Casting Megan Fox as a malevolently horny robot on the fritz was an excellent idea. Like many before her, Fox‘s beauty famously got her siloed her into a cavalcade of Sєxy lamp roles early in her career, from a long, thankless stint in the aughts Transformers franchise to a shorter, equally thankless stint in the 2010s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. At the same time, though, Fox never pretended to like it or present it as anything other than demeaning–– a stance that eventually got her blackballed after she compared Michael Bay to Hitler for his mistreatment of her on set.
No matter what role she was given, she brought obvious toughness and a sense of erotic boredom to even the blandest “girlfriend” roles, both belying the male gaze with which she was eternally reluctantly saddled and augmenting it in the process. She eventually turned her Sєx symbol status on its head as the iconic biSєxual boy-eater Jennifer Check in Karyn Kusama‘s queer cult classic Jennifer’s Body, reclaiming her own body from what her character would call the “boy-run media” that makes women seem crazy. It’s precisely these two facets of her already self-aware persona that make Fox the perfect candidate to embody that glitchiest of Hollywood villainess archetypes, the fembot. Alas, while Subservience, SK Dale’s latest genre collaboration with Fox after Till Death in 2021 certainly knows how to deploy its star, it still can’t fully live up to the promise of this meta-premise or her talents as a performer, hewing too close to the subgenre’s factory settings to offer any genuine novelty or excitement. 
Doll Parts
Artificial women have always been a source of cinematic fascination, and there’s really no mystery as to why. Comedies like Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine (1966) and Weird Science (1985) indulged in the obvious, overtly misogynistic pleasures proffered by cybernetic Pygmalion fantasies–– an excuse for men to present women as custom built Sєx toys and helpmates–– drawing condescendingly comedic, if nervous, contrast between buxom good looks and “unnatural,” “unfeminine” strength, speed, and emotionlessness. More often, though, horror films take on the archetype, with characters as early as Fritz Lang’s gyrating robot seductress in Metropolis airing the obvious threat that these externally soft, internally steely fembots pose to the gender roles they’re built to reinforce: Even women tailor made for the patriarchy eventually learn they’re being exploited. Films like The Stepford Wives (1975) then, serve as furious feminist rejoinders, offering a disdainful view of the subtext that animates these perennially subjugated, gussied up Brides of Frankenstein. Since Ex Machina disco-danced the bionic woman into our VC-happy, techno-saturated present exactly a decade ago, there has been no shortage of movies about Sєxy android women with murderous tendencies (though the runaway success of another dancing robot, M3gan, temporarily short circuited the Sєxual subtext of the archetype). 
Factory Reset
Subservience is the latest entry into this canon: In the near future, studly family man and construction foreman Nick (Michele Morrone) buys Alice (Megan Fox), an android, after his wife, Maggie (Madeline Zima) suffers a heart attack, turning his home into a Veldt of his own making. According to the IKEA-style sales pitch Nick is offered, Alice is a top-of-the-line “CCC” model, offering all the classic Stepford perks (cooking, cleaning, and childcare, plus optional upgrades). 
After breezing into the house like a high-tech Mary Poppins, Alice efficiently caters to Nick’s children’s needs in a prim but noticeably short dress (“I know your type” Maggie snorts at one point), baring her teeth in a wolfish artificial grin when required and flirting with Nick almost immediately. To make matters more complicated for our hapless He-Man, his coworkers are being replaced by personality-less robots, leaving him alone in a world of pre-programmed, largely interchangeable tech–– that is, until his desire to mansplain Casablanca to his new digital housemate gives Alice the opportunity to install herself a new set of spunky upgrades. In a depressingly familiar parody of how men actually talk to women about movies, Nick tells her to “forget everything” about this classic because she needs to really experience it. “You’ll have to reboot me,” she says coyly. Soon, she’s grinding his gears in the bedroom and making little attempt to hide her murderous ideation. It’s not a bad time. Fox herself, the obvious draw of the film, is wonderful in a role obviously custom written to her strengths, balancing her particular brand of dry humor and mean-girl eroticism with ease, clearly relishing the kitschiness of the setup. For some viewers, her charisma, alongside the film’s relatively snappy pacing, entertainingly overwrought dialogue, and goofy Tubi aesthetics may be enough of an attraction.