By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
If you were randomly scrolling through a streaming service blindfolded and pressed play after 30 seconds of scrolling, there’s a good chance you’d just pressed play on a movie about a helpful AI running wrong. With hundreds of films following this basic plot, Netflix’s latest streaming hit, Enslavement, struggles to stand out. It does, thanks to Megan Fox’s performance.
That’s right, I just complimented Megan Fox on her acting. Fox reunited with director of surprisingly good thriller Until death for the film, and I mean this as a compliment, but she plays a wonderful emotionless robot.
Megan Fox was born to play an evil robot
From the moment you press play Enslavementyou know where it’s going, and the first half has no twists from the classic formula we’ve come to expect. Michele Morrone, Netflix erotic thriller 365 series, it’s Nick, a husband and father who tries to keep the family together while his wife, Maggie, played by Madelina Zima (who played Grace, Sheffield’s youngest in The nannyin case you need to feel old today) is in the hospital for heart surgery. Fox plays “Alice,” an advanced Sim, the new android who takes over as nanny/housekeeper to help the family recover.
If you guessed that Alice slowly becomes more and more sinister, congratulations, you’ve already seen at least one other movie. In this case, she’s trying to replace Maggie.
If the movie had just stuck with the “accidents” sequence around the house, it might have been more interesting, but instead, Enslavement try to do a little too much. There’s a subplot about Nick’s business dealing with workers upset by the introduction of Sims, a genuinely bizarre scene with Alice seducing Nick using Maggie’s voice, and a wild tease for more potential films that undercuts all the tense moments of a super powerful robotic killer. inside the couple’s home.
Megan Fox is great, but the rest of the movie…
Even though it’s Megan Fox playing the evil AI, Michele Morrone gives the most lifeless performance ever. Enslavement. Oddly enough, it works because Nick isn’t supposed to be a great guy, at least I don’t think he is. With multiple erotic thrillers under his belt, Morrone is becoming the Netflix equivalent of Michael Douglasand when he appears in anything, you know he’s playing a bastard.
With a different male lead and a tighter focus on the parts of the film that really work, Enslavement could have been a future cult success, but as it stands, it’s a good streaming a movie when there’s nothing else to watch. On Rotten Tomatoesthe critics have not been kind; out of 30 reviews as of this writing, it’s 50 percent crap, and the fan rating, out of over 250 reviews, isn’t much better, at 53 percent. And yet, it’s also the number one movie on Netflix in the United States during its first weekend on the service.
Servitude comes 30 years too late
If Enslavement was a HBO released in 1994, it would be a success. Unfortunately, it’s 2024, and aside from a few legitimately scary moments, all thanks to Megan Fox deciding to absolutely go all out as a killer robot, it’s completely forgettable today.
ENslavement REVIEW NOTE
If you really want to see another evil AI movie first M3GAN2.0 comes out, you do worse. At the very least, Fox appears to be embracing her new career arc as the villain of the streaming film. She’s willing to take risks, but maybe next time she’ll have a more exciting storyline.
