Subservience (2024) review: When technology goes wrong…

If you’re still fresh from a screening of The Terminator, you’ll appreciate the irony of the latest AI-genre offering that’s about to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting world. And if you take the time to give Subservience a go, you may be pleasantly surprised as well.

Not least because it’s also something of a return to form for Megan Fox, who’s right at home in this sci-fi that will shock you, thrill you, and even make you smirk through a smattering of dark humour.

Construction worker Nick (Michele Morrone) receives a nasty shock when his wife Maggie (Madeline Zima) suffers a heart attack and takes a spell in hospital. Things don’t get any easier as he’s left to juggle his job, the housework, and looking after their daughter Isla (Matilda Firth) and baby boy. Thankfully, help is at hand when Nick buys domestic AI SIM, Alice (Fox), who is the answer to his prayers. That is, until the soon-to-be deranged home help receives a reboot that turns thankfully into dreadfully.

While some might say (we had to try and slip in some topical Oasis pun somewhere) that playing an artificial human might not exactly require Shakespearian acting, you still have go some to convince, which is why this could be a return to form. She’s perfectly cast here as the manufactured femme fatale, whilst Morrone, Zima and promising newcomer Firth all do a grand job.

Earlier this year, what should go down as a Brit-flick classic, Blank, was touted as so good by yours truly, that “if you see a better British Sci-Fi thriller this year – on second thoughts, drop the ‘British’ part – I’ll need some serious convincing.” Subservience had to go some to beat that, but whereas the former left it to the viewer to make up their own mind as to whether or not AI’s a good idea, that’s definitely not the case with the latter.

No way. AI is mad, bad and dangerous to know, and director S.K. Dale leaves us in no doubt that if it were to get out of hand… well, you do the linear algebra. So with this no-holds-barred kind of approach to the subject, it was inevitable that parallels with The Terminator would be drawn. Many many movie fans would never say no to a bit of that, but where this could have been a sort of homage to the 80s masterpiece, it comes dangerously close to becoming a copycat exercise in the end, which almost proves its undoing.

Coupled with this, the storyline isn’t too dissimilar to the superior Blank, but its sheer entertainment value steers it through these choppy waters, with an extremely twisty-turny storyline. It also tackles the thorny issues associated with AI head-on, no messing, with two big questions: will AI replace humans in the workplace? Could machines take over? According to Subservience, you bet!

As it’s safe to say there’s been a few AI genre-based films doing the rounds lately, they have to mark themselves out as different to succeed, and this manages to just do that, despite the similarities. Integral to this is how it manages to convey that, however closely technological advances can come to the real thing, Artificial Intelligence will never truly replicate human feelings, emotions and experiences.

To answer the question posed at the top, this movie’s got plenty to offer, it just lacks a little something extra in the originality stakes. Subservience is out on EST on Friday 13, and TVOD a week later.