Cassandra Review: The AI That Tucks You In… and Takes Over
Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
When a family moves into what used to be Germany’s earliest smart-homes, they awaken Cassandra, a home-bot from the 70s who’s been asleep for decades in the abandoned house, but this time she is determined to be a lasting part of the family, and not someone who’ll be discarded…
Created by Benjamin Gutsche, the 2025 German thriller Cassandra stars Lavinia Wilson as the sinister titular character – the home robot who used to be human. Spanning six episodes, the series begins with a cold open: a flashback to the 1970s, where a family is lethally injured in a car crash while Cassandra, the robot, ominously looms over them on the road. Cut to the present, sometime in the 2020s – the Prill family moves into a remotely located smart home: artist mom Samira (Mina Tander), author dad David (Michael Klammer), their teen musician son Fynn (Joshua Kantara), and their cute little daughter Juno (Mary Tolle). The family relocate from Hamburg after a mysterious tragedy compels them to have a fresh start in the suburbs. Little do they know that more trouble awaits them in the swanky new “smart” home.
Cassandra’s primary target is Samira, the mother, whom she wants to replace in the Prill family. While Samira senses something off about the robot right from the start, the manipulative AI ensures everyone thinks she is losing her mind. And that’s the most frustrating bit about the six-episode series – how everybody prefers to take the AI’s word over Samira. If you’re in a new house, with a home-bot system whose reliability is dubious, any logical person’s first instinct should be to turn it off, especially if someone in the family thinks the system is a threat to their safety. Plus, the AI blaring an obnoxiously catchy ‘Good Morning’ song early in the morning, without your permission, should be a major red flag. But, maybe, as a viewer who has never had a robot do all their dishes, cooking, and the smallest errands, perhaps I am underestimating the lure of a robot slave.
The smart home in ‘Cassandra’ is an interesting blend of retro aesthetic blended with modern touch, and the creepy element comes in with tv screens everywhere, even in the bathroom (what’s up with that?!), for the AI AKA Cassandra to control every aspect of the place. From the doors, to the phone systems, she powers everything. Given that Cassandra was created in the 70s, the robot’s design is very basic, like a lump of tin, slightly resembling the robot from the 1960s animated show ‘The Jetsons’, but taller, and with a TV-screen for the head, where a human face (Lavinia Wilson) comes on to interact with people.
It’s super weird that the Prill family is very surprised at the interiors of their new home, as if nobody actually checked the property before buying it. This little impractical aspect of the plot drives quite a few twists in ‘Cassandra’, like the discovery of the home-bot itself, secret rooms, and a few other things. Samira discovers a few old photos of the original owners of her new house, and spots a woman who looks exactly like her AI Cassandra. Flashbacks in each episode reveal how Cassandra was a super-mom in the 70s, married to a scientist who built the smart-home and how everybody in the family ended up dying too soon. And unlike the 2023 techno-thriller ‘Margaux’, where an AI ‘Smart Home’ is completely malevolent and murderous for no real reason, Cassandra’s origin story helps explain a lot of her alarming behavioral quirks and her eerily human-like functioning. From her obsessive favoritism toward Juno to her unease over Fynn’s budding romance with a cute boy from school, every action is chillingly intentional.
Lavinia Wilson is the driving force of this series, portraying both AI Cassandra and the human version who appears in flashbacks. Child actor Mary Tolle is adorable as the impressionable Juno, who is instantly befriended by the AI – only to be manipulated into turning against her own mother. Mina Tander makes you root for Samira, the human mother desperately trying to hold on to her family as they slowly slip from her grasp under Cassandra’s influence. However, some of Samira’s decisions feel questionable, even frustrating at times. Michael Klammer’s David is one of the most insipid characters in the series, he has little personality, even though the creators try to portray him as the ‘hot author dad’.
Despite the many themes the show attempts to explore – including the Prill family’s way of coping with a disturbing tragedy – Cassandra ultimately boils down to a “human mom versus AI mom” showdown, as the eerie Cassandra aspires to become the Prill matriarch. While the pace of the show can be slow, the writers manages to slip in an unexpected violent twist now and then to jolt the viewers from becoming complacent.
Rating: 3 on 5 stars. Watch the series on Netflix.
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