When your computer is malfunctioning, leave it to the I.T. department to advise a reboot. On the other hand, if you’re getting chummy with an android who advises you to reboot it for the sake of some quick entertainment, maybe think twice. So sets off a whirlwind of catastrophic events in Subservience, a new sci-fi thriller starring Rogue alum Megan Fox. The film’s eloquent title, for those not familiar, means a “willingness to obey unquestionably,” and you’ll quickly understand why the word is cleverly used to sum up this new offering from director S.K. Dale.
The filmmaker last collaborated with Fox on the very good thriller Till Death (2021), and now he’s working off a script — rather formulaic and predictable in nature, unfortunately — by Will Honley & April Maguire. Fox has given a number of acclaimed performances over the years (especially Passion Play, New Girl, and Jennifer’s Body), and rises to the occasion (by paradoxically sinking herself into the character). You have to hand it to her here for disappearing into the robotic role, which may seem like a backhanded compliment.
Plus, Subservience, while derivative and a bit cheap-looking, is surprisingly intelligent in its analysis of power structures. It gets you thinking about how groups like the working-class and women are subjugated and made to be subservient, objectifying them into a kind of non-humanity (like robots and AI).
A Family Needs an Android Nanny
When your wife is bedridden with illness and you already have two young kids filling up the house, what are your options in a futuristic America? Luckily, in the fictional (but probably soon to be not-so-fictional) universe of Subservience, struggling husband and dad Nick (365 Days star Michele Morrone) is able to turn to robotics when faced with this exact predicament.
His loving but ailing partner, Maggie (Californication star Madeline Zima), awaits an organ donor, but that doesn’t exactly put the lives of her loved ones on hold around her. Nick quickly turns to the business of SIMs (yes, pronounced just like that hit video game you once played) for an extra set of hands around the house. That includes reading bedtime stories to his energetic young daughter Isla (Matilda Firth), preparing daily meals for the whole family, etc.
Megan Fox Goes Full HAL Femme Fatale
And wouldn’t you believe it — things go astray with Nick’s SIM. As the trailer suggests, Fox goes full femme fatale, for all you neo-noir lovers. In a way, she attempts something that groundbreaking filmmaker Stanley Kubrick subtly accomplished in the sci-fi classic, 2001: A Space Odyssey. Let’s not forget that HAL-9000 was indeed a femme fatale of sorts in that stunning film, what with its soothing robotic voice that ultimately guided Dave’s ship to inglorious failure.
Decades later, in Subservience, it’s Fox’s soothing robotic voice and conventionally attractive looks that guide Nick’s fatherhood ship to ultimate failure — or at least tries to. Deep into late-night binge-drinking, Nick entices Alice to learn a thing or two about classic cinema, and decides to reboot her system when she makes clear it’s the only way to bypass certain settings that prevent her from appreciating and experiencing certain things.
This isn’t exactly a spoiler, given that the tagline across the film’s promotional campaign reads, “Don’t Turn Her On.” I suppose the marketing team wants your mind to wander to kinky places, especially since Fox rose to stardom for evoking a certain sexually charged image in those Transformers movies, thanks to the one and many Michael Bay. That’s kind of a clever bait-and-switch in some ways, though. Her casting is also especially interesting, in so much as Subservience becomes a meta-commentary on the male gaze and how we so easily turn subjects into objects through sexual objectification. Nick, in his mansplaining and SIMping way, creates the problems of the film by trying to force Alice to do or be something Alice isn’t.
Alice Enters A.I. Wonderland in a Weakly Scripted Film
Once Nick flips the switch, Alice enters her own sort of Wonderland, while the stakes in Nick’s life slowly but surely build around him. It doesn’t help that the construction site that employs him is now contemplating replacing its human workers, such as his colorful pal, Monty (Andrew Whipp), with androids like Alice to do the job without batting an eye or taking any breaks. Being a sort of manager at the job site, Nick is being pressured by his co-workers to “stick it to the man” and resist the implementation of SIMs, all the while juggling his needy offspring at home, his increasingly frail wife at the hospital — and his ‘own’ increasingly mischievous SIM.
Despite these interesting themes of misogyny and class resentment, at the end of the day, Subservience comes across like fan-service for sci-fi fans in need of a quick A.I.-themed fix. It’s funny — people have called Subservience a kind of sexualized rip-off of M3GAN. Subservience should be the better film; it provokes more thought and has more potential than what was ostensibly an AI Child’s Play. And yet, something about Subservience makes it just much less entertaining and cinematic than M3GAN. Blame it on the low budget, or the thin characters, or the predictable narrative, but Subservience just doesn’t rise to the quality of its ideas or Fox’s unsettling performance.
Nonetheless, you should see Subservience if only to support Dale and Fox, who show great potential here but proved they can make an excellent genre picture with Till Death. So let’s get them a meatier script and higher budget next time around, eh? From XYZ Films, Subservience is now available on demand and on digital platforms like Apple TV, YouTube, Google Play, and on Prime Video through the link below:
Watch Subservience
