Finding stuff on Netflix that is worth your time is often more work than it’s worth. The recommendations that Netflix’s algorithm surfaces for you aren’t necessarily the things you might like best, but if you don’t rely on the algorithm, there aren’t a lot of alternatives.
If you’re looking for something great, though, we’d recommend you check out Subservience on Netflix. The movie stars Megan Fox as an AI servant who slowly gains sentience and decides she wants the undivided attention of her male owner. Here are four reasons it’s worth checking out.
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It’s a reminder that Megan Fox is mesmerizing in the right role
For a variety of reasons, few of which had anything to do with the way she behaved, Megan Fox garnered a reputation in the early part of her career for being beautiful but a pretty terrible actor. In the years since, though, she has managed to refute that reputation over and over again, which isn’t to say that she’s ever going to win an Oscar.
In Subservience, though, she’s used perfectly in a role similar to the one she took on in Jennifer’s Body. Her beauty is a weapon that ensnares those who fall into her orbit, and it’s that very beauty that makes her so dangerous. It’s a role that subverts her own image, and Fox uses it to her advantage pretty effectively in the film.
It’s genuinely terrifying
The back half of Subservience shifts the movie into all-out horror mode, and the movie manages to get some genuine scares out of the AI character’s emerging power. AI is intimidating, but it’s not inherently scary the way something like a ghost or demon is.
And, as embodied by Fox, this AI is definitely intended to entice more than repel. Even so, the movie knows when to shift into menacing mode, and it also understands that something can be ludicrous and terrifying at the same time. Think of Subservience as M3GAN‘s slightly less outrageous older sister who still wants to control her human owners … at any cost.
Subservience has a certain B-movie flair
The worst thing a movie can be is unsure of what it is. Thankfully, Subservience understands that its core appeals are familiar ones, and it takes its premise and does some delightfully outlandish things with it. This movie is a lot of fun, but it’s not Ex Machina and it understands that it can still be worth watching without aspiring to be high-class art.
Instead, Subservience engages in some more basic thrills, but those thrills have been entertaining audiences for decades, and this movie knows how to take full advantage of them.
It’s conventional in all the right ways
The notion of a movie about an AI creation that gains a life of its own and turns on its owner is basically the opposite of new. Since HAL-9000, humanity’s main concern with the robots we build is that they would someday try to kill us.
Subservience isn’t treading any new ground here, but because the movie is a little schlocky, it feels like it’s playing with the conventions of what is now an established genre in a fun way. The movie itself seems to be saying something like “look, you know what’s going to happen here, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have some fun along the way.”
Subservience is streaming on Netflix.
