I Am Mother review: A must-watch female-led science fiction thriller

Who would you trust: a robot that has looked after you your whole life or the last human standing? I Am Mother brings sci-fi, thriller, and social issues that will leave you thinking about them for a while.

While some people worry about the (potential?) zombie apocalypse, some of us worry about the (very possible) AI takeover. A “machines apocalypse”, we might say. But what if the future of our planet depends on a robot? I Am Mother has come to ask that and other questions.

Directed by Grant Sputore, I Am Mother follows a teenage girl (daughter, played by Clara Rugaard) who was raised by a robot (Mother, performed by Luke Hawker and voiced by Rose Byrne) designed to repopulate planet Earth after a major extinction event. Their plans and relationship are tested when another human (Woman, played by Hilary Swank) arrives. Danger is out there, but who is the real threat: humans or robots?

The suspense won’t leave you alone. The story is so well crafted, we truly follow Daughter’s personal journey from the very beginning, as just like her we don’t know what’s going on outside the bunker – and we don’t see the outside either, we only know the inside, just like her. Her discoveries are also ours, and we learn along with her.

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Without revealing too much, because this is one movie you must watch, it throws the question of who’s the actual threat (humans? a virus? is there even danger? what actually happened to humanity?) and who can you trust: robots or your own species. There are twists and turns throughout the whole movie that won’t let your brain rest, as just when you thought you knew what was going on, something happens that makes you reevaluate everything you know.

There are a couple of moral dilemmas, too, that will leave you thinking about if what some of the characters did was the right thing or if there were better ways to fix the seemingly unfixable. I’ve always thought sci-fi is here to make us reconsider our actions as society and how they affect not only humanity but also nature in general. It’s a very rich genre that goes beyond robots and futuristic/post-apocalyptic scenarios, and I Am Mother proves it.

If I had to compare the vibe of this movie to others, I would definitely say it has some Ex-Machina vibes with a hint of 10 Cloverfield Lane, but I Am Mother is its own story, its own message, and its own power. And its female-led, in case you needed more reasons to watch it.

Although it has a robot as main character, I Am Mother is much more than another sci-fi movie with robots and a post-apocalyptic world: it’s a story of humanity, nature, family, and an ending that leaves the door open to many possibilities, without properly being an open ending or cliffhanger. I Am Mother is now available on Netflix.

Netflix subscriber? See I Am Mother? Let the other horror heads know what you think in the comment section below.