Crew
Director – Steven C. Miller, Screenplay – Christopher Beyrooty & Nick Waters, Story – Christopher Beyrooty, Chris Sivertson & Nick Waters, Producer – Brad Krevoy, Photography – Neil Cervin, Music – Matthew Rogers, Visual Effects Supervisor – Geena Renik, Visual Effects – Artifex Studios Ltd. (Supervisor – Rob Geddes), Bot VFX (Supervisor – Sean Pollak), Dexmob (Supervisor – Brando Ross), Framel Lab (Supervisor – Caleb Clark) & Ghost VFX (Supervisor – Eric Gambini), Special Effects Supervisor – Jak Osmond, Makeup Effects Supervisor – Todd R. Masters, Production Design – Tyler Harron. Production Company – MPCA (Motion Picture Corporation of America).
Cast
Madison Pettis (Hannah), Jedidiah Goodacre (Drew Collins), Vanessa Morgan (Lexi), Richard Harmon (Clay), Phoebe Miu (Kayla), Jordan Buhat (Devon), Susan Bennett (Margaux), Brittany Mitchell (Martha), Lochlyn Munro (William)
Plot
Hannah joins a group of university friends as they get away for the weekend to a smarthome. The house’s A.I. Margaux reads their social media profiles and adapts according to their interests, all except for Hannah, a computer geek who avoids having a social media presence. However, as the group settle in and begin having fun, Margaux uses the house’s automated devices to start killing them. As the other realise what is happening and try to escape, Margaux creates copies of them using nano-liquid.
Steven C. Miller has emerged as a regular genre director since the early 2000s. He first appeared with the zombie film Automaton Transfusion (2006) and went on to make the Syfy Channel film Scream of the Banshee (2011), the home invasion thriller The Aggression Scale (2012), the killer Santa film Silent Night (2012), the children’s horror film Under the Bed (2012) and Werewolves (2024). In more recent years, he has specialised in action film/thrillers with the likes of Extraction (2015), Marauders (2016), Submerged (2016), Arsenal (2017), First Kill (2017), Escape Plan 2: Hades (2018), Line of Duty (2019) and Under Fire (2025). Co-writer Chris Beyrooty had previously directed the quite good Covid pandemic-shot horror film Shelter in Place (2021), while the film coms with a story from Chris Sivertson, director of films like The Lost (2005), I Know Who Killed Me (2007) and All Cheerleaders Die (2013).
The 2020s have seen a major interest in films about Artificial Intelligence. Most of these have focused on A.I.’s and androids, robotics less so. Among this, we have also seen a spate of films about smarthomes gone amok. First there was Tau (2018) in which a creepy billionaire makes Maika Monroe prisoner in his automated house and she must bargain with the A.I. in order to get free. These were followed by the likes of Blank (2022), Dark Cloud (2022), I’ll Be Watching (2023) and Afraid (2024).
Margaux starts out looking like it is going to be a really bad film. In the opening scene, there is the schlocky image of Lochlyn Munro getting his head squished by a recliner chair such that is splatters all over girlfriend Brittany Mitchell like a popped grape. And then there are the teens who seem an unlikeable and utterly self-absorbed bunch of characters. You can spot who is going to be the Final Girl right from the outset – Madison Pettis, who was once Dwayne Johnson’s daughter in The Game Plan (2007) – because not having a social media marks her as sweet and innocent.
Certainly, you have to admit that the smarthome designed here is one of the most sophisticated looking of all the ones on screen – it being able to read people from their social media profiles and creates avatars of them, as well as provide individually catered drugs and sexual accoutrements, can cook thousands of different menu items, even produce replicas of trophies and drug stashes, and manifest snake arms to do everything from cutting the meat to hunting them.
The point that Margaux becomes completely unstuck is when it gets to the ludicrous deaths. Jordan Buhat and Phoebe Miu are in bed for a round of PG-rated sex with he handcuffed to the bed when the ceiling starts compacting down until it is right above him, while she becomes trapped as the nano-liquid covers her like glue and is then electrocuted. The most ridiculous of these is when Vanessa Morgan gets trapped on an exercycle where Margaux keeps extending the seat up until Vanessa is tilted at an unusual angle – you keep wondering why she just doesn’t climb off?
Margaux goes from a killer smarthome story to something even more outlandish when the house starts manifesting nanotech doppelgangers of the various friends. It mounts to a completely absurd set of showdowns between doppelgangers of Madison Pettis and Vanessa Morgan fighting one another where Madison then uses ‘cut and paste’ from inside the guts of the computer to resurrect all the others for a Battle Royale.
Trailer here