Subservience - Film Review

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Subservience is directed by S K Dale and stars Megan Fox, Michele Morrone, and Madeline Zima. Of the Sci-Fi/Thriller genre, 95 mins long and rated MA15+ it's available to rent or buy on all major platforms from 27 September 2024. Megan Fox stars as Alice, a lifelike artificially intelligent android, who has the ability to take care of any family and home. Looking for help with the housework, a struggling father, Nick (Michele Morrone) purchases Alice after his wife Maggie (Madeline Zima - young Grace Sheffield on the CBS's hit comedy series The Nanny) is rushed to hospital, awaiting a heart transplant. He is in desperate need of help around the house, and to take care of his young daughter Isla (Matilda Firth), and the baby (Jude Allen Greenstein as Max). Young Isla names the new addition Alice after her favourite Alice in Wonderland book. Alice does a quick scan of the home, orders the necessary groceries in a blink of the eye, and very quickly becomes self-aware. She wants everything her new family has to offer, starting with the affection of her owner to whom she's grown attached and she'll eliminate everything she perceives as a true threat to his happiness.


Walking into Kobol Tec - Life Simplified was like being in an Ikea-like store with the latest superior, sophisticated AI robots that auto-adapt, customise their program to fit your needs, and mimic human emotions. The more they learn the better they serve and serving the human who has the primary user status, is their main focus. At the end of the day, there is relief, and Nick and the kids come back to a pristine home and dinner is served. However, Alice's lasagna dinner falls short for young Isla, as it's not quite the same as mum's. Not all things are well as Nick is undergoing a lot of stress with the boss at his construction site. He's laying off all the workers and replacing them with Sims, except for Nick, who is able to hold on for now in the capacity of a supervisor. In a moment of camaraderie, fuelled by drinking, things go wrong at work when Nick and his friends stop by. The police question Nick who denies any knowledge of what happened. On the home front, Maggie is frail but returns home after a successful heart transplant.


There's nothing new about the storyline of Subservience - nothing we haven't seen before. It starts at a slower pace with a lack of suspense and a predictable future. However, to its credit, it does layer on the tension and slowly builds up plenty enough to catch your breath. Megan Fox is well cast with her lack of expressiveness, playing an android in this lightweight piece of sci-fi, thriller. However, Zima shines and brings the heart, the humanness, and injects life into the proceedings. Her performance manages to rise above those of Fox and Morrone, something she's been doing well and evident even when she played young Grace in 'The Nanny'. There's enough there to keep you entertained for the short 90 minutes of screen time, which is smart. At least it doesn't drag it out. It's the story of the crazed nanny genre, but with an AI update that you're going to think twice about at the end of the film that hints at a sequel. If that happens, let's hope it injects fresh life and originality and manages to be smart, scary and topical. which this mashup Terminator-like film is not. However, it does work on the level that it mirrors the problem with AI and its soulless emptiness.





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