SUBSERVIENCE (2024)

Genre: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Director:  S.K. Dale
Cast: Megan Fox, Michele Morrone, Madeline Zima, Matilda Firth, Andrew Whipp, Atanas Srebrev, Manal El-Feitury
Runtime: 1 hr 51 mins
Rating: R21 (Sexual Scenes)
Released By: Shaw Organisation
Official Website: 

Opening Day: 28 November 2024

Synopsis: With his wife in the hospital, a struggling father purchases a domestic AI to help simplify his home. But as the lifelike robot grows attached to her new owner, boundaries are crossed. Soon she becomes determined to eliminate what she perceives as the true threat to his happiness: his family.

Movie Review:

AI going rogue? Yah we have seen them in I, Robot, Ex Machina, Terminator of course and the recent M3gan. Now a lifelike android aka sim named Alice in the form of Megan Fox is wrecking havoc on an ordinary suburban family in Subservience.

Nick (Michele Morrone), a construction foreman whose wife, Maggie has been hospitalised for a heart condition resorts to buying a robot to take care of his three C’s, cooking, cleaning and childcare. Things get complicated when Alice starts to seduce Nick and when Maggie came home after a heart transplant, Alice becomes increasingly jealous of Maggie’s presence and turns incredibly violent and dangerous.

Subservience on the whole is built on familiar ground, entertaining for the most part yet predictable. The movie by S.K. Dale isn’t blessed with a generous budget but he knows how to work around to deliver a few decent scenes including serviceable CGI and makeup effects.

There’s a major subplot involving Nick’s construction team being replaced by sims. This could be a smart move in an otherwise formulaic movie but the screenplay doesn’t help in addressing the issue in the end except pulling a brief action sequence involving Nick’s over zealous co-worker.

The most entertaining (hilarious) aspect however is the level of eroticism and the ridiculous clunky dialogue like “You put your dick in her!”. Is it consider as adultery when Alice the humanlike robot offers sex to Nick and even offering to take Maggie’s place in terms of intimacy given her poor health. This is by far the most interesting question ever posed by an AI related movie but the narrative is too shallow to deliver further.

Even crazier is the finale which has Alice turning up Terminator-like to destroy Maggie and her daughter in a hospital. Let’s face it. First of all, you are not going into Subservience for the story. Secondly, Megan Fox certainly impresses as the sexy robotic housemaid and that probably accounts for the entire ticket price.

Movie Rating:

(An almost barebones tale of AI wrecking havoc)

Review by Linus Tee