I Am Mother Review

Netflix has become a home for original sci-fi. Their original content includes films like the dystopian thriller What Happened to Monday and the space drama Stowaway. One of Netflix’s acquisitions was the Australian film I Am Mother, a wonderfully interesting film in the sci-fi genre.

In the future there is an extinction event. The future of humanity lies in a bucker controlled by a robot called Mother. In the bucker are 63,000 embryos and Mother is tasked with raising the children. Mother raises Daughter (Clara Rugaard) to adolescence, but everything Daughter has been taught gets shaken when the teen makes an extraordinary discovery.

I Am Mother had a lot of buzz surrounding it. The screenplay was on the 2016 Black List and it premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. It boasts a 91% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. So, expectations were high, and the film fulfils them.

I Am Mother was a taut film. It only had three characters and the majority was set in the bucker. It was similar to Moon, Ex Machina, and 10 Cloverfield Lane due to its setting and themes and had elements of The Terminator and Interstellar in it. It was a film that had some excellent reference points.

Moon was the biggest influence on I Am Mother. Both films start with a person and a robot living in a bunker and how the main character’s worlds get shaken by a shocking revelation. Both films were influenced by Plato’s ‘Analogy of the Cave’ story where a group of people spends their whole life in a cave and their whole sense of reality is changed when one of them leaves the cave. All Daughter knows about the outside world was what Mother told her, so it was a shock when a survivor came to the bucker.

I Am Mother had two major themes which were tied into the reveal: trust and morality. Early in the film in Mother gives Daughter a morality lesson by asking the question is it better to let one person die if it means saving five more people? Daughter gave a complex answer. Daughter’s morality was tested by the appearance of a survivor. Trust came about through Daughter’s interactions with The Woman (Hilary Swank) and The Woman revealing some shocking information. Daughter ends up being caught in the middle because Mother has lied, but The Woman isn’t honest either.

The more sci-fi centric theme was typical for one focused on robotics: can a robot or artificial intelligence feel emotions? In I Am Mother’s case the question is can Mother feel love? There was a connection between Mother and Daughter, Daughter was a kind and compassionate person despite being raised by a robot and there was some warmth in Mother’s voice through the robotic manipulation. Mother could be stern with Daughter like a parent can be.

I Am Mother had a tremendous cast. Hilary Swank was the big Hollywood star and Rose Byrne supplied her voice for Mother. Yet it was Clara Rugaard who got to show off her talent. Rugaard is a young actress from Denmark and her role in I Am Mother is her biggest to date. Daughter was a difficult role and Rugaard excelled with this challenge as it works in an unusual coming-of-age story. Hopefully we will see more from this young talent.

Weta Workshop, the special effect company that worked on films like Lord of the Rings and Blade Runner 2049 worked on I Am Mother. I Am Mother was a lower budget, smaller-scale film but Weta was still able to show off their abilities with the robot which was a combination of a physical costume and motion capture. There were a lot of CGI effects when Daughter goes out on the surface. It was a desolate, dark hellscape with robots flying above. This part of the film gave I Am Mother a Terminator vibe.

I Am Mother had a simple and familiar setup for a sci-fi story. It was used to explore some complex and interesting ideas and works as a character drama. It made for a compelling and thoughtful film that will linger in the mind.