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According to Chris Snellgrove
| Published
The advent of artificial intelligence in the form of programs like ChatGPT and Dall-E 2 has sparked intense speculation about the role of this technology and how it can improve and disrupt our daily lives. It’s a debate that continues to rage through Hollywood, with many of the bad robot movies of the past being replaced by new movies about new kinds of danger (like the new Mission Impossible movies, which have a disembodied AI behind the Big Bad). If you want a movie that wraps the anxieties of yesterday and today into a sleek and sexy vision of tomorrow, then it’s time for you to watch Subordination on Netflix.
Conspiracy of subordination
Subordination is a film about a builder whose wife’s illness forces him to buy an android that looks like she’s alive to help around the house. Unfortunately, the robot develops feelings for its human master and it begins to appear that he feels the same way. However, when the robot decides to go full Single Byte Female and try to kill the man’s wife, the flesh-and-blood couple must join forces in a fight for their own survival…which may become a fight for the soul of humanity. .
Cast Subordination is intimately small and features Italian actor Michele Morrone as a man who buys a robot to help his wife (Madeline Zima, best known for her roles in Nanny and Californianization) will get sick. The rest of the cast consists of Matilda Firth, Andrew Whipp and Jude Allen Greenstein. But the real star of the show is Megan Fox, whose experience embodying both sensuality and horror in films like Jennifer’s body he helps her bring to life a sexy robot that her own programming just can’t handle.
It’s no M3GAN and that’s okay
Subordination it doesn’t really have much box office power because it was first released digitally, though it collected a paltry $246,010 from a short theatrical run that included places like Russia and Lithuania. On digital, the film has confounded critics and currently sits at 52 percent Rotten tomatoes. In general, critics complained that the film was predictable, with some negatively comparing it to more inventive killer AI fare such as M3GAN.
So I can hear you straining those keyboards right now, asking me the big question: why the hell am I recommending you watch a straight video that critics mostly hate? First, Megan Fox is absolutely perfect as a robot who threatens to tear this family’s life apart by being anything but a robot. It’s actually her misplaced passion that causes all these problems, and the subtext that it’s actually her humanity that makes her so inhumane to the world is unsettling in its bleak depth.
Plus, Subordination does a good job of metaphorically dramatizing the various public reactions to the invention of AI. The film makes it clear that the male lead is worried about how the arrival of perfectly human replicas will affect his construction work and work in general. Of course, that doesn’t stop him from tinkering with his own robot, and his character ultimately encompasses both our fascination with and fear of this new technology.
Finally, your mileage may vary, but I liked the film’s clear thesis that the road to an AI apocalypse is paved with good intentions. Our main character has good reasons for getting a robot helper, and even his weakness with her is framed as a way to relieve stress so he can provide for his family and his employees. However, it soon becomes clear that AI is destructive no matter how well-intentioned its users are, and that’s a message that, frankly, more people can hear.
Can you find? Subordination a poignant meditation on the dangers of AI, or turn it off and go watch M3GAN again? You won’t know until you stream it Netflix and decide for yourself. After that, you may never see AI – or Megan Fox – the same way again.
