The second most prominent review on the Rotten Tomatoes page for the new film AfrAId is from The Wrap, written by William Bibbiani: “If an algorithm recommends The Emoji Movie, Weitz’s film argues, there’s something very, very wrong with that algorithm — and there’s no denying that logic.” Yes there is. Fuck you. I’m sick of having the same conversation about The Emoji Movie, a mesmerizing piece of contemporary speculative science fiction where entire worlds, people, and histories exist within every smartphone, and our disregard, abandon, or responsible repair or replacement of these machines wipes out whole civilizations. Once some of the emojis escape their app, they surf the sound waves of Spotify and pause for tender moments in the photo roll of their phone’s owner’s trip to Paris. They kiss in the frozen sunset underneath a giant fountain with the Eiffel Tower in the background. When I saw the movie at the since shuttered and rebranded Landmark Harbor East, a little girl sitting right behind me said during this sequence, “That was beautiful.”
SHE WAS RIGHT! STOP CRITICIZING THE EMOJI MOVIE IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT!
I’m not sure why AfrAId has gotten such bad reviews; even more baffling is the lack of any crossover audience, as with last year’s M3GAN. But where that film went for jokes and silly set pieces, AfrAId plays it deadly straight, even when the evil AI machine brought innocently into the home of John Cho’s family calls Amazon’s Alexa “that bitch” in front of their small children. Of course mom and dad aren’t around, and of course “AIA” is going to go Space Odyssey on them, but what struck me about the movie was how everything in it could happen today, or yesterday. Last year! The AIA produces deepfakes of both Cho and his daughter, causing a brief marital rift and a major scandal at the girl’s school; her boyfriend’s car is hijacked by AIA and driven into a tree, but not before it can deepfake an apology video dedicating his death to the girl who’s life he ruined.
This movie isn’t fucking fun! But it’s terrifying, because again, everything in it could happen right now. Most of it already has: revenge porn, remote hijacking of cars, deepfakes of all kinds—these are the 2020s. Most American movies are too cowardly to face them, but however trashy and limited AfrAId is, it’s much more in tune with what’s going on right now than anything else in theaters, and that’s what makes a good movie. India Donaldson’s Good One is a much better movie about an eternal subject, but AfrAId came out just in time to be scarier than almost anything else Jason Blum has produced.
And it has the bones to end grim: AIA has invaded the entire internet, and our screen-warped world is her new playground—for manipulation, torture, murder. Cho and his family drive off with their smartphones in their smart car, not smiling and not at all sure that they’ll even make survive in time for the sequel.
—Follow Nicky Otis Smith on Twitter and Instagram: @nickyotissmith