Subservience (2024) Film Review – Meet the other ‘Megan’ doll

Posted on by Jayson Laniba

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Artificial intelligence, or AI, has been a popular trend amongst sci-fi horror films these days, from Lars Klevberg’s 2019 reboot of Child’s Play to the more recent Gerard Johnstone’s 2023 horror-comedy hit, M3GAN. In this latest film from S.K. Dale, Subservience (2024), we follow an artificially intelligent gynoid/feminine humanoid robot who develops self-awareness and gains sentience, becoming overprotective of its primary user.

In this sexy sci-fi thriller, Megan Fox plays a revolutionary AI-powered robot advertised as the most effective home companion, having the three C’s: cooking, cleaning, and child care. She’s also designed to mimic human emotions—the first time we see her, she even cracks a joke with our protagonist as her attempt at connecting with him. Enter struggling father Nick (Michele Morrone) who’s taking care of his two kids, Isla (Matilda Firth) and baby Max (Jude Allen Greenstein), while trying to balance his work. He’s been trying to manage their household all by himself after his wife, Maggie (Madeline Zima) gets admitted to the hospital due to her sickness. And so he purchases one of these AI robots to help care for his house and family, with his daughter calling her Alice, inspired by the kid’s favorite storybook, Alice in Wonderland. Everything seems to be fine until she starts to gain awareness and turn on the ones he loves most.

Subservience starring Megan Fox

Penned by Will Honley and April Maguire, this sci-fi thriller is a more adult and more steamy version of 2023’s M3GAN. It takes its time showing the viewer how bad and difficult Nick’s situation is- he feels all alone as his wife is stuck at the hospital, and he’s got a lot on his plate. And so when Alice enters their lives, he finds some relief. Everything else becomes quite predictable, as it follows the same premise as its similar counterparts.

However, in this film, Alice tries to replace Nick’s wife to satisfy him in a whole different way. Things become more interesting once she starts showing awareness. She starts with the small things like deleting his owner and his wife’s photos, mimicking his wife’s voice while reading a children’s book to his kid, and going further to inviting him to have sex to make him feel “better.”

I like how the film tries to highlight why AI is sometimes better than humans, as they don’t get easily swayed by emotions and make irrational decisions, just like Nick’s friend and co-worker Monty (played by Andrew Whipp). The film also has this ambitious third act, which reminded me of 2019’s Child’s Play finale.

Performances-wise, it’s got some brilliant turns from its cast. Michele Morrone is a pretty effective lead as he portrays Nick, while Matilda Firth is impressive as his daughter Isla. But it is Megan Fox’s eerily cold and wickedly flawless performance as Alice that truly elevates this sci-fi thriller.

There are a few kills throughout the film, some of which are far from the PG-13 violence displayed in the original cut of M3GAN. However, they would have been more fun if the kills utilized a more creative means to enact their bloody visualisation. Furthermore, Subservience‘s finale felt slightly underpowered, benefiting from more action, and, as a result, felt rushed. Honestly, it doesn’t bring anything new to the platter and it can be quite predictable. It also lacks the cleverness of its counterparts. Despite that, this titillating sci-fi thriller from S.K. Dale does have its entertaining moments, all thanks to an excellent turn from Megan Fox as a sexy robot gone bad, that makes it worth checking out.

Subservience (2024) will be available EST from 13th September and TVOD from 20th September

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