Just call her M3GAN Fox.
One of the few movies in the last few years of Megan Fox‘s career that actually earned acclaim was the 2021 home invasion thriller Til Death. It is a lo-fi VOD affair that has probably gone largely unnoticed, but it has a fun elevator pitch premise – that of Fox being handcuffed to the lifeless body of her deceased husband as she fends off home intruders – and director S.K. Dale managed to earn a worthy performance out of the actress who hasn’t always been a critical darling.
Hoping that perhaps lighting can strike twice, Dale has reunited with Fox for the AI thriller Subservience, where her oft-robotic nature as an actress is actually put to good use in the form of Alice, an advanced AI humanoid whose primary objective is to serve whoever happens to take her home. As with last year’s M3GAN, a much campier and more successful effort than what Dale provides here, we know that giving a humanoid program such a directive as this is taken to the most literal extremes, so when the struggling, aesthetically hunky Nick (Michele Morrone, best known for his repeated nakedness in the panned Fifty Shades-esque sex series the 365 Days films) purchases her as a means to assist in his household, we’re all too unsurprised when she takes her duties of tending to his needs in the most serious of fashions.
Nick having a live-in maid and bed buddy would be all well and good if he wasn’t married. But he is, to Madeline Zima‘s Maggie, who suffered a heart attack and has been sidelined in the hospital for the time being. Unable to juggle his construction job and the parenting duties of his and Maggie’s young daughter and toddler son, Nick sees Alice as the solution; of course, Maggie sees right through the fact that he purchased arguably the most attractive model.
For the first half of Subservience‘s running time, Will Honley and April Maguire‘s script adheres to a more dramatic temperament, as we see Nick and Maggie’s life drastically alter in the wake of her ailment, and their young daughter struggle with the fact that her mother may not be coming home. Alice’s initial involvement in the household sees her try her best to care for Nick and Maggie’s children, and when she seduces Nick there’s a certain rationale that comes with his actions. We don’t condone them, of course, but his internal struggle comes from being unaware if his wife will indeed survive her heart transplant, and Alice being aware that he is at his happiest when his blood and stress pressure are low as a result of sexual gratification means there’s a complicated manipulation at bay that actually gives way to the film’s most interesting conversation.
But Subservience isn’t that deep in the long run. It’s not smart enough to subvert the genre so. Instead, like many other films involving self aware AI robotics, it descends into a more horror-like production, where Alice is ready and able to do all she can to make sure Nick is taken care of in the most twisted ways of her own viewing. Maggie isn’t safe, understandably, but the film even boldly (and quite terrifyingly) suggests that killing Nick’s own children would eradicate his stress, leading to some admittedly tense, lightly disturbing sequences where Maggie and Nick’s toddler is placed in danger’s way.
And ultimately that’s what proves most frustrating with Subservience over all. That it flirts with such deep themes beyond its trashy, campy exterior, but never commits to full exploration. And when the film feels as if it should embrace the guilty pleasure mentality of its set up – that being Fox going full Terminator – it never quite finds the right balance to earn any points as a cult-hit-in-the-making.
I’ve always felt Fox has been hard done by as an actress. Whilst certain roles have earned their rightful criticism, when she’s given the right material she is a pleasant presence to hold on screen, particularly in the comedy genre, and had Subservience leaned more into its satirical possibilities it could have emerged as a worthy companion to something like M3GAN, which understood the assignment that this sci-fi outing merely cheated from.
TWO AND A HALF STARS (OUT OF FIVE)
Subservience is available now for Digital purchase in the UK (TVOD from September 20th) and United States. It is scheduled for release to rent or buy on Digital in Australia from September 27th, 2024.
