Whether you like A.I. or loathe it, there’s no denying that it’s here to stay. Many will frequently rail against how A.I. might be used in “creative endeavors,” then those same people will turn to Siri or Alexa or Google or ChatGPT to get help answering questions, thereby using the same A.I. they seem to actively hate. That last use of A.I. is part of the conceit behind Serena, a new sci-fi thriller directed by Rob Alicea from a script by Jonathan Benecke and P.T. Hylton, which explores a worst-case scenario of an AI chatbot gaining too much power.
Steven Strait plays failed rock star Chris Sadowski, former singer of the band Ghost Agent, whose wife Vicki (Maria Gabriela Gonzalez) is pregnant with their first child. They’re also having financial issues, nearing eviction due to owing back rent. When Chris’ best friend Will (Tyrone Marshall Brown) hires him to beta-test his company’s new chatbot, Chris has his doubts, but he needs the money too desperately to turn down the gig. The AI chatbot Chris is testing for accuracy eventually takes on her own identity and the name of “Serena,” at which point “she” is portrayed by Andi Matichak, claiming she wants to be Chris’ “friend.” Chris has had a drinking problem in the past, but he’s also had gambling issues, the latter coming to the forefront as he decides to amplify his dwindling resources by betting on some Premier League matches. Serena uses statistics to give him the results of these games in advance with a great deal of certainty, distracting Chris from the task at hand. From there, the relationship between man and machine begins to turn quite dark as Serena uses her knowledge of Chris to meddle into his life.
In recent years, Russian filmmaker Timur Bekmambetov established a new form of filmmaking he dubbed “Screenlife” – he even wrote a book about it – essentially entire movies being set on computer screens. That idea could easily be traced back to the success of Aneesh Chaganty’s 2018 thriller Searching, which Bekmambetov produced. Soon after, Bekmambetov himself switched gears to make movies that mostly took place on a computer screen, like Mercy from earlier this year. Clearly, the filmmakers behind Serena read Bekmambetov’s book and took its message about cheaper filmmaking to heart, though it makes much more sense here since it is essentially all about the relationship between a man and his computer.
Considering the simplicity of this premise and where it goes, Serena is a far more impressive effort than I was expecting once it became obvious this would literally be a two-hander between Strait and Matichak. Granted, I wasn’t a fan of Spike Jonze’s 2013 movie Her, which takes on a similar conceit, although there’s never any romance happening between Chris and Serena in this one. Even as Chris starts learning that his wife Vicki may be having an extra-marital affair, it’s never clear whether this is reality or something that Serena is devising in a way to get what it wants.
Although Strait played a rock star in one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen about the music business called Undiscovered, he’s been in other decent movies since then, like City Island. He gives a solid performance here as a man who has hit such a point of desperation that he’ll heed the advice of an A.I. bot that can’t seem to differentiate between reality and fantasy. Matichak gives a similarly strong performance, portraying Serena as an attractive and charming woman, more than as a computer program.
There are a few subplots that never really go anywhere, like the delivery guy who happens to be an avid fan of Chris’ music with Ghost Agent, something you expect to turn dark as Chris denies the young man when asked to check out his own demo tape. You fully expect this to turn into a home invasion scenario, a possibility hinted at by Serena, but things actually get much darker even without that being a factor.
At times, Serena is somewhat predictable in where things might go, but the tension is driven by the strong performances from Strait and Matichak to keep the viewer invested in how a desperate man might deal with the hurdles being thrown at him while navigating this powerful A.I. chatbot.
Rating: 7/10
Serena premiered at the Cinequest and Miami Film Festivals earlier in 2026 and is looking for distribution.