I Am Mother is a 2019 sci-fi thriller about a teenage girl raised underground by a kindly robot designed to repopulate the earth following the extinction of humankind.
There’s a natural disconnect at the start of director Grant Sputore‘s debut film I Am Mother, where we see a human baby in the arms of a highly-advanced robot and while the imagery is unsettling, there is a remarkable sense of empathy we feel toward the machine and what it’s trying to do. Perhaps that’s our own inherent inclination for caregiving that stirs these emotions, but it’s the film’s most striking achievement and a satisfying hook in setting up one thing before putting us on the story’s true path.
It’s far into the future and we are told there has been an extinction event, leaving all life on Earth dead. As we travel along a dimly lit corridor, we also discover that an underground facility has several thousand human embryos in deep freeze. There, an android is assembled by other machines and given a specific task, to raise one female as her own in hopes of repopulating the planet. Years pass and soon the girl is a teenager appropriately named Daughter (Clara Ruugard). Mother (voiced by Rose Byrne), and the girl are all alone, the robot educating and keeping her healthy, promising that one day all the others will be raised like her. However, when a woman (Hilary Swank) suddenly arrives, everything in Daughter’s world begins to crumble as she struggles with what might be a new truth.
As with many in this genre, we’re bound to the limited halls and sterile corners of a small set, it eventually becoming as much a part of the cast as the people (and robot) in it. The movie looks sharp and Sputore makes good use of the space, lighting, and atmosphere, giving the facility the presence it demands. However, Michael Lloyd Green‘s story is somewhat transparent, those with even the slightest bit of sci-fi fandom running in their blood able to guess who is who and why fairly quickly.
Either way, detailing any more of the plot is to navigate a host of trip wires, so the most I’ll say is that while the film does explore some grand matriarchal themes, it doesn’t quite do so as deeply as it’s set up to. The outstanding opening, which genuinely establishes an impactful relationship is all but abandoned as Daughter reaches her teen years and bouts of rebellion, which is then set aside as the Woman introduces a new spin. This lends some slight disappointment to the experience but not all is lost.
A story like this is do or die by the artificial being at the center of its plot and Mother is an intriguing creation, with Byrne’s protective voice shaping much of our connection to her while Luke Hawker‘s motion capture performance is a convincing mix of standard robotic jerks and jumps with some surprising warmth. Ruugard does well with her pivotal role in the shadow of two diverse mother figures while Swank does best as an injured woman with a dark past. There is no fault in any of this from the cast.
To be sure, there are things that don’t work, especially some lulls in the middle that mess with the momentum. There is not much action per se either, but frankly it doesn’t need it. It’s intelligent enough to task its audience to consider what is really happening when the finale has stripped much of the questions clean and opened an all new circle. Getting to this point might have its flaws, however it’s last shot and the implications it presents are more than well earned. Recommended.