Mark Reviews Movies: MOTHER/ANDROID

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 16, 2021

The robot uprising occurs in the prologue of Mother/Android, and until it becomes necessary for the plot, the rest of the movie seems content to evade what happened and why it did. That's a potentially clever move on the part of writer/director Mattson Tomlin, whose story is more about survival against nature and within human circumstances than a fight against murderous androids. If the filmmaker had stuck to those convictions, there might have been something to this movie that goes beyond or, at least, eschews expectations, clichés, and a predictable plot.

Eventually, though, convention wins in this tale of a futuristic post-apocalypse. Whatever the movie is trying to say or could have said about human nature, which seems to be the driving force until a very busy and quite convoluted third act, is tossed aside. A series of action sequences, a couple of twists, and a plenty of contrived, emotional manipulation take over control.

We're thrown into a near-future, in which androids are used in homes as servants (This seems a pretty limited use, but if androids—as they probably would have to, given the likely cost for a home and the sheer number of them that end up trying to destroy humanity—make up any other part of the world, Tomlin skirts past that). Around Christmas, as Georgia (Chloë Grace Moretz) and her boyfriend Sam (Algee Smith) are home from college to spend time with her family and their friends, the couple faces a difficult choice. Georgia is pregnant, and she's not certain if she loves or even wants to be with Sam.

Anyway, the androids revolt, killing off everyone we've met but Georgia and Sam. Some months later, the two are traveling through the woods, attempting to make their way to Boston. Rumor is that, there, boats are taking families with children to Asia, where—for reasons that, again, aren't clear or clarified—androids aren't a problem.

The smart element of Tomlin's screenplay is that, for a while at least, it avoids everything the prologue makes us anticipate. The threat of androids, who have overrun swathes of the Eastern coastline and forced surviving humans into makeshift forts, is present but kept in the backdrop. This story isn't about them, or it isn't up to a point in the plot, at least.

No, this is about Georgia, nine-months pregnant and still holding back doubts about her boyfriend, and Sam, trying everything he can to protect the soon-to-be mother of his child and to guarantee a future for, hopefully, this family. The two performances do a lot of the lifting. Moretz is so believably strong of will that we even kind of buy the movie's most ridiculous scene, which features Georgia rolling through a gunfight, fleeing androids, and holding back a swarm of them while confined to a wheelchair. Meanwhile, Algee is sweetly sincere as the boyfriend whose biggest flaw, perhaps, is that Tomlin keeps inventing reasons to make Sam dumber than he has any reason to be.

The actors' boosting of their characters is a necessity here. Tomlin is too busy creating the broad aesthetics (a lot of desolate forest, some grimy bases, a farmhouse that has seen some bad things) and uncertain background (There's really no clear understanding of how the humans are fighting and why the androids seem so passive in this war) of this minimal world. He's manufacturing a basic plot and little conflicts along the way, seemingly on the fly.

Georgia and Sam have to get from where they are to the relatively safety of Boston, and little of note happens—in terms of the plot or these characters—in the early stages of their trek. We get a sense of the relationship, which doesn't evolve or deteriorate from the opening scene, and the general stakes at hand, but that's it.

The third act, which begins with the couple trying to flee some chasing androids on a motorcycle and offers even less in terms of characterization, is basically an extended act of overcompensation for what Tomlin has previously kept off-screen or out of the story. We get a chase, a couple of cat-and-mouse games, a weird helper (played by Raúl Castillo) who knows a lot about androids (The combination of trivia and exposition provided by him is laughably, simultaneously on-the-nose and vague), and yet another chase.

Mother/Android tries to wrap up the human story with an attempted sense of tragedy. It comes across as unearned and mawkish, though, because the humanity of this story is thin at first and snuffed out entirely once the gears of predictable plotting and action start in motion.

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