Where I Watched it: Free Vee

English Audio Description?: Yes

Narrated By: AI

Yeah, I’m pretty sure this was an AI narrated film. It’s sad, because I spend my whole day dealing with artificial intelligence and screenreaders that range from nightmarish to almost human. Even as i type, this inhuman voice is giving me the letters back as I hit them. I suppose after seeing Come Play, I should be happy that the only thing my device is giving me is this voice.

Come Play is an interesting horror title from a few years back that features Gillian Jacob’s and John Gallagher Jr. as parents to an autistic son, who doesn’t seem to fit in because the other kids his age think he’s weird. He’s a little weird, but aren’t we all? Really examine your life. you do something weird, I promise.

But this loneliness brings him to Larry. Larry appears in a book on his phone, which he uses to communicate since he is basically non-verbal. Then, some weird stuff happens, but it’s OK… Larry just wants to play.Reminiscent of The Babadook, Come Play has the book dynamic, and the mother/son relationship mirrored. it also feels like a little seen entry from last year, Grimcutty, which had a meme come to life. In a weird way, this is the same thing, except he’s more of an app.

Genuinely, I thought the performances in this film were really solid, and the movie is pretty good at building and holding tension. There’s something going on with the parents at the top that I wish was explained better, and they also make pretty awful life choices. But, Larry is an oddly formidable foe, who once unleashed is just going to keep hanging around whether you choose to play with him on your electronic device or not.

The artificial voice just doesn’t sound great. I’ve seen worse done at Amazon, where the words chosen don’t sound human, and they don’t bother to check to make sure the narration isn’t trampling the dialogue. At least, this film doesn’t have those problems. If Amazon believes the AI is the future, they need a voice that can be at least questionably human, as well as making sure all their projects are quality checked. This one made it through and was able to help convey the terror the boy experiences, but this similar system has ruined previous films for me before, like Jolt as an example, which had the audio description talking for quite a while over Kate Beckinsale.

If you are looking for a late stage horror title, and don’t mind the AI voice, this is one of the better random horror selections I made this year. it’s just not a 2023 film, but at least Freevee is free, right?

Final Grade: B+