Movie Review ~ Subservience

With each passing year, there’s a collective unease about AI’s growing presence in our lives.  Films like 2022’s M3GAN and 2014’s Ex Machina have posed deep, thought-provoking questions about the dangers of human-like machines but layer them under slick effects and the shimmer of a big-budget production only a massive Hollywood studio could provide.  Now, ominous entities that know us better than we know them, stretching back to HALL 9000 from Stanley Kubrick’s boundary-breaking 2001: A Space Odyssey from 1968, don’t feel that far off.  We created them; could they destroy us as a parting gift?

Offering a fresh, if predictable, take on AI-driven chaos, Subservience also straddles a favorite genre that is slyly making a respectable comeback in theaters and streaming services: the domestic thriller.  Blending family drama with the rising fear of our digital assistants turning on us, screenwriters Will Honley and April Maguire craft an enjoyable—if not entirely groundbreaking—addition to the AI genre.  Without providing much introspective commentary, this is a conventional suspense tale that keeps its eyes on its prize and manages to get quite close to its target.

With his wife gravely ill in the hospital waiting for a heart transplant, Nick (Michele Morrone) finds himself struggling to keep his head above water.  Caring for their young daughter Isla (Matilda Firth, Starve Acre) while visiting wife Maggie (Madeline Zima, Bombshell) and holding down his job appears to be just too much for him (he has time to work out and tool around his garage, though, go figure), and that’s when Alice enters their home.  Purchased by Nick to be a domestic robot that will effortlessly take care of tasks and offer him emotional support, Alice (Megan Fox, Night Teeth) is state-of-the-art and quickly learns how to maximize efficiency in the household. 

She also discovers how to bypass her security algorithm, a glitch that allows her to take her pledge of loyalty to the extreme and eventually see Maggie and Isla as threatening roadblocks between Nick’s continued contentment.  When Maggie gets her transplant and returns home, Alice is not needed as frequently, and emotions that robots were never supposed to have come to the forefront anyway.  Igniting a taut game of survival, where the lines between flesh and code blur, Alice turns from helpful assistant to robotic stalker who will stop at nothing to maintain the perfect household she’s created in her source code.

Reunited with her director of the clever 2021 thriller Till Death (which, like this, was filmed in Bulgaria), Fox’s Alice is the nucleus of Subservience, operating between the cool robotic detachment of Alicia Vikander’s Ava in Ex Machina and the knowing femme fatale allure of a bad girl gone badder. While her performance is engaging, it often strays into familiar territory for the actress, leaning more into her well-known seductive persona than truly exploring the nuances of AI consciousness. That said, there’s a certain cold charm in watching Alice attempt to emulate human emotions, and Fox manages to inject some degree of menace into what could have been a one-note role. 

The same can’t be said for Morrone, who feels more focused on maintaining his smoldering looks instead of finding genuine performative depth.  This may be a B-movie sci-fi knockoff of a patchwork of other titles, but at least Fox came prepared to have fun with it.  Morrone seems always to be aware he’s on camera.  His character’s growing desperation feels surface-level, and Morrone’s stoic performance undercuts much of the danger Alice poses (and Fox works hard to generate). Meanwhile, Zima’s Maggie recovers from a heart transplant at a comically swift pace, serving more as a plot device than a fully realized character.  It’s almost ironic that Zima finds herself entangled in this tepid suburban thriller, having co-starred in one of the best and most rewatchable of the ’90s, The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, when she was roughly the same age as the child playing her daughter.   

As he showed in their previous collaboration, director S.K. Dale knows how to ratchet up tension on a Fox film within confined spaces. The film’s pacing is brisk, moving from one suspenseful moment to the next without much pause for deeper reflection. However, this efficiency comes at a cost. Subservience misses opportunities to build real suspense, gliding over its more philosophical undertones of AI subjected to roles of servitude to focus on familiar beats of techno-thrillers.

Technically, the film is competent for its budget if unremarkable for its ambition. Alexei Karaghiaur’s production design is subtly futuristic, offering a glimpse of a world not far removed from our own, where technology seamlessly integrates into everyday life.  As silly as they may seem now, I appreciated the filmmakers forming and running with actual ideas for future items that are either in development or could be actualized in the not-so-distant future.  The AI elements are handled with restraint, avoiding the flashy, holographic interfaces we’ve come to expect in similar films.  Yet, despite these promising elements, the cinematography from Daniel Lindholm and the pacing enforced by editor Sean Lahiff doesn’t quite elevate the movie beyond its predictable thrills.

As AI continues seeping into our lives, the film asks the question: what happens when our machines develop attachments? While M3GAN leaned into its campy charm and horror-comedy hybrid, Subservience stays grounded in thriller territory, choosing a more serious, albeit ultimately less innovative, tone. You almost wish it had leaned harder one way or the other instead of staying safely on middle ground.  There’s an eerie pleasure in watching AI evolve from helpful assistant to calculating menace, but the film never digs deep enough to truly unsettle.  When it does opt for a harder edge, like a few blistering scenes leading up to the finale, I honestly felt the movie was about to take a remarkable step forward.  Alas, it just as quickly resorted back to its standard progression toward a pat ending.

A moderately diverting entry that delivers just enough suspense to keep viewers engaged throughout its runtime, Subservience doesn’t rewire the AI thriller genre, but it doesn’t have to either. Fox’s performance as the AI assistant gone rogue is fun, if not particularly original, and the film’s domestic setting adds a relatable twist to the growing subgenre of AI paranoia. Entertaining but not challenging, it passes the time, but as the newest edge-of-your-seat breakthrough in suspense, it just doesn’t compute.