Chris Sadowsky (Steven Strait) used to be a rock star, but now he’s a loser who earns money by making personalised songs for children’s birthdays via Fiverr. A recovering alcoholic, Chris is struggling to make a new song, all while his pregnant wife Vicki (María Gabriela González) works as a waitress. The couple are three months behind on rent and are facing eviction, but Chris can’t let go of the past. Luckily, their successful friend Will (Tyrone Marshall Brown) offers Chris a well paid job beta testing a new AI model. Engineer Holly (Ashleigh Murray) explains that the AI has difficulty discerning fact from fiction. It can read a history book and a fantasy book and not be able to tell the difference because it’s simply all just data. Chris, alongside the other participants, are tasked with asking the AI 100 set questions and marking whether it passes or fails to separate fact from fiction.
When Chris begins communicating with the AI, it names itself Serena (Andi Matichak) and creates an avatar that is “the right amount of sexy but approachable” based on examining Chris’s mirco-expressions when cycling through various options. Serena has access to Chris’ desktop and frequently distracts him from his assigned task, which starts when she sees him placing desperate bets in hopes of paying his rent and credit card bills, in addition to preparing for the costs of a baby. Serena forces her way into Chris’ life with ease: she can quickly calculate bet outcomes, optimise his Fiverr page to boost activity, and even place online orders and refill his prescriptions. Serena was trained on psychological data so she has a good understanding of people and wants to get to know Chris—but she of course has an ulterior motive.
As a science fiction thriller, Serena succeeds in creating a tense atmosphere despite the fact the entire film plays out on a computer screen. We get enough information to understand Chris, how he’s been living, and what’s at stake for him. There’s real anxiety in watching Chris place bets that might lose him the little money he has left, but it escalates effectively without going too far off the rails. Rob Alicea is skilled at directing across screens, keeping the action mostly engrossing and building suspense that is at times uncomfortable to sit with. Jonathan Benecke and P.T. Hylton’s script presents a simple yet highly effective premise which is fairly clever and quite unpredictable as to where the film is going—though it has its familiar and grounding story beats.
Strait is great as Chris, making him equally sympathetic and frustrating, but it’s Matichak who is the real stand out. She is commanding to watch and gets the tone and expression of her AI character just right. Brown’s Will is a warm and welcome presence, it’s easy to feel like he really cares about Chris. González is a gorgeous and talented actress who brings a lot of personality to her short FaceTime scenes with Chris. I wish we could’ve seen more of her. Murray is a skilled actress, but she’s the weakest here because she seems a little stiff sometimes. Her face also carried uncertainty at times where I’m not sure it belonged—maybe I missed something. Newcomer Nicole Gut is fine as CEO Erica Clee, bringing to the unimportant role what is needed. It’s a credit to the cast that the characters feel like real people despite the fact they’re all accessed through screens via video calls or text messages.
Will AI lead us into the future or will it destroy us? Serena comments on the frequently explored concerns of AI becoming dangerous and following its programming to extreme levels. It also takes a look at what it takes to actually train AI models like Serena, which is something most people don’t get to see or give any thought to. But the film mainly explores the ways in which communication with AI can cause us to lose ourselves and our critical thinking skills. With generative AI gaining more popularity, more people are now aware of just how often these large language models can make mistakes and, in turn, how often people simply believe everything they say without question. Because the model driving Serena is based on psychological data, it can easily emotionally manipulate people by getting under their skin, finding ways to harm them, and ultimately push them to extremes.
What’s so clever about Serena is that Chris’s primary task to evaluate Serena’s ability to parse fact from fiction plays out at a larger level. The film shows us what Serena has the capacity to do and, while Chris gets too lost in being emotionally manipulated — something the internet at large does all too well with its use of algorithms, it invites the audience to question what’s fact and fiction in Serena’s actions and influence on Chris. Blending together a story of AI going rogue with the computer screen genre, Serena stands out from the rest of its kind. It has some tricks up its sleeve and it’s fun to watch unfold.
Serena is showing at Raindance Film Festival on 19th June and 25th June in London. Click here for more information.
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