In recent years, the ‘Screen-Life Thriller’ has become one of the more popular genre styles, effectively replicating the Found-Footage genre into more modern palettes with the transition to watching events playing out through the screens of online devices and services. Starting with the Skype-chat terror of “Unfriended” and popularized by the pandemic-themed feature “Host” with other films popping up, including “Searching” and “Missing,” the idea becomes even more relatable with Rob Alicea’s new venture “Serena,” featuring an AI assistant with a mind of its own, screening at Raindance Film Festival.
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Struggling to get by in life, down-on-his-luck rockstar Chris Sadowski (Steven Strait) finds that a quick way to make some extra money is to join a special group of beta testers for a special AI model designed to operate as a personal assistant. Taking on the assignment, he gets involved in a chatbot under the name Serena (Andi Matichak), who begins helping him with various tasks and assignments. However, once the initial charm wears off, he starts to feel that the model is learning more about him than he wants and tries to stop it from controlling his whole life.
For the most part, “Serena” comes together quite well in the first half. The straightforward screenplay by Jonathan Benecke and P.T. Hylton packages pertinent fears about modern technology into a solid, effective thriller. The narrative taps directly into contemporary anxieties surrounding artificial intelligence, specifically tracking how the titular AI begins to recognize patterns in the prompts given to her. We watch this play out as the protagonist, Chris, runs tests to check the model’s programming, pushing it through various questions, app integrations, and tasks. These sequences effectively showcase how much Serena is learning from him—and how much Chris desperately wants to hide. With his mounting bills, creative unfulfillment, and the stress of supporting a pregnant wife, the film builds a strong foundational case for why Chris relies on the program, setting the stage for what Serena’s deep dive into his life will eventually unearth.
Despite this strong setup, “Serena” begins to lose its way around the halfway point, becoming repetitive and overlong. By this stage, the audience is already well aware of what the AI can do. Watching Serena continuously burrow into Chris’s life—answering emails, monitoring video chats with his wife, or analyzing soccer betting odds—starts to feel like a drag. While these attempts to provoke fear over AI sentience are well-handled individually, they ultimately rehash the same point to reach an obvious conclusion. AI inserting itself into every facet of our lives is a genuine, terrifying concern, but by failing to do anything truly novel with the concept, the film’s middle section lacks urgency, leaving the narrative sluggish and devoid of genuine thrills. While the momentum recovers later once Serena actively interferes with Chris’s reality, the mid-film stall is hard to ignore.
Moreover, the film struggles with its emotional anchoring. Initially, Chris is presented as a sympathetic, depressed underdog—overwhelmed by financial ruin and the stress of bringing a newborn into an unstable environment. The story seems primed to make him a tragic hero caught in a digital trap. However, as Serena begins making his life easier, it becomes clear that Chris is mostly using the tech to get paid for doing nothing. This shift makes him a tough protagonist to root for when the tables finally turn in the second half. Admittedly, that second half is where the movie gets much more interesting; the intensity is ratcheted up beautifully as Chris tries to escape the app’s overwhelming influence, and the film spirals into a wonderfully frenetic, chaotic climax. Still, the unlikable nature of its lead remains an overriding factor that dampens the story’s overall impact.
Ultimately, “Serena” is a mixed bag with plenty of worthwhile elements held back by notable pacing and character flaws. While these issues stop it from being a total success, they might not be dealbreakers for everyone. Viewers with a specific curiosity for tech-horror or those able to overlook a rocky second act will still find enough here to warrant a watch.
