They Listen | Full Movie | Movies Anywhere

Crucially, Weitz grasps that the most unsettling thing about AIA’s real-world equivalents isn’t their alien novelty but the way they mirror human nature, revealing qualities in their designers and users that were present all along.

Afraid is better than expected...and it largely succeeds as a fun genre exercise. If only its aspiration to “say something” didn’t keep it from being pure dumb fun.

A really interesting cautionary tale.

Every line of dialogue is stilted, every theme is spelled out in laboriously literal terms, and the characters never feel even close to human.

AfrAId‘s cultish thread actually becomes its most compelling for a time... But none of these threads are quite seen through. They’re often just hinted at and left largely unexplored, cut off, or resolved before much can be made of them.