get Subservience.

An AI SIM who looks like Megan Fox and who continually learns and has only one goal: protect her primary user (think M3GAN). When that AI eventually concludes that, yes, the thing making most people unhappy is other people, but fails to realize they are also the source of our greatest happiness, bad things are going to happen.

After the sex part, of course.

Sure, Alice justifies the sex as part of her care of Nick, but one can’t help but feel there’s a bit more to it, like a weird, AI Fatal Attraction thing, going on.

The ending is a bit pat, as is the ultimate fate of the newly liberated AI by the end of the film.

If it feels like I’m harping on the sex bit, I am. Not because it’s not fun to watch Megan Fox have sex, but because sex seems to be an overriding priority in Alice’s plans for Nick’s “protection.” She uses sex to convince him she is correct and that he would be better off, less “damaged” I suppose, if he simply chose to be with Alice and got rid of his family: that thing which makes him unhappy.

I suppose my overall opinion is this: Subservience might have been better served (pun not intended) with someone other than Megan Fox in the role of Alice.

Subservience has a serviceable plot, trope-filled or not, and makes for a passable sci-fi entry, even if they sometimes gloss over some exposition and character motivations.

Subservience is available digitally now and stars Megan Fox, Michele Morrone, and Madeline Zima.

And remember, if the BEST thing you can say about a movie is that it’s “visually stunning,” then they’ve done something wrong.

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