Movie Review: I Am Mother

Netflix Sci-Fi Film Explores Morality in Technology and More

By Rachel Rivenbark

Netflix

The role of artificial intelligence in society and how it plays into either the flourishing or destroying of humanity is a topic which seemingly countless sci-fi films have attempted to broach. Everything from The Bicentennial Man to I, Robot to Chappie to the blood-curdling Terminator franchise takes a different approach to this basic everlasting question: what does it take, and what does it mean to be human? I’ve always loved these kinds of movies for the ethical dilemmas they present, but their biggest flaw has often been for their outcomes to be predictable, in one direction or the other. Viewers often know early in the movies who to trust, and which side to root for - that of robotkind, or humankind. I was extremely delighted, however, to note that director Grant Sputore’s new sci-fi film I Am Mother manages to not only make the list of these robo-classics, but also to circumvent this fatal flaw of immediate predictability. 

Taking place in a post-apocalyptic universe, I Am Mother opens on a high-tech repopulation facility built to ensure the survival and recreation of the human species, in the event of their extinction. Viewers are quickly introduced to a character simply known as “Daughter,” who amidst a touching and only slightly foreboding overdub of “Baby Mine,” is quickly depicted through her raising from infancy at the hands of “Mother,” a maternal android seemingly designed solely to ensure the survival of her human charge within the facility. Daughter and Mother’s idyllic, peaceful life is abruptly disturbed with the appearance of a woman only ever referred to as “the Guest,” who claims that Mother’s android species was responsible for the destruction of humanity. 

Although such narratives in sci-fi films generally depict one side as being quite clearly in the right or wrong, I Am Mother manages to keep viewers closely connected to Daughter’s mindset as she fluctuates in her suspicions and loyalties, questioning all that she was raised to believe, and all that she has begun to learn, all at once. Viewers are forced to constantly re-evaluate their own judgements on the cast of characters, simultaneously suspecting and sympathizing with both the Guest and Mother. Watching it, viewers cannot help but wonder whether Mother is secretly a diabolical agent of some greater malevolent force, or if the Guest is simply a biased victim of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder who is projecting the motives of the evil droids onto Mother without just cause. 

This film is strewn with hard to miss, but nevertheless extremely telling foreshadowing which doesn’t make itself apparent until the end of the film, when all of the pieces of the puzzle - all those little details that didn’t seem quite right - finally click into place. For some more than others, the eventual outcome may prove to be predictable, but even still, I found the progression and the conclusion of this movie’s plot to be satisfying and not a small bit chilling in all of its implications. It doesn’t shy away from toying with the concept of grey morality in ways that somehow manage to both horrify and justify in the eyes of viewers. It is by no means a perfect film, nor a particularly original one, but I still believe it has managed to earn its place among the sci-fi classics that make all of us reconsider buying that Amazon Alexa unit.