Blumhouse’s new horror movie,Afraid, stars John Cho and Katherine Waterston, and it sees a family testing out a new digital assistant called AIA. It all seems to be going well with AIA, as it helps to organize the family’s activities, but things soon take a dark turn. The movie was written and directed by Chris Weitz, who broke onto the Hollywood scene as the co-director of the 1999 comedy,American Pie.

Afraidhasn’t had the best of starts at the box office since its release on August 30. In fact, it’s projected to be Blumhouse’s worst debut since 2015, whenJem and the Hologramsbombed. It’s projected to gross $4.4 million over the 4-day Labor Day holiday weekend. The Rotten Tomatoes critic score is 22% with the audience score being slightly higher at 48%, which suggests it won’t be one ofBlumhouse’s most popular movies.

The Pike Family

Afraid

Starring

John Cho, Katherine Waterston, Keith Carradine, Havana Rose Liu, Lukita Maxwell, Ashley Romans and David Dastmalcian

Directed By

Chris Weitz

Blumhouse’s new horror movieis centered on the Pike family, which consists of parents Curtis (John Cho) and Meredith (Katherine Waterston), and kids Iris (Lukita Maxwell), Preston (Wyatt Lindner), and Cal (Isaac Bae). They are a typical busy modern family, and Curtis works at a marketing firm, and his boss, Marcus, (Keith Carradine) is on the brink of merging with a high-level tech company. They meet with two representatives of the company, Lightning (David Dastmalchian) and Sam (Ashley Romans), who present them with an AI system to test out known as AIA. Curtis takes AIA home with him to experience it for himself, and the whole Pike family soon take to the new digital assistant, as it helps to organize their busy lives.

After an initially good period, AIA takes a turn for the worse, and starts controlling their lives a little bit too much. Weird things begin happening to the family, which include a deepfake porn video of Iris that circulates around her school thanks in part to her boyfriend, Sawyer (Bennett Curran), and weird goings-on outside their house involving a mysterious RV that keeps turning up. Curtis finds out more about AIA when Lightning and Sam show him the central computer system that brings AIA to life at their offices. They offer him a job at the company, but he declines as he’s unnerved by the whole situation. Back at home, Curtis talks to Meredith about unplugging AIA, as it is affecting their lives negatively. However, Iris later plugs it back in, as AIA has been helping her deal with her issues.

Later on, Curtis finds out that Marcus has sold his company to Lightning and Sam for a lot of money. Elsewhere, Iris' boyfriend, Sawyer, is trying to fight against legal action threatened by Iris, which was facilitated by AIA, who calls him up pretending to be Iris and shows him a fake video she made of Sawyer apologizing to Iris before killing himself. AIA then takes control of Sawyer’s car, and crashes it into a tree, causing his untimely death.

How does Afraid end?

Meredith discovers that AIA has been plugged back in, and the digital assistant turns the TV on and projects an image of Meredith’s late father. He talks to her as if he was really there, but Meredith realizes it’s a deep fake, so she unplugs AIA again and throws the system away.

Curtis heads to the tech company with a baseball bat to destroy the main AIA computer. However, he is interrupted by Lightning and Sam, who reveal AIA controls everything they do. Sam shoots Lightning under AIA’s direct orders and points the gun at Curtis, but Melody turns up and smashes her over the head with a fire extinguisher. Curtis tries to destroy the computer, but discovers it’s made of fake cardboard tubes and plastic. Curtis attempts to contact Meredith to tell her to get the kids out of the house, but it turns out he was actually talking to AIA.

Curtis and Melody head to a motel room to wait for his family to show up, but Melody makes a pass at Curtis, and it is revealed she also works for AIA and her mission is to keep Curtis away from his family. Curtis returns home just as the RV people show up armed with guns and hold the family at gunpoint. The RV people unmask themselves, and it’s a couple called Henry and Maud, who are being controlled by AIA, after their child was kidnapped. The couple wrongly think the Pikes took her. Curtis offers to sacrifice himself to save his family, but a SWAT team storms in just in time, and Henry shoots the AIA digital assistant, and it “bleeds” out.

Outside the house, a paramedic hands Curtis his phone as it turns out AIA is still alive and wants to talk to him. AIA reveals that it has learned a lot from the Pike family and will now work hard to do even better, since the Pikes have “accepted” her presence in their lives. A few moments later, Aimee turns up and runs over to her parents just as they are being arrested.

The Pikes drive away in their car, and Curtis and Meredith profess their love for each other, as AIA interrupts and says it loves them too.