Subservience (2024) Dir: SK Dale
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Sometimes, I'm so desperate to watch a film, that I'll put on just about anything, and this was one of those times. Directed by SK Dale, this science fiction thriller didn't exactly set the world on fire, nor did it particularly excite me with its trailer or description. I must emphasise how little I expected from this film - it looked very poor - but I needed something easy to watch, and this didn't look like it would be too much of a challenge.
There are some films that look worse than they are, and some that truly surprise you with how good they end up being - this is not one of them. It was terrible, for so many reasons. Least of all of these being the inconsistent visuals. The film failed to commit to its science fiction environment, instead creating a bizarrely incoherent depiction of a future setting. Furthermore, some of the VFX used at the end of the film was, quite simply, laughably bad.
My biggest gripe with the film, however, was with its sheer unashamed laziness and adhering to the never-ending and tiresome fetishisation of robotic, obedient, emotionless, and erotic, women. The film doesn't even attempt to be subtle about what it depicts, and if it was supposed to be a critique of that very fetishism, then it was a very poor attempt at it.
It felt like the vision for this film was just to hire two conventionally attractive actors so that they could film a very mildly erotic romance with no nuance, no depth, and no real quality. The writing was truly abysmal - it felt straight out of a bad wattpad story - and featured a series of extremely tepid developments, capped off by a painfully predictable twist ending that did nothing at all to boost anyone's hopes of a sequel.
It's a good job that Megan Fox's character was supposed to lack explicit emotions, because she was honestly very wooden in this role. I found her extremely dull, albeit she was not helped by the film's truly horrendous writing. Her character was the representation of the male fantasy of a subservient, attractive woman - and the twist she provides does little to erase the underlying misogyny of the film.
Michelle Morrone tried and failed to come across as a compelling, interesting, and desirable male protagonist. Instead, he only succeeded in portraying a frustrating and unlikeable man with a weak sense of will. He felt like a parody of a character you'd find in a very bad and very cheesy romance novel.
Madeline Zima was both the most likable actor in the film, and the most likable character. She was the only one, aside from he children, who I actually had any interest in seeing the fate of. Her acting wasn't even that good, it was just comfortably better than everyone else's. I don't even think her character was that well written either, she was just easier to root for than the other two key characters.
Overall, despite not exactly coming into the film with low expectations, I still left it feeling disappointed. Part of me had hoped that at least something interesting would happen, but, ultimately, there wasn't. This was a boring, predictable, and tropey, slog of a thriller, and one that is best left to be a forgotten film somebody scrolls past every so often on a streaming service.
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