AfrAId
Sony Pictures Entertainment (SPE) | Release Date: August 30, 2024 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
28
METASCORE
Generally unfavorable reviews based on 15 Critic Reviews
Positive:
1
Mixed:
7
Negative:
7
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
65
Film ThreatAlan NgSep 4, 2024
Overall, Afraid delivers an unsettling ride with standout performances. Read full review
55
TheWrapWilliam BibbianiAug 30, 2024
If an algorithm recommends The Emoji Movie, Weitz’s film argues, there’s something very, very wrong with that algorithm — and there’s no denying that logic. Read full review
50
LooperMatthew JacksonAug 30, 2024
Despite a cast of endearing key players, a couple of solid scares, and a story rooted in certain fears a lot of us can easily relate to, it's a film that spreads itself so thin that, by the end, the only thing it can really be is a mess. Read full review
48
Paste MagazineNatalia KeoganAug 30, 2024
Making such an insubstantial film about one of our era’s greatest technological shifts isn’t just annoying. It feels downright irresponsible. Read full review
40
ColliderMatt DonatoAug 31, 2024
It's a Frankenstein'ed monstrosity made of different horror approaches, except instead of bringing something to life, unrevivable ideas remain limp and useless. Read full review
40
IGNA.A. Dowd Aug 30, 2024
The stars are about the only reason to boot up this preposterous thriller, which ends up playing less like a critique of AI technology than another daydream about its power. Read full review
40
VarietyDennis HarveyAug 30, 2024
When crises start occurring at the halfway mark, they pile on too quickly to underwhelming effect, sacrificing credibility for excitement that never really materializes. Read full review
40
The GuardianBenjamin LeeAug 30, 2024
It’s too sloppily written and edited for even the least discerning of horror fans to really enjoy, a patchwork of nonsense confusingly stitched together by someone, who at one point, knew better. Read full review
38
ObserverDylan RothSep 3, 2024
AfrAId, the new thriller from writer-director Chris Weitz, is a boiler-plate example of the exploAItation genre, a condemnation of A.I. so by the numbers that an A.I. could have written it. And, like the best examples of A.I. “art,” it’s solidly, emphatically, “good enough.” Read full review
30
We Got This CoveredCharlotte SimmonsAug 30, 2024
Alexa, send this underbaked, untethered failure back to the cutting room. Read full review
30
The Hollywood ReporterCaryn JamesAug 30, 2024
Chris Weitz (most famously About a Boy and most recently Operation Finale) works hard to make Afraid a smarter-than-average horror movie, but the effort is conspicuous, and in the end the film is bland and obvious. And if horror can’t make us feel frightened in a way we couldn’t imagine ourselves, why bother? Read full review
25
Movie NationRoger MooreSep 6, 2024
What [Weitz] doesn’t produce are frights, suspense and the rising sense of dread such a film has to have to work. Read full review
20
The New York TimesElisabeth VincentelliAug 30, 2024
This scenario’s predictability could be forgiven were the movie effective on any level, but it just isn’t, from Cho and Waterston’s wooden performances to jump scares that would not startle Scooby-Doo. Read full review
16
The A.V. ClubLeigh MonsonAug 30, 2024
For all that its baffling narrative may be explained by deleted scenes, there is no excuse for how tediously non-threatening AfrAId is as a horror movie. Almost entirely bloodless and with half a handful of kills, there just isn’t enough visceral terror to make up for the disparate, thematically muddied nonsense that’s been cobbled together into the shape of a movie. Read full review
12
RogerEbert.comPeter SobczynskiAug 30, 2024
Here is a film that is so awful in so many ways that at one point, it includes a clip from the notoriously dreadful “The Emoji Movie” and you begin to worry that that film’s reputation might be tarnished by association. Read full review
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