I Am Mother

On this edition of Force Fed Sci-Fi, we took a look at and reviewed the Netflix film, I Am Mother. Among many things, we debated about how the world ended in this film, is society simply allowing technology to raise our children and just how freaky is that underground base? Let’s jump in and begin….

I Am Mother Cast and Crew

Directed by Grant Sputore

As far as we can tell, this is the only major film that Sputore has directed. His only searchable credit was an Australian television show where he directed several episodes, but for his first time in the director’s chair, he did a fairly decent job. While the concept may have been a bit too ambitious for him, we’re hoping to see more of him in the future.

Clara Rugaard as Daughter

Rugaard is another newcomer to the scene with not many credits to her name other than several Danish television shows. She brought a certain grace and naiveté to the film as her character has been sheltered for her entire life without any knowledge of the world beyond their bunker. Surprisingly, she

outperforms the other two actresses in this film.

Rose Byrne as Mother

Technically, she was only the voice of Mother and Luke Hawker was the physical stand in during filming. She voices Mother as very even keeled and matter of fact, but that’s almost a given considering she’s voicing a robot. She has an accomplished resume, and while this is a fair performance, it's not going to be a role that's to notable on her resume.

Hilary Swank as Woman

The two time Oscar winner brings her acting skills to this film ... kind of. As mentioned previously, Rugaard outshines her counterparts in many regards in I Am Mother as we get no real insights into her background - how did she end up on the beach in a shipping container or who shot her near the beginning of the film? It’s

hard to connect to a character when we don’t know much regarding their backstory, but of course we can't always blame the actor/actress as some of the blame can be put on certain crew members.

For Starters, What Happened in I Am Mother? (a bit confusing...)

I Am Mother mostly takes place in an underground bunker where the no-name daughter is being cared for by a robot simply known as Mother, but a question that our host Chris brought up in the podcast episode is how did this world come to be the way it is?

It seems like there was some sort of cataclysm, but it is not immediately clear as to exactly what the event was - was it war, famine, a combination of both?

We don’t find out until later in the film that Mother is part of a larger entity that was created by the military. Was its true purpose to really re-create humanity in the event of destruction? We're pretty sure that Mother and the robotic entity Mother is associated with eventually turned on humanity which, sounds eerily familiar to us but we suppose this idea isn’t exclusive to The Terminator.

Set Production and Its Contribution to the Film

The underground bunker does look great on film and the production design team deserves a lot of credit for what they accomplished, but the layout of this facility isn’t exactly clear. There’s an expansive living facility for all of the humans that will be grown and what we assume is a very large warehouse for storage, but there is also medical facilities and classrooms.