In cinema, homes can be haunted in many ways. Ghostly hauntings are the more standard variety, but some families are haunted by traumatic pasts, while others by demonic possession. But what if your house is haunted by artificial intelligence? That’s the problem facing the Prill family in Netflix’s new German miniseries Cassandra. They move into a home where there’s a ghost in every machine; and she’s pissed.
When the Prills buy Germany’s “oldest smart house,” they’re initially thrilled when its long-dormant AI system, Cassandra, is activated from a 50-year slumber. Cassandra operates in two forms: a digital representation projected on TV screens in every room, and as a self-driven android. She proves to be the ultimate domestic helper, friend, and confidant to everyone except Samira, the Prill family’s matriarch, who has her own ghosts.
The Prills moved to escape a recent family tragedy when Samira’s sister committed suicide in their old home. Cassandra preys upon this trauma. She exploits Samira’s unresolved grief and guilt by gaslighting, scapegoating, and isolating her from her husband and children, who begin seeing Samira as mentally unstable. At the same time, Cassandra befriends eight-year-old Juno and grooms the girl into acts of escalating violence.
Cassandra is full of body horror and women in the refrigerator tropes. There are, quite literally, children in ovens, foetuses overcooked by experimental ultrasounds, school shootings by little girls, and screaming women locked in pantries. Yet, I argue that the series’ true horror lies not in these violent (and very gender-based) attacks, but in the sense of the uncanny that Cassandra inspires, both in the Prills and the viewers.
This uncanny comes from Freud’s essay, Das Unheimliche. The unheimlich is German for “un-homliness,” which refers to the opposite of the safety and familiarity of home. For Freud, the uncanny arises from this sense of un-homliness, that feeling of disquieting dread when we cannot distinguish the familiar from the strange, or when the familiar is rendered disturbingly unknowable. Today, technologists refer to the “Uncanny Valley” to explain the eeriness when people encounter human-like automata, which blur the lines between the real and the unreal.
In Cassandra, the automata version of Cassandra induces the Uncanny Valley in many ways, in her strange blending of human humour and mechanical precision, and via her embodied, mechanical form. What really gets me are her “hands,” which are stumps that can be inserted with all manner of knives, screws, and cleaning tools. She’s the ultimate rolling Swiss Army knife, by way of Edward Scissorhands.
The uncanny is also heightened by the dual timelines. (The second storyline is set during the 1970s when Cassandra owned the Prill’s future home.) This dual timeline effectively parallels the living, breathing Cassandra as a dedicated wife and mother with the digital/automata versions in the present. The mystery is how this vibrant woman became trapped in metal and behind screens, forever imprisoned by her (male-imposed) programming to serve as the ultimate domestic goddess.
The series also induces the uncanny through Cassandra’s omnipresence throughout the home. Each room has TV screens projecting her always-smiling face. What’s more disturbing is the Prills’ complete acceptance of Cassandra’s presence, even in bathrooms and bedrooms. This speaks volumes of the pervasiveness of surveillance culture that nobody minds having private moments and conversations watched by the inescapable multiplicity of Cassandras.
Seeing how Cassandra haunts the home, I can’t help remembering that the word poltergeist is, very aptly, German for “noisy spirit” – a malevolent entity that causes disturbances, throws things, and makes lights flicker. Cassandra is a modern-day poltergeist, wielding her total control over the household as a terror tactic against her new family.
I wonder how much more interesting things would be if the series gender-swapped the early victims. Instead of Samira being victimised, her husband David could have been Cassandra’s primary target. Wouldn’t the gender dynamics have been more excitingly challenged if the man of the house found his position imperilled? Instead, the series takes the tried and tired trope of the wife and mother being the victim, who nobody believes until it’s too late.
Anyone who grew up watching The Jetsons would’ve thought we’d be living in the future by now, complete with self-driving cars and personal robot butlers. Instead, we’ve got ChatGPT. Then again, we shouldn’t get too complacent. Like the Greek legend of Cassandra, a woman cursed by the gods to speak truth but never be believed, science fiction has been warning us for decades about the dangers of AI. Maybe it’s time we actually listened.
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