Wednesday 21 August 2019

I Am Mother (Grant Sputore, 2019)

Humanity is nigh-on extinct once more following an unspecified apocalyptic event and the only apparent survivor is a girl raised by a robot from one of hundreds of stored embryos in a bunker. The years pass as the robot mother raises the girl with a firm but loving hand, until the girl begins to question the state of things as she reaches teenage.
The set-up, a composite of everything from THX 1138 through 2001 and The Terminator to say, the recent Spanish Orbiter 9 or, in the non-scifi sphere, Room, is at once familiar enough that we know two things from the start: there is obviously something more to be discovered outside the confines of the bunker, and kindly robots will prove to be otherwise. And so once a woman from outside does turn up with tales of the horrors she's experienced, we're well on course to one of a limited range of endgames. All that said, it does manage to add elements all of its own along the way, mainly around the theme of social engineering, and the ambiguity of the mother character is retained long enough to keep up interest.

6/10




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