I AM MOTHER on Netflix Review

This is a review of I Am Mother on Netflix, which stars Luke Hawker, Rose Byrne, Clara Rugaard and Hilary Swank. It's directed by Grant Sputore, in his feature directorial debut.

It's a small cast, with Hawker playing the robot body and Byrne the voice.

"A teenage girl is raised underground by a kindly robot "Mother" -- designed to repopulate the earth following the extinction of mankind. But their unique bond is threatened when an inexplicable stranger arrives with alarming news."

-

The film starts out watching the robot grabbing an embryo and birthing it, for lack of a better term. We watch the child grow up, a solitary human child, with nothing but the robot for company to nurture it into adulthood.

As she grows older, we learn how humanity has been infected and it's dangerous to come in contact with anything from the outside of 'Daughters' sealed off compound/world, or at least, that's what 'mother' says.

But then a stranger (Swank) comes knocking on the door and 'daughter' innocently let's her in, and hides her from 'mother' because she knows 'mother' would disapprove. But one thing leads to another and that's when the plot becomes fascinating, as 'mother' says one thing, and the outside stranger says another, completely contradicting what 'mother' has said.

This starts creating doubt within the viewer's perspective of what is real or not? Is 'mother' telling the truth of sheltering our young lady from what could be outside. Is the stranger right or is mother? Throughout the first two acts we are prompted to potentially believe or not what happened to society, who or what did that?

But events start to pan out that challenges the viewer's expectations of what could or could not be by the end of the film.

Is Mother evil or truly protective? In the third act, we're even led to believe good and or maybe bad things about what is behind the human holocaust.

- - -

I don't know the actress that plays Daughter, but she did a fine job portraying an isolated human, not knowing anything about anything human outside of her relationship with the robot, Mother.

Mother on the other hand, because I'm a suspicious viewer, I kept wondering, that if Mother is in charge of thousands of embryos in cryo-storage, why raise just one. Why not raise more than one? And as Daughter, via their visitor, becomes aware of new potentials out there, why Mother never answers her questions with nothing but redirection.

Then again, their visitor (Swank) never once answered Daughter's questions directly either. So I did not know which character to be more suspicious of.

Speaking of Swank, she really pulls of this role of a desperate human living in a ragged world hostile to humans.

Throughout the film we don't know if the outside is full of contaminated air or that humans turned on each other, or that androids took out all humans.  It's pretty confusing which in and of itself is a great tool deployed by Sputore, keeping us guessing every step of the way.

-

In one instance, it was questioned whether director Sputore is the next Christopher Nolan or not. Looking at this one film, yea, that' a valid question, but then again, sometimes, as we've seen, some directors can be one-hit wonders, so we'll see. But yes, coming from that perspective, this is indeed a film that keeps you on your toes wondering where it's all going. Plus, Sputore was pretty intelligent about tackling his first project, keeping it simple, a small setting of few characters, then exploited his imagination with this small setting.

The film also tackles the basic premise of what motherhood could comprise of?

In the third act, DON'T LOOK AWAY and do other stuff. You need to stay focused, or it can get a bit confusing.

As far as the robot goes, the production company went with the production company called Weta, known for their fantastic special effects. But while I was watching the film, I could have sworn that they may have used one of Boston Dynamic's actual self-moving robots.

If you have the time, and don't mind a slowish kind of pace, I Am Mother is a worthy watch on Netflix!

-

After 35k votes, the film has a 6.8/10 on IMDb and 91% on Rotten Tomatoes.

---

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

Follow Cinema Static on: