Hulu Mother / Android Movie Review | RBC
Mother / Android feels generic, wasting any unique ideas it conjures up in favor of the same post-apocalyptic imagery and events.
There’s a massive robotic apocalypse in the original Hulu movie Mother / Android, but it takes place almost entirely offscreen. The end of the world is an economic affair in screenwriter Mattson Tomlin’s debut film. Tomlin once wrote the top sci-fi movies Project power and Little fish. Like these movies, Mother / Android brings some intriguing ideas, but ultimately does not follow through, in part due to limited resources.
After a brief flash-forward starring protagonist Georgia (Chloë Grace Moretz) burning photos and meditating in voiceover on the letting go process, Mother / Android begins on the day of the android uprising. At first, college student Georgia and her boyfriend Sam (Algee Smith) have other things on their minds. Georgia has just found out that she is unexpectedly pregnant. They go to a Christmas party, trying not to think about the news. In this near-future world, friendly human-like androids function as servants, serving drinks and cleaning at the party.
A high-pitched noise is suddenly emitted by all surrounding electronic devices, the lights go out, and the androids are no longer servants, they are killing machines. Tomlin stages a chaotic, at times hard to discern, battle between androids and humans inside the party host’s house. Just as Georgia and Sam escape to the streets to witness the larger destruction, the film continues months later. Georgia and Sam live in a tent in the woods, hiding from the current threat of androids, and Georgia is ready to give birth at any time.
At least half of the movie involves Georgia and Sam in the woods, while the androids are busy elsewhere, plotting the demise of humanity. Like Little fish, Mother / Android uses the apocalypse to focus on a single romantic relationship, but Georgia and Sam’s bond isn’t as captivating as the central relationship in Little fish. In addition, generic robopocalypse does not have the resonance that the disease of memory loss in Little fish do. Georgia and Sam lovingly and playfully consider baby names, fight for the best solution to escape the androids, and make many silly post-apocalyptic decisions.
Mother / AndroidThe depiction of the Android apocalypse is more like a zombie movie than most stories about humans battling artificial intelligence. At each checkpoint, Georgia and Sam are given blood tests to prove they are human. In their occasional encounters with androids, androids are portrayed as relentless and determined killers, in constant pursuit of their prey. There is no explanation as to how or why the androids arose, and there are only a few brief scenes in which the characters reflect on how humanity got to this point.
Mother / Android feels generic, squandering all the unique ideas Tomlin conjures up in favor of the same post-apocalyptic imagery and events of dozens of other films. Even eventual glimpses of the true murderous forms of the robots don’t seem original, and the last-minute addition of a specific Georgia antagonist is finely crafted and hastily executed.
Mother / Android is more of a tearful than an action movie. Tomlin has many opportunities to touch the hearts of the public when his protagonist is a pregnant woman in constant danger. When Georgia and Sam reach the relative safety of a military compound, the resident medic explains all the action that took place in a rapid exposure dump, describing what would have been the primary focus of another type of film. However, Tomlin is not interested in giant robot battles, as Georgia wants to know how to escape first and foremost.
Tomlin’s most intriguing idea is this inversion of the typical refugee narrative, with Americans desperate to flee to another country and parents potentially separated from their children. However, you never know why Korea and other Asian countries were spared the android uprising, and Tomlin does not devote enough time to the refugee granting process to successfully explore its implications. Instead, it’s just another way to manipulate the audience’s emotions, resulting in a shameless sentimental finale.
Mother / AndroidAll the success of relies on its main characters. While Moretz gives a tough, engaged performance, she and Smith have no chemistry, and many of Georgia’s big emotional moments – especially the final scene – don’t feel deserved. Tomlin adds heavy symbolic elements that land awkwardly rather than achieving the desired effect. Mother / Android tends so much to evoke heavy feelings when what it really needs is more exciting doomsday action.
Mother / Android premieres Friday, December 17 on Hulu.
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