Written by: Will Honley & April Maguire
Starring: Megan Fox, Michele Morrone, Madeline Zima, Matilda Firth, Jude Allen Greenstein
Rating: [2.5/5]
The promise of artificial intelligence idealistically stems from making the world easier for humans. Utilizing these programs will bring efficiency in the workplace and, as demonstrated in Subservience, will take over duties typically subscribed to maintaining a home. A dream for many, but as with most stories surrounding this topic, the dream can quickly become a nightmare.
While his wife awaits for a heart transplant at the hospital, Nick (Michele Morrone) has trouble taking care of the kids, the home, and continuing to work. He learns of lifelike androids that are available for purchase with the specific design in taking care of domestic tasks, named Alice (Megan Fox). Everything seems to work just fine until Alice’s programming begins to alter her behavior as she forms an attachment to Nick and the family.
Not presenting anything necessarily new in the world of artificial intelligence other than what if said android looked like Megan Fox, Subservience aims to entertain by putting together attractive actors to tell a familiar story. You have Michele Morrone, Megan Fox, and Madeline Zima portraying the lead characters, which gets complicated as men have this distinct weakness to not control their urges. Yes, with the android looking like Megan Fox, of course, there would be some sort of sexual element to this story.
Outside of what happens in the household, the film makes a point about artificial intelligence and how these androids could do more than just take care of domestic tasks but completely replace workers and eliminate their jobs. We see this specifically in Nick’s workplace in construction, where his colleagues face the real threat of the company offloading real humans and opting to purchase androids who never get tired, need a lunch break, or call out sick. It therefore makes sense that Maggie would feel a certain way about why Nick purchased an android that can do so much at home and looks as attractive as Megan Fox. It plays into this real fear of artificial intelligence ultimately asking whether humans remain irreplaceable in our society.
While delivering a good setup, Subservience takes some strange turns in what it wants to focus on within its story, especially when we look at Nick’s workplace. That particular storyline goes in directions that continued to drag on in ways that just felt unnecessary when the most intriguing dynamic remained in what was happening in the household. The relationship dynamic between the android, Nick, and then Maggie makes for the most intriguing element and also the main reason why anyone would want to watch this film and even then it struggled. This mostly came down to the shoddy acting on display by the two leads, who have never been known for delivering the best performances.
Megan Fox has always been an interesting figure in the film world, with her exploding onto the scene following her role in Transformers. She has never given the best performances with one tremendous exception in Jennifer’s Body, which confirms that she has it in her but needs to work with a great director like Karyn Kusama to get it out of her. S.K. Dale, the director of this film, is no Kusama behind the camera and it showed. It also does not help when she needs to act opposite Michele Morrone for the majority of this film who rose to prominence mostly because of his looks in the horrific film 365 Days. Why these two were cast in these roles and what ends up transpiring in this film makes it quite obvious the intention of this entire production but it does not make for a good film. Good acting was not on the menu or at the request of the creatives.
Every step of the way, Subservience does nothing but go in the exact directions one would expect when reading the log line of this film. It brings the salaciousness you can imagine when casting the actors it did, and if that does enough for anyone to find entertainment then I cannot begrudge you. However, if looking for something insightful about artificial intelligence and the way it will impact people’s lives both in and outside of the home, this film will leave wanting much more with its surface-level approach.
Films with Josh 
