AI in a dystopian rural America couldn’t be a more current subject. Despite the subject matter and setting, even Saoirse Ronan with Paul Mescal, committed as they are in the lead as a devoted couple, can’t save this confusing film.
This film is based on the best selling novel by Ian Reid and the screenplay was written by Director Garth Davis (Lion) and Reid. The scene is set with a couple isolated on a Midwestern farm surrounded by dead trees, except for one that Hen (Ronan) is trying desperately to save. Junior (Mescal) has a job in a huge poultry processing factory because there is not enough water to grow anything on the farm. Climate change has taken its toll. They are barely surviving in Junior’s 200-year-old family farm house which he refuses to leave.
Davis jumps back and forth on the time line showing them as a loving young couple in 2055, then later in what is presently 2065. Their relationship is quiet, like their life. They love each other but there is no stimulation. They don’t have kids, nor any animals to take care of.
Junior’s work environment is a very sterile, depressing atmosphere with fellow employees in white coats wearing hair nets.
Hen used to play an old piano, but not much anymore. There is so much tension between them. Even though she seduces him with steamy sex, they are both emotionally dead. No sparks.
One day, a visitor named Terrance (Aaron Pierre – Brother) comes knocking at their door with a strange proposal. He is an imposing figure, making it seem as if Junior had won the lottery. Pierre plays his role well as a faux-friendly bureaucrat with big grins and a hidden agenda. He wants Junior to enlist for a year on a space station. While he’s gone Terrance will program a perfect replicant in his place to keep Hen company. Once they accept, Junior is put through difficult mental and physical testing probing for intimate details and affectations to create Junior’s twin. It’s more like torture.
And so is watching this film. Ronan, and especially Mescal, bare more than their souls in their dramatic performances but appear as if they had no idea what they were supposed to be portraying. The plot is a confusing mess trying to tackle too many issues about life in the future. Even a beetle is used to blur the lines between AI and humans.
Director Davis presents too many mixed messages in a film that drags on with plot twists not at all satisfying leading to unnecessarily gruesome scenes by the finale. This disorganized film is neither friend nor foe, but certainly not friendly.
MGM. 108 Minutes Rated R
