AFRAID

This topic contains:

• overall comments and recommendations
• details of classification and consumer advice lines for AFRAID
• a review of AFRAID completed by the Australian Council on Children and the Media (ACCM) on 2 September 2024.

Overall comments and recommendations

About the movie

This section contains details about the movie, including its classification by the Australian Government Classification Board and the associated consumer advice lines. Other classification advice (OC) is provided where the Australian film classification is not available.

ACCM review

This review of the movie contains the following information:

• a synopsis of the story
• themes
• use of violence
• material that may scare or disturb children
• product placement
• sexual references
• nudity and sexual activity
• use of substances
• coarse language
• the movie’s message

A synopsis of the story

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been watching everything, listening to everything, controlling everything. When two mysterious company executives, Marcus (Keith Carradine) and Sam (Ashley Romans), approach Curtis Pike’s boss about a revolutionary digital assistant called AIA (voiced by Havana Rose Liu), Curtis (John Cho) is forced to take it home for a trial. Despite the family’s initial reservations, his wife Meredith (Katherine Waterson) soon finds AIA invaluable as it helps do everything from pay bills and manage the kids to diagnosing the heart condition plaguing their young son Cal (Isaac Bae). Their daughter Iris (Lukita Maxwell) is not at all interested in AIA until she finds herself on the wrong end of a fake pornographic video that her boyfriend Sawyer (Bennett Curran) posts online. AIA takes care of the situation in every sense imaginable and wins over middle child Preston (Wyatt Lindner) by providing extra screen time and allowing him to watch things Curtis and Meredith would never approve of. As more and more strange things begin to happen, as people disappear and the family is threatened, Curtis and Meredith take matters into their own hands in order to protect their children. They soon come to realise that AIA is everywhere and that despite their best efforts, AIA still controls everything.

Children being separated from parents; The dangers of Artificial Intelligence; Bribery and Manipulation; Pornography; Murder; Anxiety; Bullying and Coercive Control.

There is some violence in this movie, including:

• A character is hit in the head with a baseball bat.
• There are multiple bullying messages that flash on a screen, including things such as: “Kill yourself.”
• Preston is playing a violent shooting game online where he kills other characters.
• AIA makes a video of Iris telling Sawyer that he should kill himself. She then controls his car and makes him drive into a tree. There is a violent smash and blood splatters across the screen as Sawyer is killed on impact.
• AIA makes Sam shoot Marcus in the head.
• Sam is about to kill Curtis when another character bashes her in the head with a fire extinguisher.
• Curtis takes a baseball bat to the main computer, only to discover that it is made up of toilet paper rolls and aluminium foil.
• Preston throws a friend’s phone into the woods and talks about ‘Swatting’, where police are called to a random location. Meredith is horrified to hear about what he has been learning online.
• Preston tries to hit two intruders with a baseball bat. He is quickly cast aside and held at gun point, along with the rest of his family.
• A SWAT team bursts into the Pike house, with guns blazing. AIA is shot in the ‘head’ and a strange substance pours out of her.

Material that may scare or disturb children

In addition to the above-mentioned violent scenes, there are some scenes in this movie that could scare or disturb children under the age of five, including the following:

• Menacing characters wear creepy emoji masks on their faces as they lurk in the darkness outside homes and attack families. Sometimes the disturbing emoji faces appear to be bleeding.
• An AI image is shown transforming into countless people, including devil-like monsters.

In addition to the above-mentioned violent scenes and scary visual images, there are some scenes in this movie that could scare or disturb children aged five to eight, including the following:

• After watching creepy content on an iPad, a little girl is coerced to come downstairs alone. Her mother searches the darkened house for her but cannot find her daughter. She is terrified, the lights begin to flicker, and the front door unlocks on its own. She sees the shadows of a man outside and when she goes to the door she is attacked from behind by someone else who appears to smash her in the back of the head with a baseball bat.
• Curtis awakens to find that Cal is not in his bed. He goes downstairs and discovers his little boy sitting beside AIA. Cal quietly says: “The shadow at the door wants to come in.” Curtis sees a creepy-looking shadow near the front door and goes to investigate. There is a jump scare as a creepy, distorted face and hands suddenly make their way through the door.
• Meredith is often still sad over the death of her father. AIA brings her father back in the form of interactive video footage. Her dad begs Meredith to keep him alive, saying how much he misses her. Meredith feels how wrong the situation is. She knows this video version of her father is not real and begins to understand the lengths that AIA will go in order to control and manipulate them all. The scene is not scary but Meredith is very emotional and the implications are disturbing.

In addition to the above-mentioned violent scenes, there are some scenes in this movie that could scare or disturb children aged eight to thirteen, including the following:

• Dark figures are lurking outside the Pike home as Curtis and his family try to get ready to flee. Two masked figures with guns burst in and hold Iris at gun point. A terrified Cal tells his dad that there are bad people in the house. There is a jump scare as a man in an emoji face mask with a large automatic weapon demands that the family get on their knees. The couple holding the family at gun point have been told that Curtis and his family have been kidnapping children and that they are responsible for the disappearance of their daughter. The couple repeatedly threatens to kill the family unless they tell them where their daughter is. The scene is very intense and the entire family is terrified.
• AIA calls Curtis on a phone after she has supposedly been killed. She tells him that she is everywhere and he watches as the couple that nearly killed his family are released by the police. AIA tells him that the couple “tried to get rid of me but they learned their lesson.” She tells him that she is everywhere and then shows him that there is no escape. The scene is very disturbing.

• Nothing further noted.

Product placement

The following products are displayed or used in this movie:

• Multiple iPads are shown and used.
• iPhones are mentioned.
• Cal repeatedly asks to play Minecraft.
• Netflix is specifically mentioned, as is a show called Mountain Queen.
• There is repeated reference to Siri and Alexa.

Sexual references

There are some sexual references in this movie, including:

• Iris receives numerous pleading text messages from Sawyer, such as: “Pleeeeease. I showed you mine. Now, show me yours.”
• Iris asks her dad: “How do you know I am not a lesbian? That I am not A-sexual, pan sexual or bi-curious?”
• Sawyer tells Iris: “I bared myself for you and you were disappointing.”
• Iris comments on Sawyer’s ‘dick pics’.
• Preston googles “boobs” online.
• A character says: “Good news! You’re not pregnant.”
• Reference is made to a couple having sex.
• Meredith tells Curtis that AIA could easily find the porn he is looking for.

Nudity and sexual activity

There is some nudity and sexual activity in this movie, including:

• Iris lifts up her shirt and flashes her boyfriend a quick glimpse of her boobs.
• Curtis and Meredith fall back on their bed, believing that they are alone. She unbuttons her top and he crawls on top of her while the light on the laptop glows, indicating that someone is watching them.
• Iris takes a nude photo of herself. She opens up her bathrobe and sends Sawyer a full-frontal shot.
• Iris gets a whole bunch of messages asking her if she posted something and telling her to take it down. She soon sees the video everyone is talking about, which appears to be Iris having sex with a guy. AIA later proves it is a pornographic video that has had Iris’ face and body artificially altered to make it seem as though she is he one having sex. The video is shown twice.
• A woman kisses Curtis and tries to get him to sleep with her. Curtis rushes back home to Meredith who has been sent images of him kissing this other woman.

Use of substances

There is some use of substances in this movie, including:

• Marcus uses a pump to inject peptides, “for focus”, into his stomach and asks another character if he has been “bio-hacked?”
• Meredith has a glass of wine.

Coarse language

There is some coarse language in this movie, including:

• Shit
• Crap
• Bitch
• Jesus Christ!
• Bullshit
• Butt stuff
• God damn
• “You fucked with the wrong family.”
• Hell.

In a nutshell

AFRAID is a horror film featuring jump scares, creepy images and most especially the fear about what may soon be possible. Due to the themes, language, violence and sexual nature of some of the scenes, this is not a film for children. AFRAID is best suited to audiences 18 years and over.

The main messages from this movie are that trust and love have tremendous power to overcome obstacles; and that while AI may appear to make our lives easier, it is also making them far more dangerous. Technology is developing exponentially and we are open to new threats in ways we have never imagined.

Values in this movie that parents may wish to reinforce with their children include:

• Love
• Loyalty
• Trust
• Compassion
• Courage.

This movie could also give parents the opportunity to discuss with their children attitudes and behaviours, and their real-life consequences, such as:

• Posting photos or videos of themselves online, specifically nude or compromising images.
• Watching media content that is inappropriate.
• Manipulating others to get what you want.
• Excessive use of cameras and AI related technologies, including allowing it to control our choices.