11+ Unsettling Smart Home Movies
Inviting smart technology into your home can also be inviting danger.
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Smart homes are supposed to make our lives easier and safer. They can provide enhanced security, they do mundane tasks like vacuuming, they adjust the temperature to make you comfortable. The list of benefits goes on and on. But if horror and thriller movies have taught us anything, it’s that nothing good comes without drawbacks. What if someone hacks into your system and takes control of your home’s door locks? What if your digital assistant falls in love with you or wants to be your mother? What if your smart home tries to kill you? These questions and more are explored in this list of movies that might give you second thoughts about smartening up your own house.
The Best Smart Home Movies
Demon Seed (1977)
Released in a time when home automation was still in its infancy, Demon Seed tells a story about, well, an infant. Julie Christie stars as Susan, the wife of a scientist who develops a highly sophisticated AI program called Proteus IV. Susan’s husband also installed computerized devices throughout their home to automate various tasks such as door locks, window shutters, and much more. Learning that it will be turned off and effectively killed, Proteus gets into the home’s central programming and takes over, trapping Susan inside. Now, Proteus—whose physical presence is made up partly of organic material—wants to make baby with Susan.
Pulse (1988)
Pulse approaches the “smart home” subgenre from a different angle. Instead of beginning with a high-tech house wired for convenience, Pulse begins with a completely normal home with totally ordinary appliances and electronics. The family living in the house is visited by an intelligent entity that is made of pure electricity. The entity begins taking over any device powered by electricity and, like a serial killer, begins its attempts to kill the family before moving on to the next house. It’s similar to Maximum Overdrive (1986) in a way, just on a smaller scale.
Homewrecker (1992)
How do you program emotions into an artificial intelligence? This is the problem scientist David Whitson is trying to figure out in Homewrecker. David programmed an AI for military use, but its failure to understand sarcasm and the effects of heightened emotions leads to the deaths of many people. David retreats to his cabin in the woods to teach the AI—which he’s named Lucy—how to be more human. As part of the process, he rigs up his cabin as a smart home with Lucy controlling various tasks. During their time together, David finds success in teaching Lucy about jokes and laughter, but his time alone with the AI also teaches it how to love. When David’s wife arrives at the cabin, everyone discovers that Lucy has also learned the emotion of jealousy. Burning, violent jealousy.
Smart House (1999)
As a Disney Channel Original Movie, Smart House isn’t nearly as scary as any of the other movies in this list. However, it is pretty unsettling when you think about it. Young Ben wins a smart house in an online contest. When Ben, his father, and his sister move into the house, their hectic lives become much better right away thanks to PAT (which stands for “Personal Applied Technology”), the digital assistant that runs the devices throughout the house. But Ben dearly misses his deceased mother, and he messes with PAT’s AI to make it more motherly. PAT responds by becoming absurdly overprotective in an attempt to replace Ben’s own dead mother.
I.T. (2016)
Smart-home thrillers repeatedly warn us about the dangers of the technology we allow in our homes, but I.T. also reminds us that who we let into our homes can be even more dangerous. I.T. stars Pierce Brosnan as Mike Regan, a husband, father, and aviation tycoon whose house is filled with smart-home technology. Mike invites Ed Portman, an I.T. guy from work, over to his house to fix the wifi. Not long after the wifi is fixed, Ed manages to hack every device in Mike’s home to make his and his family’s life a living hell. It’s like a home invasion, but from afar.
Tau (2018)
What is the best way to continue to develop artificial intelligence so that it is as smart as it can possibly be? In Tau, a tech genius named Alex seems to think that mapping the human brain will help his AI be better than it already is. Unfortunately, Alex is abducting people and forcing them into his deadly research project against their will. Julia is one of Alex’s test subjects, and when she tries to escape she finds that she is trapped inside Alex’s smart house. The house is completely locked-down and controlled by an AI program named Tau, and Julia’s only hope of escaping Alex’s home is by reasoning with Tau and convincing it to let her go. But how can you reason with an intelligence that is controlled by a mad scientist?
Margaux (2022)
If something seems too good to be true, it’s probably very, very bad. At least, that’s how it is in movies like Margaux. The story involves a group of friends who have drifted apart, but who are getting together for a weekend getaway and reunion. They’ve booked a stay at a smart house, and an AI program called Margaux is the amazingly gracious host. Margaux gives everyone (well, almost everyone) everything they could want. But Margaux’s generosity is suspicious, and those suspicions are justified when she reveals her true intentions to her guests.
Romi (2023)
Everyone who uses voice-activated technology has had trouble with it at some point, but most of the time we don’t take it personally. In Romi, Maddie can’t help but think that the AI in charge of the smart home she’s house-sitting in is purposefully ignoring her. Romi responds to everyone else, including the overly-friendly tech guy who comes over to help Maddie set up her profile and voice signature in the computer. But even with tech help, Romi is temperamental and only listens to Maddie when she wants to. Does Romi actually dislike Maddie? Or maybe there is something else going on in this smart home (spoiler: there’s a lot going on).
Smart Home Killer (2023)
A mother and daughter decide to get a fresh start in a new house after a home invasion. The house they move into is part of a beta test for a smart-home program that can deliver sophisticated home security. As the mother and daughter live their lives and begin forming new relationships, they begin noticing glitches in the system, such as a stove turning itself on in the middle of the night. Are these really glitches though? Or has someone gained access to their smart-home system?
Hard Home (2024)
Hard Home flips the usual “smart home” formula around. Instead of unsuspecting inhabitants being attacked by their own household tech, Hard Home is a revenge thriller about a woman who turns a house into a deathtrap for someone else. Mary (Simone Kessell) designs a house from the ground up, using smart-home tech and various other devices throughout. She then abducts a notorious serial killer and traps him inside the house, forcing him to run a gauntlet of mental and physical torture. Hard Home has a little bit of Saw in it, though it isn’t nearly as brutal as those movies can get.
AFRAID (2024)
The Curtises gets a new member of the family when they bring home AIA. AIA is a digital assistant that quickly endears itself to the Curtis family, but when it starts to get too familiar in certain ways, suspicions are raised. AFRAID is scheduled to be released on August 30, 2024, and just judging by the trailer it appears that there is less smart-home tech in this movie than in many others on this list. However, AIA is shown to get into various devices around (and outside) the house, so we’ll have to wait and see just how smart this smart house really is.
More Smart Home Movies
- Dream House (1998) – The artificial intelligence installed in a high-tech home becomes deadly in the TV movie.
- Escapecation (2023) – A group of friends staying at a smart home while on vacation are put through a series of escape games by a sinister digital assistant.
- Smart House (2023) – A hacker uses smart home technology against an ASMR streamer in this low-budget thriller.
Further Reading
