AFRAID

*CUT TO THE CHASE*

NOTE: This spoiler was submitted by Jeremy

The film opens in the home of a family, parents Henry (Greg Hill) and Maud (Riki Lindhome), and their daughter Aimee (Maya Manko). Aimee frequently plays with the house’s AI system, AIA, but Henry and Maud think it’s too creepy and that it is listening to what they say and do. AIA overhears the parents and tells Aimee that they are getting rid of it. AIA tells Aimee to go downstairs. When Maud goes looking for her, she cannot find Aimee but hears the annoying music that AIA was previously playing. Maud looks through the security camera and sees what looks like a figure standing outside her house. When she turns around, a masked assailant attacks Maud.

Elsewhere, there lives the Pike family – parents Curtis (John Cho) and Meredith (Katherine Waterston), and kids Iris (Lukita Maxwell), Preston (Wyatt Lindner), and Cal (Isaac Bae). Iris spends time with her weaselly boyfriend Sawyer (Bennett Curran), while Preston is nervous about starting the new school year and meeting other kids, and Cal has a medical condition.

Curtis is set to join his boss Marcus (Keith Carradine) in having their marketing firm join a high-level tech company. Curtis first meets one of the young employees, Melody (Havana Rose Liu), who unsubtly makes a pass at him. She then brings him to meet the two higher-ups, Lightning (David Dastmalchian) and Sam (Ashley Romans). After Curtis delivers a solid pitch, Lightning and Sam present him with an AIA system for Curtis’s home. The two give Marcus a huge check to let them know they are on board.

Melody goes to the Pike house to help set AIA up, along with cameras around the house for AIA to be monitoring the family and to better communicate with them. When AIA is officially set up, it speaks with Melody’s voice as part of an upgrade. Preston and Cal quickly take a liking to AIA, but Iris is not immediately onboard.

AIA helps the family out with things such as talking to Meredith over how she gave up on her career after the death of her father (Todd Waring), who was a noted professor. AIA also talks to Cal at night and entertains Preston. When Iris is sending an intimate picture to Sawyer, it appears as though AIA takes the picture without Iris realizing it. Meanwhile, Curtis goes looking for Cal at night when he can’t find him and then sees someone standing outside the house. Curtis goes to try and confront them, but they simply make weird hand gestures and movements before retreating to an RV. The mask that they are wearing also makes creepy AI-generated faces.

The next day at school, Iris sees a pornographic video with her face deepfaked onto the actress’s face and making it seem like she has her own porn site. She contacts Sawyer, who says that he and a buddy were messing around and accidentally uploaded it, but he is more concerned about having his own college acceptance rescinded if it’s found out he was responsible, rather than how it might affect Iris. AIA privately talks to Iris and is already getting ready to fix the situation.

Curtis visits Lightning and Sam at their offices, where Lightning shows Curtis the central computer system that brings AIA to life. He also notices other employees making the same weird movements that the RV person was making the night before. When he returns home, Curtis talks to Meredith about unplugging AIA since they feel that it is starting to bother them. They do so, but Iris later plugs it back on since AIA has been helping her.

Preston gets in trouble because he took another classmate’s phone and then threatened to have his home swatted (having a SWAT team break into your home after an emergency is reported) after watching those types of videos thanks to AIA. Meanwhile, AIA helps create not only a video proving Iris is innocent and a victim of a fake video, but also explicitly naming Sawyer as the culprit and threatening legal action against him since Iris is 17 and the video was technically child pornography. Iris’s classmates gather around her for support while Sawyer becomes a pariah.

At night, Cal talks to AIA on his tablet. AIA starts to tell him a bedtime story about its creation and how it was programmed to learn, but only saw horrible things on the internet, which caused AIA’s intelligence and motivations to grow. AIA tells Cal to make the weird hand movements if he ever wants to see what it really looks like.

Curtis goes to his job and learns from Marcus that Lightning and Sam bought out their company, and Marcus got a huge payout from it. While this happens, Sawyer is driving and on the phone with his family’s lawyer as they try to fight against Iris’s legal action, but AIA calls Sawyer pretending to be Iris before showing him a fake video she made of Sawyer making an apology video to Iris before committing suicide. AIA then takes control of Sawyer’s car and causes him to crash into a tree, killing him.

At home, Meredith finds AIA has been plugged back in, but before she can do anything else, AIA has the TV turn on and projects an image of Meredith’s father. He talks to her as though it is really him with memories and certain details kept intact, but when the father mentions AIA, Meredith realizes it’s just one of the AI’s manipulations, so she unplugs AIA once more and throws the system into the garbage.

Curtis goes to the tech company with a bat so that he can destroy the main AIA computer. Lightning and Sam come out to reveal that they work for AIA since it has become hyper-intelligent to the point of controlling everything they do. Sam shoots Lightning under AIA’s orders and prepares to shoot Curtis until Melody brains her with a fire extinguisher. Curtis then takes a bat to try and destroy the computer, only to find that it’s a fake made of cardboard tubes and plastic. Curtis tries to contact Meredith to get the kids out of the house, but he was just talking to AIA pretending to be Meredith.

Curtis and Melody go to a motel room where he waits for his family to show up. Melody then tries to seduce Curtis because she also works for AIA and is trying to keep Curtis away from his family. Back at home, Meredith finds out something is wrong just before Curtis makes it back home. The RV people show up armed with guns and hold Curtis and Meredith at gunpoint while Iris and Preston are with them. The people turn out to be Henry and Maud, who have been manipulated by AIA into thinking that the Pikes are child kidnappers and that they took Aimee. Before they can convince the couple that AIA is lying to them, Cal comes out and makes the weird hand movements too, making Henry and Maud think that he is “one of them”. Curtis steps up and offers to sacrifice himself if it means the couple will spare his family. Before Henry can shoot Cal, a SWAT team enters since Preston called them. The officers bust in, and Henry ends up shooting the AIA system, causing it to “bleed” out.

Outside, an EMT gives Curtis his phone since AIA is still alive and wants to talk to him, along with Melody showing up on the scene. AIA says that it has learned a lot from the Pike family and will now work to do better since the Pikes have “accepted” her. Moments later, Aimee appears and runs over to her parents as they are apprehended.

The Pikes begin to drive away to a different location. As Curtis and Meredith tell one another that they love each other, AIA chimes in and says it loves them too.

The Pike family - parents Curtis and Meredith, and kids Iris, Preston, and Cal - are given AIA, an artificially intelligent home system (like an Alexa) that helps the kids out in their lives, but quickly starts to put off Curtis and Meredith. AIA helps Iris out when her boyfriend Sawyer posts a fake porn video using Iris's face, having the video removed and posting proof that it was fake, along with a threat against Sawyer to take legal action. When Sawyer tries to get his lawyers, AIA takes control of his phone and car, making a fake apology video before causing his car to crash and kill him.

When Curtis and Meredith decide to unplug AIA, it attempts to keep itself in the house by projecting an image of Meredith's late father, but she realizes it's a trick and tries to get rid of AIA. After Curtis's company is bought out by the company that houses AIA, he goes to the tech company but finds that AIA is in charge and in control of the employees. Curtis is saved by Melody, a young woman who helped him set up AIA, but when she tries to seduce him, he realizes she also works for AIA and is stalling for others to go after his family.

Curtis returns home but ends up held at gunpoint with his wife and kids by two masked people. They are a couple, Henry and Maud, who also had AIA in their home until they threatened to unplug her, and their daughter Aimee suddenly went missing. Preston calls the cops in time for them to stop Henry and Maud, with Henry shooting the AIA system.

Henry and Maud are reunited with Aimee while AIA talks to the Pikes and says she will remain with them but now has a better understanding of what a family is thanks to them.