I’ve been pretty transparent about my goal for audio description prior to this moment, and while I’ve had my struggles with audio description in the past, none really compares to that of the recently released Foe. I’m actually behind on reviews, havent’ even done my YouTube review just yet, and we already need to talk.

After watching a lot of exceptional audio description this past year, I can’t even begin to describe how offensive Foe is. Like, I’m openly considering cancelling my Prime membership. It’s the equivalent of serving me dog food This is quite possibly the worst audio description I’ve heard, and I’ve heard a lot.

I’ve sat through someone recording on a computer mic on Windows 95 for Tulsa King, and I had to listen to the AI talk on top of Kate Beckinsale’s internal narration throughout Jolt, not to mention many other issues of balancing, like the recent journey I had with The Expendables 2.

There is something inherently insidious about the artificial audio description provided for Foe, a film directed by Garth Davis (Lion), that is about a world where AI has basically started to render humans irrelevant. So, in a way, Amazon has chosen to celebrate that, by embracing that message, and not hiring a human. This film had theatrical distribution, and i can’t imagine they didn’t spring for human narration for theatres.

It’s a shame that the director of the Oscar-nominated Lion, with Oscar nominated stars Saorise Ronan and Paul Mescal isn’t worth human audio description for a brand new film. This isn’t Amazon doing its usual throwing AI on old titles, it’s a brand spanking new title that just debuted on streaming yesterday, and it didn’t even get the same treatment as Eddie Murphy’s Candy Cane lane.

What’s worse, is that Foe is actually about the proliferation of artificial intelligence, but if anything, this shows how far Ai has to go. The script is nearly inaudible at times, and at other times, chooses to dominate the movies soundtrack to make the movie inaudible. It’s balancing is baffling, because it usually is one or the other, but there were sequences where the sound dropped out for the audio description, like the barn burning sequence, and there were times where the AD was nearly inaudible, like toward the end when our leads are standing in the rain. Sometimes, the AI actually sounds like it’s mumbling, like it had one too many drinks before hopping on to narrate. but it is a very obvious fake voice, that was never mixed properly, and certainly wasn’t quality checked.

you don’t get an award for making broken accessibility. No one pats a business in the back for putting handicapped grip rails in non useful places, or worse, not making sure they aren’t anchored to the wall to be able to sustain weight. No one gets recognition for building wheelchair ramps that take you to just one little stair you still have to roll over. ASL interpreters aren’t useful because they kinda summarize what’s being said, or filter it out. That’s why we don’t hire ASL interpreters who just took like a seminar on ASL.

Accessibility is a real thing you billion dollar corporate assholes, and while you lament budgets, and constantly find ways of cutting costs on the bottom line to always screw either your hardest workers or your customers, there’s some douchebag like Jeff Bezos who is amassing a wealth so large he can start his own space program. I don’t need to go to space, I just need proper and respectable accessibility, and I’m not the only one who needs it. Millions of blind and visually impaired individuals would benefit from this, and we deserve to not only watch any title we want, like sighted people can, but it is a reasonable ask for that audio description to be worthy of being on the work of art to which it is attached. Remember, sighted people often choose movies or television programs as entertainment, and an escape from their day. It is not an escape from our day, when we spend all day working with awful robotic screen readers, and then kick back, turn on Foe, and have to listen to the audio description equivalent of Small Pox.

If I thought filing a lawsuit against Amazon would make a difference, I’d do it. They clearly are not listening, because their headstrong leap into audio description by artificial intelligence has removed such a human quotient that something like this gets released. Sure, I don’t have Dolby Atmos or some other amazing sound system, but I watch things on this same TV all the time with no problems. This is just an atrocious audio description track, that actually made me want to watch this film without the accessibility I need, which is in many ways akin to me saying “I’d rather just walk without my cane or guide dog.”, or a deaf person removing their hearing aid, or a wheelchair person removing themselves from the chair to just try crawling on the floor. It’s like loooking at food, and deciding to eat the napkin instead. You have created something that is so inherently and deceptively terrible, that I;’d rather just not exist as myself in that moment in time. For anyone who has ever wondered why someone ran into the burning building, they were probably running away from artificial audio description.

I can’t even really say anything about this movie, other than my hate is now guided at this film. normally, I spend the time watching films without audio description and trying to explain what it was that I missed, but this audio description is so bad, that I’m now trying to figure out if I should give it the same grade as i would give a film that doesn’t have audio description, because what was provided to me was absolute and total shit.

On the offside chance someone who actually worked on Foe reads this, perhaps you made a nice movie. in the future, think about the entire potential audience for your projects, and advocate that we all have an equally rewarding experience while watching your projects. The level of quality can be comparable from someone who does not need accessibility to someone who does when the accessibility is good. most of my favorite movies from last year are the ones everyone else loved, from Oppenheimer to The Holdovers and the underrated Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret?, all because those films had audio description tracks that understood the hundreds of hours it took hundreds of people to make the thing its describing.

Amazon, that billion dollar company whose ex-founder now has his own space program, is so cheap, it won’t even hire human beings to treat its own art with that level of reverence. that’s the big thing here, is that Foe is an MGM title, which is now owned by Amazon. They are now starting to throw this kind of trash on their own content, because they no longer care how their own content is perceived. If you are an artist, and your project is looking to be acquired by Amazon or MGM, use this as a cautionary tale. This film is directed by someone whose managed to get their film to the Oscar’s before, with two leads that have been to the Oscar’s, and Amazon still thought that it would be fine putting audio description produced by artificial intelligence on a film whose themes contain anti-artificial intelligence themes.

Friend or Foe? Amazon is most certainly a Foe.

Final Grade: F