Starring Saoirse Ronan, Paul Mescal, Aaron Pierre

Directed by Garth Davis

Streaming on Amazon

When Junior is conscripted to work on a giant space station designed to relocate humanity from a dying planet, he is upset to learn that he will be replaced by an identical sentient AI who will keep his wife company while he’s gone.

Why?

That was the question that haunted me throughout the 110 very long minutes of Amazon’s latest contribution to science fiction’s increasingly tedious attempts to squeeze the last drops from our neuroses about the threats or otherwise we face from Artificial Intelligence. In some movies, these AIs are out to get us; in others they are our friends; in a few, they’re terribly hard done by and we’re out to get them. Although, the choice of collective pronoun here does rather depend on whether I can be sure that I am actually human myself as I type this – although if I’m not, why would I care?

Anyway, in Foe, the challenge seems to be to create an AI even whingier and whinier than its human original. Why would anyone want to do that, let alone a top cybernetics team? Why on Earth (especially a dying Earth) would they pick the planet’s most tedious, indolent couple, who spend their days doing very little aside from puckering up their faces and crying about nothing very important, in between singing along tunelessly to the music supervisor’s vinyl collection, and having sex, or finding other excuses to get Paul Mescal’s kit off?

And that’s not the only ‘why’ by any means.

Why are we stuck on this dreary farm in the middle of nowhere rather than up on the exciting looking space station? Why, if the planet is toast, are they bothering to replace anyone at all? Why is the film’s central twist so glaringly obvious from about five minutes into the action?

Why did I agree to review this, meaning I can’t fast forward to the end?

At one point, however, the sinister cybernetics chappie (Aaron Pierre) in his future car, asks the couple why they keep their piano in the cellar. Luckily, once Hen (Saoirse Ronan) starts playing it, the answer to that question is, at least, pretty obvious.

Verdict: There’s no doubting the talent and commitment of the two leads, and there’s a lot of ‘acting’ going on in this film, but nothing can salvage Foe from its worst offence – it’s not just nonsensical, it’s very, very boring. On the upside, you do get to see a naked A-lister being vacuum packed, so, every cloud… 2/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com