I Am Mother Review

I Am Mother is one of those original Netflix movies that feels both ambitious and undercooked. It takes place, we are told at the outset, in an undefined future where an “extinction event” has taken place, wiping out most if not all of the human race. But stored in an underground bunker in case of just such a crisis are some 63,000 frozen human embryos, all carefully tended by an a robot named Mother (voiced by Rose Byrne, performed in an incredibly believable suit by Luke Hawker), who hatches one of the embryos in the bunker’s medical lab and grows it via montage into a teenage girl named Daughter (newcomer Clara Rugaard).

Mother acts as Daughter’s parental figure, friend, playmate, doctor and teacher, and when the girl is naturally curious about what lies outside the bunker, Mother regretfully informs her that the toxicity levels from whatever occurred outside are too high for them to even open the front door. That all changes, however, with the appearance of an unnamed woman (Hilary Swank), who pounds on the entrance and screams that she’s been shot. A stunned Daughter lets her in — and the woman shares information that begins to drive wedges into both Mother’s story and Daughter’s trust in her.

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Directed by Grant Sputore from a script by Michael Lloyd Green that made Hollywood’s famous Blacklist of quality unproduced screenplays, I Am Mother works best in the early going, as we get to watch Mother and Daughter together in their lonely and evocative setting. Seeing Daughter sit alone in a shadowy room full of school desks, or sleeping in a similar chamber filled with rows of empty beds, creates an undeniably haunting effect, and there is initially genuine chemistry between the promising Rugaard and the robot, with Byrne striking an eerie halfway point between empathy and logic (the design of the machine is quite effective as well, with a “face” that’s lit with subtle warmth).