Susan Granger’s review of “I Am Mother” (Netflix)
Sci-fi movies about AI and robotics can be terrifying or tortuous – “I Am Mother” falls into the latter category.
Set in a massive, automated, underground laboratory, the story begins with an angular, one-eyed android – embodied by Luke Hawker (who supervised its manufacture at New Zealand’s Weta Workshop) and softly voiced by Rose Byrne.
Calling itself Mother, it chooses one test-tube embryo out of thousands in cryogenic stasis to begin the job of repopulating humanity after a horrific global extinction event.
After 24 hours in a womblike incubator, the female embryo becomes a crying baby, soothed by Mother singing “Baby of Mine.”
As more time passes, she grows into a toddler, a youngster and, soon, a teenager, identified only as Daughter (Clara Rugaard).
Determined to create a “smarter, more ethical” human race, Mother instructs Daughter in all kinds of moral lessons, honing her physical, intellectual and emotional skills.
While she’s free to roam around the sprawling “reformulation facility,” curious Daughter is forbidden by Mother to venture outside since Mother describes it as a post-apocalyptic wasteland where the air is contaminated.
But one night when metallic Mother has powered down, lonely Daughter hears a knocking at the bunker’s steel outside door. Much to her surprise, she discovers a wounded Woman (Hilary Swank) who needs help.
When over-protective Mother awakens, she’s immediately ‘on alert,’ marching toward Daughter. “Is that a droid?” inquires the frightened Woman, who has obviously encountered hostile droids in the outside world.
Inevitably, a relationship grows between the lonely, warily determined Daughter and the grimly desperate Woman – to manipulative Mother’s predictable consternation.
“I was designed to value human life above all else,” Mother explains. “I couldn’t stand by and watch humanity slowly succumb to its self-destructive nature.”
Scripted as a dystopian allegory by Michael Lloyd Green, it was filmed in Australia by first-time feature director Grant Sputone and premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. Why wasn’t it immediately released? Perhaps because the tension lapses and the conclusion is complicated and confusing.
On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “I Am Mother” is a frustrating, fumbling 5, streaming on Netflix.
