Blumhouse's 2024 AI Horror Movie Flop Becomes A Hit On Netflix

Netflix has often been a venue for theatrical flops to find new life, and it's currently providing that service for a 2024 horror film you likely missed. "Afraid" was Blumhouse's third of five horror movies this year, following "Night Swim" and "Imaginary" and preceding "Speak No Evil" and "House of Spoils." There are more duds than hits in that batch, making 2024 a rough year for Blumhouse. "Afraid" (stylized occasionally as "AfrAId") currently holding an abysmal 22% critical score on Rotten Tomatoes. At 55%, the audience score is much better, but still not great.

But hey, sometimes when you're scrolling Netflix late at night, all you want is a ridiculous, silly horror flick to throw on and pass the time with. At the time of this writing, "Afraid" is residing in the number seven spot in Netflix's daily Top 10 movies for the United States (via FlixPatrol). That means it's only currently ranking behind the original Lindsay Lohan Netflix holiday rom-com "Our Little Secret" and a few older films, including Michael May's "Transformers." Given that "Afraid" came and went without much fanfare earlier this year, that's a pretty decent showing.

Perhaps the passage of time has simply made us all a bit more curious about stories where unbound tech corps and free-range artificial intelligence with no legal fencing in place lead to tragic, even nightmarish consequences. But while "Afraid" might be worth the watch for fans of the Blumhouse style, it will likely fall short for anyone seeking real commentary on the modern AI landscape.

Plenty of horror movies fall short in the eyes of critics yet find immense success with their target audience. Unfortunately, "Afraid" didn't do much better in that arena when it was released in theaters back in August. It barely made back its meager $12 million budget at the box office, and when you account for marketing costs and all the other expenses of distributing a major film, that comes out to a pretty substantial loss. Blumhouse has built a pretty reliable model around lower-budget films, but that doesn't mean that every one of them is going to hit.

There are things to like here, though, most notably the strong leading performances from co-stars John Cho and Katherine Waterston. The two play a married couple whose family is thrown into chaos after the installation of an experimental new AI smart home system. Cho's character, Curtis, has professional ties to the company developing the AI, but though the benefits of using it seem immense at the start, a dark underbelly eventually reveals itself.

If that pitch sounds fun and you don't mind spending time on a movie that may be kind of meh, "Afraid" might be worth a stream on Netflix. But in a world where so many good sci-fi horror movies exist, and where films like "Ex Machina" or "The Creator" handle AI storylines with so much more depth, there's not that much to recommend here. It's not about to break onto the list of Blumhouse's best horror movies, and you're probably better off just rewatching "M3GAN" instead.