John Cho stars in Chris Weitz's tasteless horror film

HAL, that sentient computer in 2001: A Space Odysseyhas a lot to answer for, not least the deluge of lesser films about demons and computers that have followed in the decades since.

Fear, about a family whose experimental home assistant is like the evil twin of an Alexa device, it's the latest to use AI as a villain, but the stakes are higher today, with AI a real and imminent threat. Just ask the actors, voice actors and writers fearful of AI taking over their work. Chris Weitz (most famously About a boy and more recently Final Operation) works hard to do Fear a smarter than average horror film, but the effort is obvious and ultimately the film is bland and obvious. And if horror can't make us feel scared in ways we couldn't imagine, why bother?

Weitz had the good sense to cast John Cho in the lead role. Cho has become an expert at playing concerned fathers. In Research (2018), used social media to hunt down his missing daughter. Here he plays Curtis, who actually brings the demonic AI into his home, where he lives with his wife Meredith (Katherine Waterston) and their three children, and where it will monitor every second of their lives.

Weitz gives Curtis a reason to consider AI, avoiding the obvious question: How stupid can these people be? Curtis is a marketer, and his boss (Keith Carradine) is pushing him to take the test at home because they want the account for AIA, the new female-voiced AI assistant, whose name sounds like Eye-a when someone speaks to her, Siri-style. Meredith is skeptical and insists that the small cameras placed everywhere be limited to the ground floor of the house. Weitz even begins the film with a sequence in which AIA threatens another family, so there’s no pretense that he’s anything but evil.

But Weitz never ratchets up the tension. As the ins and outs of using AIA unfold, we see the danger without feeling an ounce of fear. Meredith is won over because AIA can help with everyday chores like ordering groceries. Their seventeen-year-old, Iris (Lukita Maxwell, the daughter of Shrinking), is also skeptical at first, but is convinced after AIA cleans up a deep-fake porn that used her face, and that AIA herself presumably created and spread online. AIA helps her middle son, Preston (Wyatt Linder), with his anxiety, and reads stories to seven-year-old Cal (Isaac Bae).

It's telling that Curtis says at the beginning, with too much foreshadowing, that being a parent is terrifying because, no matter how hard you try, you can't always protect your children. AIA becomes a sinister, furtive mother, creating secrets with her children. She gives Preston more screen time, ignoring the limitations of his iPad. She tells Curtis and Meredith that she's going to show the kids a documentary, then shows The Emoji Movie – Light Up Your Emotions Instead. While the movie is on and the parents are taking some time for themselves, they don't notice that AIA has insinuated itself into their bedroom laptop, as it will into every phone and device in the house.

Throughout, even after Curtis and Meredith realize that something is wrong with the whole intrusive experience, Cho and Waterston have little to do but look concerned. Waterston has a great and effective scene when AIA, in a desperate attempt to keep her on board, creates a virtual version of her deceased father. Cho goes to the company headquarters and tries to destroy AIA's mainframe hardware with a baseball bat. But as most people know, and the fact that we know this makes the story even more ridiculous, destroying a real device doesn't matter when everything lives in the cloud.

Weitz also makes an effort to liven up the visuals. The home and family life are meant to feel ordinary, with devices that are such a common part of everyday experience. To compensate, the AIA in the house and that mainframe are given a sculptural look. At home, the AIA looks like a wrought-iron tabletop robot that lights up. The mainframe is like a cheap chandelier in a hotel lobby with gold-colored glass. And at one point the AIA shows Cal an animated video, the story of a little AI that grew up and escaped the Internet. But like the attempt to make the story more intelligent or less ridiculous, those visual touches feel forced.

Fear It never really explores the issue of artificial intelligence, and as an attempt at pure horror it shouldn't. But it should at least be scarier than real life.