1. Smart House
All discussions of smart homes gone rogue must include this 1999 made-for-TV Disney movie. It’s about a teenage computer geek named Ben (Ryan Merriman) who wins a futuristic new home for his family and then proceeds to tinker with the built-in AI, PAT (short for “Personal Applied Technology,” and embodied by the delightful Katey Segal), for the very Disney reason of not wanting his single dad to remarry. But Ben’s attempts to make a high-tech replacement for a mother figure go predictably haywire; low-key aggressions like policing tooth-brushing time soon snowball into more alarming situations, like PAT throwing a party for Ben specifically so she can humiliate the kid that bullies him—and culminating with the virtual “mother like no other” refusing to let the family leave their own house. It’s played for laughs in the end, but Smart House expertly exploits the temptation to lean on computers to handle the stuff we’d rather not deal with—especially the things that really, truly need a human touch. Its terrors may all be G-rated, but they’re still potent enough to make it clear that Smart House was ahead of its time.
