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‘Mother/Android’ Review: The Future Looks Bleak for Chloë Grace Moretz and Her Baby

This Hulu Original offers a dystopian sci-fi scenario that starts with a bang, even if it falters in the later going.

By Dennis Harvey

Dennis Harvey

Film Critic

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Ending a year begun saving her baby from a gremlin in deliberately outrageous “Shadow in the Cloud,” Chloë Grace Moretz again suffers peril-fraught maternity as half of the title equation in “ Mother/Android .” This sci-fi thriller, launching on Hulu Dec. 17, offers a more sobersided survival tale set in an imminent future where humanity’s artificial helpmates have turned against their creators. It’s a familiar dystopian premise that plays out in narrative terms redolent of myriad recent movies like “A Quiet Place.”

Still, at least to a point, it’s lent sufficient engrossing urgency by Mattson Tomlin in his commercial-feature directorial debut. He wrote two other fantasy-tinged tales released last year, “Little Fish” and “Project Power.” This project is ostensibly more personal, inspired by the Romanian biological parents who apparently gave him up as an infant amidst the turmoil of that nation’s 1989 revolution. But “Mother/Android” falls short when it attempts to grasp a similar degree of tragic parental sacrifice later on, faring best in the straightforward fugitive suspense of its first half.

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At a subsequent Christmas party, however, they suddenly have much worse developments to deal with. In this near-future, the only significant difference from our present reality is that robotics have advanced to the point where many households have entirely human-looking/acting android servants. Unfortunately, that workforce chooses this particular moment to rebel, with immediate, bloody consequences.

Eight months later, Sam and the almost-due Georgia are living in the woods, doing their best to escape notice by the machines that by now have largely destroyed society. They hope for a chance at a new start abroad; some less-afflicted countries like Korea are rumored to still accept fleeing young emigrant families. But first they need to cross a “No Man’s Land” and reach the harbors of Boston. For a while they’re taken in at a military base, but leave it (or rather get ejected) in worse straits than they arrived. They try making a run for it with a motorcycle they’ve acquired. At the film’s midpoint, however, the pair get separated, Georgia landing in the custody of apparent lone-wolf AI engineer Arthur (Raul Castillo), who claims “I’m alive because I know how they think.”

Though “Mother/Android” remains watchable enough, from this point onward it grows less gripping and plausible. Tomlin’s screenplay deserves credit for mixing things up, introducing new characters and narrative turnabouts. But nothing is again as bluntly compelling as the early going, and despite hardworking principal performances, these characters and their movie lack the emotional depth to pull off an earnestly teary, draggy finale.

Aiming for something more than a gritty genre piece, Tomlin lets tension flag without really clinching the poignantly universal humanist message intended. Which in the end just makes this an initially solid, then somewhat disappointing genre piece whose pretensions are out of its weight class. Nonetheless, it’s well-crafted and resourceful within its bounds, smoothly integrating Massachusetts locations and modest FX to create a credible-enough portrait of a civilized world that’s badly eroded in just a few short months.

Reviewed online, Dec. 15, 2021. MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 110 MIN.

Production: A Hulu release of a Hulu, Miramax presentation of a 6th & Idaho Motion Picture Co. production. Producers: Matt Reeves, Bill Block, Mattson Tomlin, Rafi Crohn, Adam Kassan, Charles Miller. Executive producers: Andrew Golov, Thomas Zadra.
Crew: Director, writer: Mattson Tomlin. Camera: Pat Scola. Editor: Andrew Groves. Music: Michelle Birsky, Kevin Henthorn.
With: Chloe Grace Moretz, Algee Smith, Raul Castillo, Linnea Gardner, Kiara Pichardo, Oscar Wahlberg, Christian Mallen, Jared Reinfeldt, Liam McNeil, Stephen Thorne, Kate Avallone.

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Mother/Android Reviews

Though it has a strong sense of urgency and a backstory worth rooting for, Mother/Android is a bland Netflix Sci-Fi flick that takes influence from many before it yet doesn't have enough flair of its own.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 25, 2023

There’s a sense of irony in the fact that this story is about the humanity of emotional connections distinguishing us from the cold callousness of machines.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Sep 22, 2022

A stale and spineless post-apocalyptic thriller.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Jul 25, 2022

MotherAndroid isn't the sci-fi movie you think it's going to be, or even the movie it probably wants to be, but it's nonetheless a solid first-time feature from from writerdirector Mattson Tomlin.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 28, 2022

For a property to truly connect with its audience, things still have to make sense. They don't always in this movie.

Full Review | Mar 18, 2022

Low budget sci-fi flick Mother/Android, written and directed by Mattson Tomlin, is no masterpiece but it's a step in the right direction.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 21, 2022

Mother/Android feels like the love child of Children of Men, The Terminator and A Quiet Place and, as such, commits the biggest sins of speculative fiction-it's short on originality and long on derivative ideas.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 13, 2022

Though Moretz does everything in her power to lend some credibility to this bloated drama, the lack of thought behind the post-apocalyptic pregnancy makes for a dull viewing experience.

Develops in a very unsatisfactory way. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 10, 2022

Chloë Grace Moretz's great performance elevates the narrative. All of this manages to stay afloat thanks to her. [Full Review in Spanish]

Full Review | Jan 6, 2022

Seemingly based in the premise that human emotion is at the heart of all compelling sci-fi, this film misfires a bit by focusing too heavily on the drama of a pregnant couple in an apocalyptic world.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 5, 2022

The film deflates between its narrative flatness, lack of creativity and a supposedly emotional resolution that seems to be inserted with forceps. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 3, 2022

In the end, Mother/Androidis a dramatic triumph that uses cosmic horror alchemy to get some serious expressionism across. Well worth the trip into the dark woods.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Jan 2, 2022

The pic failed to impress, but I take my hat off to Chloë Grace Moretz for giving it her all over this hokum.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Dec 28, 2021

Despite a solid message and compelling performances from its leads, Mother/Android fails to flesh out enough details to make for a coherent storyline.

Full Review | Dec 23, 2021

Even though its personal backstory is touching, this weird apocalyptic survival thriller lacks thrills and even elicits unexpected laughter at what are supposed to be its most poignant moments.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Dec 21, 2021

Like its confusing title, Mother/Android never really figures out what it wants to say.

Full Review | Original Score: 6.0/10 | Dec 21, 2021

It starts just before a Yuletide party. And, maybe as an unfortunate portent of things to come -- in a restroom!

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 19, 2021

Mother/Android has some very interesting ideas, but cannot balance its themes while simultaneously maintaining interest in its leading characters.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/5 | Dec 19, 2021

Whenever you deal with post-apocalyptic movies... they tend to be about a bunch of dirty humans in the woods trying to find their way around.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Dec 18, 2021

Mother/Android (2021)

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Hulu’s Mother-Android Review: A Robot Apocalypse Drama Brilliantly Focused On The Human Cost Of Survival

Writer/director mattson tomlin uses a familiar set-up to ask some deep moral questions..

Chloë Moretz-Grace and Algee Smith standing in the middle of a camp in Mother/Android.

Words like “robot apocalypse” conjure a bunch of familiar images when uttered. Battalions of human and android troops marching towards each other with a constant blasts of laser beams tend to be some of the most immediate concepts that come to mind. You can blame decades of sci-fi/action projects conditioning the audience to almost demand those sorts of things, and it’s part of why some might initially shy away from writer/director Mattson Tomlin’s Mother/Android . For a movie that takes place during such an event, the action is supplanted by drama brilliantly focused on the human cost of survival, and the film is all the better for it.

Things start out pretty low-key too, as our introduction to this world shows us human couple Georgia (Chloë Grace Moretz) and Sam (Algee Smith) discovering that they have an unexpected baby on the way, testing the fragile status of their relationship. Discussing how to handle this news, the audience is slowly brought up to speed in terms of the subtly futuristic reality these two live in, thanks to the inclusion of very humanoid looking androids shown in use as domestic assistants. When the robot apocalypse begins and these artificial slaves begin their uprising, it’s only for a brief moment so as to set up the world, rather than plunge Mother/Android into total sci-fi warfare.

In fact, there’s a sparse number of sequences where androids are even present for a good piece of Tomlin’s directorial debut. The decision is admittedly jarring, as the expectation would be to see Georgia and Sam literally fighting for their lives every step of the way. That would be the action/adventure version of this story – but that’s not the angle here. Instead, Mattson Tomlin plants his story’s lens firmly on the relationship between our leads, with some well timed injections of tension and fighting.

Rather than tell another story of battling artificial intelligence, Mother/Android constantly questions how far a person could, and should, go to survive.

Survival is the key ingredient to Mother/Android’s thematic blueprint, as our focus is trained on Chloë Grace-Moretz and Algee Smith almost the whole movie. The first two acts show their characters planning their uncertain future, while mapping out exactly what they have to do in order to make it to those supposedly sunny days. Whispers of hope, and a potential escape for new families via a boat in Boston, are continually repeated; as Georgia and Sam move through the woods to their intended destination. Obstacles are overcome, simple demands like a comfortable mattress to sleep on are evaluated and hunted down – but the threats of the outside world are always in the corner of the characters' minds.

Even knowing full well what the endgame is throughout the film, the scope of this extended woodland journey doesn’t budge much past a relatively street level approach. A big chase sequence in the woods opens up a little bit through the use of drones, but other than that, the establishing shots of the wider world are limited. No complaints are present in that assessment though, as the character work that is intended to set the pace of Mother/Android is well plotted, and engrossing to watch.

Carrying the majority of the first two acts of their story, Chloë Grace-Moretz and Algee Smith are compelling to follow. Some of the beats that you’d expect are hit, such as Georgia and Sam encountering a military encampment full of people they don’t exactly trust. But that plotline doesn’t act as a major pivotal moment as it would in other apocalyptic stories, as Mother/Android sets our survivors on their path rather quickly. It’s that sort of pacing that firmly establishes the personal stakes of the story, as the protagonists are forced to think on their feet at all times with safety never being a guarantee.

The drama between Chloë Grace-Moretz and Algee Smith carries the film along effortlessly, but Raúl Castillo delivers an amazing supporting performance that makes the most of his time on screen.

Humanity in times like the robot apocalypse can get pretty sentimental, but Chloë Grace-Moretz and Smith anchor the action with believable performances. There are a couple moments here and there where the beats feel a little too well worn, especially with Georgia’s slightly repetitive announcement of her pregnancy early on. Much like the rhythm of the story, the acting in Mother/Android locks in tight and fast, giving this novel and intimate narrative characters who are worth following.

The addition of other characters to stir the pot is just as selective, with Raúl Castillo’s Arthur acting as the best example of the limited-but-effective expansion of scope and cast. Castillo shows up towards the end of the second act, but he is efficiently established with a clear purpose in this universe. Using limited screen time to his advantage, Castillo makes a sizable dent when the story needs him to, and his performance puts him on the same level as Chloë Grace-Moretz and Algee Smith's leading pair.

Largely avoiding blockbuster set pieces and melodrama, Mother/Android is a low-key robot apocalypse that cranks things up in deliberate measure.

There are times that Mother/Android invokes the memory of Children of Men , right down to a subplot involving a seafaring organization called “The Family Initiative.” It’s an influence that’s properly felt, but never goes overboard at any point during Mattison Tomlin’s film. Though the pacing and intent may throw off some audiences at the start, and some moments in Chloë Grace-Moretz’s performance fall a little flat, none of it ruins what eventually becomes a solid sci-fi drama/thriller that isn’t afraid to do things differently.

By largely avoiding blockbuster set pieces and melodrama, Mother/Android 's action and suspense are heightened with great clarity when things do start to get chaotic. The third act has a particularly effective payoff thanks to the time we’ve spent establishing how this world works with Georgia and Sam. Without the proper balance of character and world building, the moments that the movie decides to play things a bit faster and flashier wouldn’t have nearly as much gravity as they do by the end of the picture.

If Mother/Android is a movie about any sort of message, it’s about weighing the choices you have in front of you carefully. Sam does get a moment of dialogue where he states the usual intent of sacrificing himself for his family – if the situation calls for it. In any other film, that would be stock heroism, but here, the field of play is established so well that anyone will find themselves questioning if any of our protagonists will make it out alive, and what they’ll have to do to achieve that goal.

The future is dangerous and emotional in this sci-fi thriller, making this a feature directorial debut that establishes a clear and commanding genre storytelling voice for Mattson Tomlin. This is particularly is fantastic, because that also means this film is a pretty ringing endorsement for what he might be able to do with the anime project set in the Terminator franchise that he is developing for Netflix. Judging by the promise shown in Mother/Android , Tomlin’s future as a writer, and even a director, is as bright as the hopes humanity clings to during the robot apocalypse.

Mike Reyes is the Senior Movie Contributor at CinemaBlend, though that title’s more of a guideline really. Passionate about entertainment since grade school, the movies have always held a special place in his life, which explains his current occupation. Mike graduated from Drew University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science, but swore off of running for public office a long time ago. Mike's expertise ranges from James Bond to everything Alita, making for a brilliantly eclectic resume. He fights for the user.

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Summary Set in the near future, Mother/Android follows Georgia (Chloë Grace Moretz) and her boyfriend Sam (Algee Smith) through their treacherous journey of escape as their country is caught in an unexpected war with artificial intelligence. Days away from the arrival of their first child, they must face No Man’s Land, a stronghold of the androi ... Read More

Directed By : Mattson Tomlin

Written By : Mattson Tomlin

Mother/Android

Chloë Grace Moretz

Algee smith, raúl castillo, linnea gardner, kiara pichardo, oscar wahlberg, christian mallen, jared reinfeldt, liam mcneill, stephen thorne, jon f. merz, tamara hickey, jason bowen, boston lieutenant, korean official, officer norton, kate avallone, doctor howe, celeste oliva, boston doctor, david pridemore, desperate man, critic reviews.

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‘Mother/Android’ review: pregnant in the apocalypse with nowhere to run

When killer robots want your guts, an accidental baby is the last thing you need

T here’s never really a good time for a robot uprising to start. But when you’re at a party and you’ve literally just found out that you’re pregnant (with a guy you don’t really even like that much), the last thing you want to do is fight off an army of killer terminators.

Someone got lazy coming up with a title for this post-apocalyptic thriller – a film that’s half about a pregnancy, and half about trying to survive in a sci-fi wasteland full of deadly machines. Chloë Grace Moretz ( Kick Ass ) and Algee Smith ( Euphoria ) are reluctant new parents on the run in director Mattson Tomlin’s dour, lo-fi debut, spending more time trying to avoid comparisons with A Quiet Place , The Last Of Us and The Walking Dead than they are outrunning robots.

Starting strong, the apocalypse arrives with a screech of electronic noise. This is the near future, and androids are a regular part of everyday life (looking exactly like us, mostly working as butlers – happily serving shots to teens if they hear the right parental lock pin code). Georgia (Moretz) has just found out that she’s pregnant by Sam (Smith), and she’s crying in the bathroom of a house party when everyone’s phone blacks out and the staff start choking, stabbing and shooting everyone they see.

There’s a smart social allegory buried somewhere in Tomlin’s film – with waiters, delivery drivers and street sweepers revolting against America’s middle classes – but whatever potential it has gets lost in cliché and a whole lot of time spent watching Moretz sitting in a soggy tent in the woods.

We jump forward nine months, and the rest of Mother/Android takes place just as Georgia is about to give birth, now partnered up properly with Sam and desperately looking for a safe place to deliver a baby in the rural wilds of a world that’s still stalked by machines. The derivative aspects of the film don’t do it any favours, and where John Krasinski found originality and creativity, Tomlin only finds the recycled offcuts of a dozen other (better) films, stretching his low budget in all the wrong places until everything feels a bit cheap.

Thankfully, Moretz and Smith are both great – grounding a corny script with real sensitivity, and doing a brilliant job of bringing it all to life. Moretz drags herself through the wringer in a string of increasingly tough (and increasingly silly) emotional scenes – giving the film’s daft ending far more weight than it actually deserves.

COVID has meant there’s less appetite for dystopian sci-fi at the moment, but recent films like Love And Monsters , The Mitchells vs. The Machines and Tom Hanks’ Finch have all managed to find interesting ways of making us care again – flipping the tired old formula on its head with cartoons, comedies and fresh angles. Mother/Android doesn’t fail because it’s a bad apocalypse survival film, it fails because it’s the exact same apocalypse survival film we’ve been rewatching for years already. If Moretz was any less convincing we’d be rooting for the robots, just to mix things up a bit.

Director: Mattson Tomlin
Starring: Chloë Grace Moretz, Algee Smith, Raúl Castillo
Release date: January 7 ( Netflix )
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Mother/Android (Netflix) Movie Review

This one, like so many direct to streaming offerings, is all filler, very little killer.

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Lumbered with a string of duds, Chloë Grace Moretz is one of those actors that always seems to turn up good in bad things. Not universally true, as she demonstrated some comedy acumen from a young age in Kick Ass and, more recently, a little heavier lifting in the masterful Luca Guadagnino reimagining of Suspiria . But for every hit, there are simply too many misses. Her ratio is all off. Her latest, Mother/Android only cements her title as “the best thing about a dull movie.”

Shortly before heading out to a Christmas party, college student, Georgia discovers she’s pregnant. As her and her boyfriend Sam leave the house, their distinctly human-looking android wishes them a happy Halloween. This is only the first sign that things are amiss, and when a technological malfunction goes national, Georgia and Sam are left fighting for survival living in the woods in fear of the new android army stalking the US.

Beyond the almost non-sequitur title (yes there is a mother, yes there are androids but, thematically, neither are of much consequence until the final 15 minutes) there isn’t much to ponder about Mattson Tomlin’s debut feature. The plot plays out like a combination of 28 Days Later and A Quiet Place , though taking only surface details from either and treating those details as disposably as the majority of the half-introduced and half-baked “original” concepts.

... chief among the missteps of Mother/Android is its pacing.

As Sam and Georgia make their way toward a rumoured safe haven they stumble across every plot beat you might remember from other, more competent movies, each unfolding with equal predictability. The execution of these is never less than competent but the word that permeates every thought about the film is “stale.” Retreading old lines is no crime, of course, but here Tomlin’s direction feels very mechanical through its character moments, and erratic and confusing through its action.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, chief among the missteps of Mother/Android is its pacing. The reliance on padding to engineer tension is, at times, a little embarrassing as we sit and watch Sam cut through nearly identical brush with a machete, make almost identical swerves on a dirt bike through the woods, watch as nearly identical scenes play out as both Georgia’s fantasy and the stark reality; the movie is like a plushie of a terminator.

It feels clumsily structured too, as it dips from plot point to plot point, resolving each one as if it were the end of a twenty minute TV episode. The through lines are faint at best.

The powerhouse performance from Chloë Grace Moretz as Georgia is really the only thing preventing this from sinking into the realms of yet more Netflix fodder. Her ability to take some fairly perfunctory material and deliver a heart-wrenching performance is testament to the acting skill she so rarely gets to demonstrate. Because of this, the deep emotional pulls required in the later stages of the movie are its best card, yet they still serve to highlight what a miss the movie is. Algee Smith as Sam creates almost negative screen presence through his barely resonant performance.

What’s missing from the rest of the movie is any consequence...

The film does come around to touching on some weighty material in its final act, once it’s past all its robo-panic, material too close to the bone to not be drawn from life. It’s too little too late, sadly, but it demonstrates that Tomlin does, in fact, have an eye for human tragedy and emotional dialogue when the need arises. What’s missing from the rest of the movie is any consequence relating to… well… motherhood or androids. All possible avenues for the exploration of slavery, humanity, rebellion are shunned in favour of a “zombies but smarter” narrative. Georgia’s pregnancy is nothing more than a mild inconvenience which makes her grunt and groan every few steps. It seems to matter not an ounce when it comes to being a week overdue and, say, riding a dirt bike, or running around the woods.

These are perhaps not beyond the realm of suspension of disbelief for some. But they’re indicative of the fact that, aside from its admittedly powerful final moments, it’s all just a bit thin to make anything out of.

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Mother/android, common sense media reviewers.

Human drama is focus of sci-fi film with violence, language.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

What sets humans apart from other creatures is the

Humans show resilience, courage, love, loyalty, an

The main characters are a White woman and a Black

People and androids are shot, strangled, thrown th

A college-age couple is pregnant. They kiss and cu

Very strong language includes "f--k," "s--t," "hel

Converse, Polaroid brands seen. A man is shocked b

College students drink at a party. Cigarette smoki

Positive Messages

What sets humans apart from other creatures is their capacity for love and emotional connection.

Positive Role Models

Humans show resilience, courage, love, loyalty, and self-sacrifice. Parents are shown as being willing to do anything for their children.

Diverse Representations

The main characters are a White woman and a Black man. Some diversity among secondary characters.

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Violence & Scariness

People and androids are shot, strangled, thrown through glass, threatened, hit with a baseball bat, tortured, punched, and more. Humans are seen dead and bloodied. Skeletons are found. Androids appear to bleed an oil-like substance, and their fake skin melts off their metal structures. A character challenges another on a fight and is said to be left blind in eye. Cityscapes look to be on fire. Characters brand each other with a hot iron. A woman has pregnancy and childbirth pains and discusses how to cut the umbilical cord if she gives birth in the wild. A person's legs are broken and ultimately amputated.

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Sex, Romance & Nudity

A college-age couple is pregnant. They kiss and cuddle. A man is seen naked with his privates covered. A woman tells her boyfriend, "We are not having sex tonight."

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Very strong language includes "f--k," "s--t," "hell," "a--hole," "boobs," "dumb," "oh my God." Middle-finger gesture.

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Products & Purchases

Converse, Polaroid brands seen. A man is shocked by the "arrogance" of humans creating million-dollar AI butlers and expecting everything to go OK.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

College students drink at a party. Cigarette smoking.

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Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Mother/Android is an intense sci-fi story about a young couple ( Chloe Grace Moretz , Algee Smith ) expecting a baby who are on the run from mutinous androids. Violence includes death, threats, and torture: Humans and androids are shot, strangled, thrown through glass, hit with a baseball bat, punched, broken, amputated, blinded, branded with hot irons, and killed. Androids appear to bleed an oil-like substance, and their fake skin melts off their metal structures. Cityscapes look to be on fire. Language is also strong and includes "f--k," "s--t," "hell," "a--hole," "boobs," "dumb," and "oh my God." Human characters display resilience, courage, love, loyalty, and self-sacrifice, and the film's message is that what sets humans apart from robots -- and what also makes them more vulnerable -- is their capacity for love and emotional connection. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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What's the Story?

At the start of MOTHER/ANDROID -- set in the near future, when every house has a robot butler -- college student Georgia ( Chloe Grace Moretz ) and her boyfriend, Sam ( Algee Smith ), find out they're pregnant right before leaving Georgia's parents' house for a party. During the party, something happens that turns the androids violent, and the humans find themselves vulnerable to the stronger robots. Flash forward nine months, and a very pregnant Georgia and Sam are surviving in the wilderness and evading the androids. They hatch a plan to get to a safe nearby city to give birth and hopefully escape the country.

Is It Any Good?

Seemingly based in the premise that human emotion is at the heart of all compelling sci-fi, this film misfires a bit by focusing too heavily on the drama of a pregnant couple in an apocalyptic world. Mother/Android is much more "mother" than "android." There's some tension around Georgia and Sam's survival (and that of their imminent baby), but the murderous robots and the circumstances involving their rebellion deserved more development.

The performances are compelling -- particularly Moretz, who's a very credible pregnant woman on the run -- and the grey tonality of the film successfully conveys the harshness of their situation. But the story's focus may disappoint both those looking for romantic drama and those looking for sci-fi action. And the ending forces the actors into a scene that feels disconnected from the rest of the film.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the premise for Mother/Android . Can you imagine a time when every house has a robot butler? Do you think this is an attractive future? Why, or why not?

A character mentions a Czech play from the 1920s that mirrors the plot of the film. Does it surprise you to know robots were a topic of interest to artists so long ago? Where could you go for more information about Karel Capek's work?

How would you describe the look of this film? What emotions do the color scheme and the music evoke?

How do characters demonstrate courage ? Why is that an important character strength ?

What role does violence play in the film? How did it make you feel? What did the movie show or not show to achieve this effect? Why is that important?

Movie Details

On DVD or streaming : December 17, 2021
Cast : Chloe Grace Moretz , Algee Smith , Raul Castillo
Director : Mattson Tomlin
Inclusion Information : Female actors, Black actors, Latino actors
Studio : Hulu
Genre : Science Fiction
Topics : Robots
Character Strengths : Courage
Run time : 110 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : violence and language
Last updated : December 7, 2022

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Home » Movie News » Mother/Android Review

Mother/Android Review

Plot: Set in the near future, Mother/Android follows Georgia and her boyfriend Sam through their treacherous journey of escape as their country is caught in an unexpected war with artificial intelligence. Days away from the arrival of their first child, they must face No Man’s Land – a stronghold of the android uprising, in hopes of reaching safety before giving birth.

Review: There are some movies that will hit you emotionally far more than you expect. When Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men hit theaters, I was a new father. Seeing a world devoid of children and the lengths that Clive Owen goes to in order to protect one baby reduced me to tears. It has been a long time since a film has impacted me in such a guttural way. Mattson Tomlin’s directorial debut Mother/Android is such a film with a devastating story of the trials and tribulations of birth and parenthood under the most extreme circumstances. Throw in some solid science fiction elements like killer androids and you have a layered genre feature that also manages to be an engrossing drama. Featuring strong performances from Chloe Grace Moretz, Algee Smith, and Raul Castillo, Mother/Android wowed me.

Like an episode of Black Mirror, Mother/Android is set in a near-future that looks eerily like the present only where technology allows for the majority of people to own robotic servants. From maids and butlers to public works roles, androids exist everywhere and are designed to be subjugated. One night, everything changes when the androids rise up and begin to slaughter humanity. All of this is shown in the opening minutes of the film where we also meet Georgia (Chloe Grace Moretz) and Sam (Algee Smith) within hours after they learn that Georgia is pregnant. Nine months later, we see the fallout from the android uprising and find Georgia and Sam looking for a safe place to have their baby. Thrust into a post-apocalyptic world, this two young parents-to-be must not only contend with murderous machines but also the impending baby that could come at any second.

For the first forty-five minutes of the film, we get a crash course on how the world works after everything falls apart. With limited resources and a No Man’s Land controlled by the enemy, humanity is segmented into small clusters, many of which are supported by soldiers. Temperature checks and scans reveal who is human and who is not. Georgia and Sam must barter and negotiate for everything or risk being on their own. Eventually, they come across Arthur (Raul Castillo), a man with knowledge and skills that can help them survive the androids. What follows in the remaining two-thirds of the movie cannot be revealed here without spoiling the twists this story takes, but I will tell you that every time I figured out what was coming next, Tomlin added another curveball. By the end of Mother/Android, I was left with emotional whiplash.

What works so well about this movie, and likely what drew Matt Reeves to help produce it, is the lo-fi quality of the science fiction. When they are on screen, the androids look human, but the solid FX work does its job when necessary. With subtle effects like glowing eyes or machinery seen through ripped skin, Mother/Android makes the androids believable without turning them into CGI. The threat is always tangible. The film also succeeds by not relying on genre tropes to tell its story. Like John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place, Mother/Android is a character study of these people experiencing something no one has before. It is a testament to both Chloe Grace Moretz and Algee Smith that they play their roles so believably that you would think they both had been parents before.

The final thirty minutes of this movie are what hit me the hardest and make the entire experience of Mother/Android worth watching. Where any other genre movie would likely have ended, Mother/Android keeps going and tells us a far more personal story. There is no SkyNet or big bad in this story, just the journey of Georgia and Sam. Where and how the androids play into the equation is vital to this story, but Mattson Tomlin never makes this a movie about the rise or the fall of the machines. This is the story of two parents and their child. Because of that, how this movie ends is far more impactful and emotionally resonant than it would have been had this been about Sarah Connor and her son, John.

Mother/Android reminded me a great deal of seeing Matt Reeves’ work on Cloverfield and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. You immediately know that Mattson Tomlin has an eye as a filmmaker and the skills as a screenwriter to tell a vital, human story within the conceits of a genre movie. With a subtle score by Kevin Henthorn and Michelle Birsky, Tomlin’s film packs a season of top-tier television storytelling into a feature-length run time. This a profoundly resonant story that will impact everyone who watches it differently, but parents will feel a uniquely strong connection to the journey that Georgia and Sam go through. This is a wonderfully transcendent science fiction tale that is full of intense thrills and drama. I left this movie impacted and cannot wait to watch it again.

Mother/Android

About the Author

Alex Maidy has been a JoBlo.com editor, columnist, and critic since 2012. A Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic and a member of Chicago Indie Critics, Alex has been JoBlo.com's primary TV critic and ran columns including Top Ten and The UnPopular Opinion. When not riling up fans with his hot takes, Alex is an avid reader and aspiring novelist.

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Review: ‘Mother/Android’

Post-apocalyptic stories are fast reaching the point of ubiquity, making it even harder for a writer or director to bring anything to the table that hasn’t been seen or done before at least a handful of times already. What makes Mother/Android stand out from the pack, though, is that it’s an end-of-the-world sci-fi thriller that also doubles as an intensely personal story for writer and first-time feature director Mattson Tomlin.

As an infant, the future writer of Netflix smash hit Project Power and Matt Reeves’ The Batman was given up by his biological Romanian parents in 1989 during the country’s revolution, which helped shape him into the man he is today. Taking essentially the same concept and melding it onto an ambitious road trip narrative with plenty of twists and turns, Mother/Android is an ambitious debut, if not always a completely successful one.

The story opens with Chloë Grace Moretz’s Georgia and her boyfriend Sam, played by Euphoria ‘s Algee Smith, discovering that they’ve got a baby on the way. Before they can even wrap their heads around becoming parents, the sentient androids that have become hired help for humans suffer a short circuit on a global scale, immediately thrusting us into a thrilling scrap set at a party that boasts plenty of urgency.

Just when you think we’re getting an action-heavy interpretation of the robot uprising, Tomlin pulls the rug out from under us for the first of several times. Instead, we’re dropped into a relationship drama nine months into the future, with Georgia way past her due date, desperately seeking a place where she can safely give birth without having to worry about a murderous super-intelligence trying to kill her.

Traversing across the dangerous and often deadly No Man’s Land, Sam and Georgia eventually sidle up to a military base, where they don’t last long. Forced out onto the road again, their only beacon of hope are whispers that if they make it to the water in Boston, rescue ships will be able to safely escort them and their child to safety, which facilitates a ticking-clock element in a plot that arguably needs it by the time we hit the halfway mark.

Mother/Android can often luxuriate in its own languid pace, and while that’s hardly a bad thing when Moretz owns every scene with Smith providing stellar support, it often stalls the momentum. There are set pieces and lashings of genuine excitement peppered throughout the running time, but it often seems as though Tomlin is deliberately grinding things to a halt to make the pyrotechnics more impactful, which ends up giving the entire movie a stop/start feeling that it never shakes.

Eventually, our intrepid duo stumble upon Raul Castillo’s engineer Arthur, living alone in the woods having very possibly gone completely insane. He claims to have developed technology that prevents detection by the robots, and his new toys are put to the test in a pulse-pounding rescue mission that makes great use of its minimalistic setting to invoke genuine dread as Georgia stalks around a house packed to the brim with enemies who want her dead, and all she’s got is the word of a stranger that it won’t go horribly wrong.

Things begin to grow increasingly less plausible as Mother/Android careens into its third act, but sci-fi has never been a form of cinema particularly concerned with realism. One of the film’s greatest strengths is a bit of an oxymoron; it leans into tropes and archetypes to the extent you can see them coming from a mile off, but right at the last second Tomlin’s screenplay pivots in an altogether different direction.

There are at least a couple of genuine twists that you may not see coming, and while diving too far into the minutiae would constitute outright spoilers, the reveals are gut-punching when you hear them out loud, but yet elegantly simple and predictable when you think about it for a second or two. Tomlin is regarded as one of the fastest-rising purveyors of genre fare in Hollywood for a reason, and it’s his seamless ability to play the hits that you love while still leaving you wondering if you’ve just heard the original or a brand new cover version that gained him the reputation in the first place.

We saw it in Project Power where the superhero origin story was given a fresh coat of paint, we’re sure to see it when Robert Pattinson debuts as the Dark Knight in The Batman , and he may even be the guy to get Terminator right for the first time in two decades after being tasked by Netflix to develop an anime-inspired series based on the classic franchise.

Mother/Android isn’t all that it could have been, and it’s got a fairly saggy middle section despite only running for less than two hours, but it’s a stark, singular and engrossing piece that really sings when it hits those narrative and performative high notes. Look elsewhere if all you want is action, but as a thought-provoking sci-fi that simultaneously subverts and upends expectations despite leaning hard into them either directly before or after, it’s definitely worth a watch.

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Warning: Major spoilers for Mother/Android ahead.

Dystopian sci-fi drama Mother/Android has many twists and turns that lead to a heart-shattering ending, which resolves many of the questions that arise throughout the movie. The post-apocalyptic thriller is written and directed by Mattson Tomlin, and it’s set in a contemporary version of North America where androids are used as butlers and household help until they revolt and a civil war between them and humans starts. Despite getting mixed reviews, Mother/Android has an ending that has lingered with audiences.

Mother/Android follows Georgia ( horror movie star Chloë Grace Moretz ) and Sam (Algee Smith) as they are on their winter break visiting Georgia’s family when they realize that they’re expecting a baby. At the same time, the android revolt starts. The movie then flashes nine months forward to find Sam and Georgia in survival mode, trying to cross the wilderness to reach Boston. From there, boats depart for South Korea, where they might have a future with the baby they’re expecting. The feat is particularly difficult not only because of the ongoing civil war but also because Boston is surrounded by a no man’s land, an impenetrable area controlled by androids that is impossible to cross.

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Led by a game cast of characters, Mother/Android skillfully mixes common sci-fi themes, such as human-android conflicts and a country in disarray because of a civil war, with more personal themes. Every day struggles such as being unsure about a partner or deciding how to handle an unexpected pregnancy are superseded by the more difficult decision of whether or not to send their baby away so that he might have a future. The dystopian drama packs many twists and unexpected, heart-wrenching turns that lead to a painful but somehow hopeful end. Here’s the meaning of Mother/Android 's ending twists explained.

Why The Androids Turn On Humanity

Mother/Android Why Did The Android Turn On Humanity

Although Mother/Android does not directly explain the reason for the organized uprising by the butler androids in the U.S., Atypical cast member Raúl Castillo’s Arthur offers a possible explanation after he saves Georgia from the androids outside Boston. Arthur's explanation takes the form of a philosophical debate about the concept of playing God. In it, he uses Karel Capek’s 1920 play R.U.R. about a scientist’s creation of the " roboti ," constructs made of flesh and artificial components, as an example. Arthur advances that even just the creation of the word " robot " is the origin of all the evil, as the very existence of the word will give humans the idea to create it. Thus, they essentially play God, just as Capek’s scientist did. And just like Capek’s play, it must end in tragedy, as, after being used as household help and servants, it's inevitable the androids would end up revolting against their human masters, resulting in humanity’s extinction.

Arthur's Twist & The Androids' Goal Explained

Mother/Android Did The Androids Reach Their Goal

Army of the Dead actor Raúl Castillo’s Arthur represents the best of humanity when he saves Georgia and helps her get Sam back, even accompanying the two of them to Boston. When Georgia finally pieces together that the coat/armor Arthur gave her was a placebo, meaning that the androids she faced were avoiding her to pursue some other goal, she realizes that Arthur isn’t actually helping them. Arthur’s twist changes everything for humanity in Mother/Android : not only does he ends up leading some of the androids into Boston, but he also reveals himself to Georgia as being an android himself, with his own ulterior motives. In doing so, Arthur reminds Georgia of something he told her when they first met: the androids are winning the war against humans as, while humans are wired to process and pursue love with other humans, for androids the only thing that matters is their final goal of obliterating humanity.

Individual androids do not matter; only their goal matters. So they easily sacrifice themselves if it means the ultimate goal is reached, and in Arthur’s case, it was reaching Boston and helping the androids infiltrate the city and take it over. The city of Boston is painted throughout Mother/Android as one of the few outposts that are free from the androids and safe for humans, but that isn’t the case after Chloë Grace Moretz’s character leads Arthur to it. Worse, it also upends one of humanity's last strongholds in a catch-22. Boston has the means to defend itself from the androids as it has one EMP that can be used to disable them. However, any other android that is not in the blast zone can then enter Boston as EMPs can only be used once, making Boston effectively unprotected, which is what happens when Georgia decides to use the EMP.

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Why Georgia Decides To Use The EMP

When Georgia realizes Arthur’s ultimate goal, she runs into the Boston compound with her newborn son Forest to look for the EMP and protect it. But she soon learns she's too late. Arthur and other androids are not only already inside Boston, but have already found the EMP and are about to deactivate it. Thus, Georgia is left without much of a choice. Kick-Ass 2 star Moretz ’s Georgia could, indeed, decide to perish in order to protect the city. But, cornered between the EMP and the net that is the only thing protecting her from a swarm of lethal androids, and with her Forest on her, she does the only thing she can think of to protect her newborn while simultaneously destroying the androids: activate the EMP. Georgia was in a no-win situation: eventually, the androids would have disabled the EMP. Thus, she makes the choice that will allow her son, Forest, to have a chance at life.

Does Sam Survive Mother/Android's Ending?

Like many other things that Mother/Android implies but doesn’t show or clearly tell, Sam’s death can only be presumed. When Georgia and Sam arrive in Boston, Sam needs surgery after being badly wounded. His legs are amputated, as the damage inflicted by the androids is too much and they can’t be saved; the doctors then tell them that Sam needs further procedures if he wants to live. Euphoria star Algee Smith 's Sam and Georgia had always agreed their goal in reaching Boston was to get on a boat to Korea, but when they finally reach the refugee boat, they're told the only one it can take is their newborn. A horrifying new realization dawns on them: with Boston fallen to the androids and Sam needing medical treatments, he'll probably bleed out before he can find help. As Georgia is shown at the end of Mother/Android burning the only picture she has of her, Sam, and Forest, before walking alone through Boston, it can be assumed that Sam died. The theme of him sacrificing to protect Georgia and Forest echoes throughout Mother/Android , and his willingness to do so was shown often. As both of them are safer than before, it would seem his goal to protect them was achieved, making his end noble, if no less tragic.

The Dual Meaning Of Mother/Android Explained

One of Mother/Android ’s messages is darker and bleaker. It's the one conveyed by Arthur when he tells Georgia that humanity's imagination is what will always inevitably lead to humanity’s extinction, because imagining things will lead humans to create them, and eventually, their creations will always turn against them. This is a common message in sci-fi movies, especially post-apocalyptic ones that portray a world overrun by evil AI bent on destroying humankind. Another message, more attuned to the spirit of Mother/Android , is told through Sam and Georgia’s personal tragedy of selflessly separating from Forest to give him a chance to live a better life by sending him alone to Korea.

The scene by the water that involves Korean authorities, Sam, Georgia, and Forest is probably the most intimately gut-wrenching of the movie, and it was coincidentally what The Batman ’s co-writer Mattson Tomlin envisioned when he wanted to create a sci-fi drama that, along its usual post-apocalyptic tropes, would also send a message of hope through difficult and intimate personal choices. It's this thread of hope through the devastating ending that makes Mother/Android stand out, and the scene by the water succeeds precisely because it’s personal to Tomlin and thus the heart of the movie. Just like Forest, Tomlin’s biological parents sent him from war-torn Romania to the United States to give him a better chance at life. The post-apocalyptic drama is defined by Tomlin in a new interview as the “ love letter to the parents he doesn’t know. ” While the surface message of Mother/Android may seem bleak, the emotional performances it delivers in the ending scene by the sea reveal the more inspiring message that underpins it.

Next: Mother/Android Review: Compelling Concept, Lackluster Execution

SR Originals

Mother/Android - Review

The hulu film is a lifeless collection of post-apocalyptic clichés..

Mother/Android will stream on Hulu Dec. 17.

In Mattson Tomlin’s post-apocalyptic film Mother/Android, AI expert Arthur (Raul Castillo) explains that the term robot comes from R.U.R, a 1920 play where artificial humans created to provide cheap labor rise up against their creators. His speech is meant to demonstrate the hubris behind humanity’s decision to take a cautionary tale and use it as inspiration, but it really just shows how old the tropes the film is drawing on are, driving home that Mother/Android has nothing new to contribute to the genre.

It follows Georgia (Chloe Grace Moretz), a college student who discovers she’s pregnant and isn’t sure if she wants to keep the baby or even stick with her boyfriend Sam (Algee Smith). But that decision becomes moot when all the android butlers that have become ubiquitous in this near future spontaneously go on a murderous rampage. Maybe it’s the fault of a bad software update? Arthur’s speech is the closest Tomlin, who wrote and directed the film, ever gets to an explanation.

Cut to months in the future where the United States has largely fallen to the androids, the survivors hiding in remote military bases or cities protected by EMP fields. Georgia is just about due and Sam wants to get them all to Boston where they might be able to catch a boat to promised safety in Korea. Why would a boat be sailing around the world from Boston to Korea instead of gathering survivors on the West Coast? Who knows.

Many disaster and post-apocalyptic movies struggle with a conflict where the characters would be better off finding a safe place and staying there, but the action requires them to keep moving and encountering new threats. Mother/Android is a particularly egregious example. Georgia and Sam repeatedly find relative security and Sam keeps driving them forward to take stupid risks in the name of protecting his family, seemingly never learning from the suffering his quest causes along the way.

The couple is so naive and boring it’s almost impossible to care about their plight. Moretz was a standout in Kick-Ass , where she played the ferocious Hit Girl, but here she’s relegated to a doe-eyed plot vessel. Stress often causes pregnant women to deliver early, but Georgia is past due — a ticking time bomb whose activity is dictated by the needs of the plot rather than logic.

Not that there’s really much plot to go on. The film is full of genre cliches, like tough military dudes who reprimand Sam for wanting to flee rather than fight the androids. It’s a mercy that Tomlin cuts away instead of showing a brawl between Sam, who has no combat training and only the power of fatherly love, and a much bigger soldier.

The disaster at the heart of Mother/Android barely matters.

There are a few decent twists, but they can’t redeem the plodding pace and saccharine scenes, like Georgia and Sam naming the things they miss the most about life before the android uprising or inexplicably stopping in their perilous crossing of the no man’s land surrounding Boston to sing and soak their feet.

In many ways, Mother/Android actually resembles another 2021 release, The Mitchells vs the Machines , which also used the robot apocalypse as a framing device for a family story. But, unlike Mother/Android, Mike Rianda’s animated comedy actually had likable characters and a coherent theme, using an AI rebelling against her creator as a metaphor for the strife between a teen and her father.

Aside from another awful monologue from Arthur about how the emotionless robots have come to understand love as the weakness in human programming, the disaster at the heart of Mother/Android barely matters. It’s just an excuse for some mediocre special effects showing metal under flesh or eyes that glow blue seemingly only when the androids are supposed to be scary.

The Verdict

Mother/Android tries to bring an emotional heart to the robot uprising genre, but it’s so laden with tropes and short on personality that it’s hard to care about the characters. What little novelty exists comes far too late in the long, slow movie.

Mother/Android

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Mother/Android is the perfect title for Mattson Tomlin's first film. The bifurcation of the name is between the most human and life-giving subject imaginable (a mother) and the most lifeless, inhuman one science-fiction usually comes up with (an android). It's weirdly ironic, then, that Tomlin's film seems to be a divided subject itself, split between a phenomenal science-fiction picture and a rather bland melodrama without much substance.

The film concerns what's often called the ' technological singularity ,' or the point in which technology becomes so uncontrollable that there is an intelligence explosion of sorts, where artificial intelligence becomes smarter than humans. This kind of hypothesis often leads screenwriters to imagine something awful-- once computers can exponentially develop on their own without the assistance of humankind, then why would the technology keep people around (at least as anything more than meat slaves)? This theme has been seen frequently over the past half-century of technological innovation, as computers become both smarter and smaller. From HAL 9000 to the digital overlords of The Matrix (which the director has literally watched more than 100 times ), cinema has many worst-case scenarios for the fate of the human race.

Non-Specific Singularity

In Mother/Android , the singularity happens rather suddenly (like practically everything else in the film). After a brief introduction, the audience is introduced to a world that looks strikingly similar to contemporary society, though something isn't quite right. At a cozy Christmas party, with the decorated tree and strung lights blinking madly away in the background, one handsome man tells the departing guest, "Happy Halloween, sir." His red Christmas sweater is bursting with holiday cheer.

"Eli, it's Christmas," the guest responds.

"Of course. Merry Christmas, sir."

This is honestly a brilliantly subtle way to introduce the idea of androids and artificial intelligence into the film; the sweater-clad Eli is undoubtedly intelligent, but also disturbingly artificial . The same thing applies to a house party later that evening, where (newly pregnant) protagonists Sam and Georgia wander to. A butler of sorts carries a tray of hors d'oeuvres at an impeccably straight angle, and when one rowdy partier sends a ping-pong ball directly toward his head, the butler catches it in one hand while maintaining perfect control of the tray with his other. It's clear, then, that the film exists in some time period between very distant and possibly soon, though the film never specifies. Ambiguity seems to be key here, with Mother/Android forsaking specific details in order to allow the film to be more universal and apply to numerous allegorical interpretations.

Chloe Grace Moretz and Algee Smith raise their hands in the forest in Mother/Android

Unfortunately, that lack of specificity often misfires when it comes to narrative development and emotional investment. While Georgia is telling a friend at the party how she's uncertain about her new pregnancy and if she wants Sam's baby, there is some kind of electromagnetic or digital event; the film never specifies that, too. A terrifyingly loud, screeching noise assaults everyone's eardrums, and the many cell phones and screens glitch before the android butler suddenly begins killing all of Georgia's friends. Sam (played by Algee Smith) and Georgia (played by Chloe Grace Moretz ) escape the house, only to see the neighborhood and distant city engulfed in flaming chaos. Out of nowhere, the film cuts to eight or nine months later, judging by the size of Georgia's pregnancy.

Related: Best Sci-Fi Movies of the 2010s, Ranked

Mother, Android, and Speed

This is all within ten minutes. The film bursts out of the gate so rambunctiously that it takes no time whatsoever to specify much of anything. The events simply happen without explanation, and even the rest of the film shies away from going into too much detail. The time jump is so sudden, and no attention is called to it other than the inference that Georgia seems pretty pregnant. The film dives straight into its post-apocalyptic world of android wars without hardly any narrative or character development, meaning it's difficult to actually care about the plot and protagonists. Everything is just so quick, and whatever details are fleshed out are not done in the service of more three-dimensional characterization.

The film progresses in this fashion, as Georgia and Sam seek some illusory escape from Boston, Massachusetts to Korea in order to have their child in safety, trying to avoid being killed by both the human military and the relentless androids along the way. The couple is in a military camp for ten minutes, then they're in an arbitrarily discovered home for five minutes; they ride on a motorcycle for five minutes, and then they are separated. It's all simply too fast to be able to humanize these one-dimensional characters, essentially soon-to-be-parents without any distinct personalities of their own. The film ratchets up the melodrama , but it's difficult to find any emotional stakes when the characters are cardboard and the plot moves faster than an android.

Chloe Grace Moretz has her invisibility suit fitted on by Arthur in Mother/Android

However, when Mother/Android decides to simply be a sci-fi action film, it goes all in. The aforementioned motorcycle scene is actually an excellent set-piece, with extremely fast androids hunting down the couple as they speed through the 'No Man's Land' forest, Sam steering away from the trees, and Georgia firing off a gun behind them. Several more set pieces are excellent, with Tomlin mapping out the geography of a space and creating a tense scenario of survival within it. A rescue mission and a wonderfully tense hospital sequence are splendidly directed, silently utilizing every great aspect of an action film (color, sound, editing, acting, special effects, etc.) to create nerve-wracking experiences.

Chloe and Covid

The acting is usually as good as it can be, considering the lack of character depth, especially from Chloe Grace Moretz. She is such an intuitive performer that she somehow gives Georgia an identity that the script never afforded her, and manages to break hearts in one scene where the film doesn't really deserve an emotional response. There is an intimacy to her performance, which makes sense considering this is one of many films with a production that was uniquely warped by the pandemic. Most scenes really only feature two or three actors, undoubtedly due to the strange process of making a film during the age of Covid-19; the simple, low-budget Massachusetts location makes up for the majority of the film's best shots. Tomlin undoubtedly didn't have the $200 million budget to hire 100 full-time nurses and doctors , so he worked with what he had.

The director has said as much, expressing the filmic frustrations caused by the pandemic to the Romania Journal :

Because of Covid, we have to keep a certain distance, wearing masks, and in the case of some of these rooms, it means that there could only be two or three people in the room at a time. Normally on a film set you have a dozen or two dozen people working simultaneously to get the set ready to shoot, and there were so many times where we had to work in waves. It was a disjointed and logistically complex way of doing things that really disrupted any sense of community with the crew.

One wonders just how different (and probably better) the film would've been under different circumstances. Tomlin really does have an eye for action sequences and is filled with interesting ideas (as indicated by his script work on Project Power and The Batman ), but was understandably forced to reduce his imagination to a smaller-scale film. He seems to want to have it both ways, though-- he wants to create a great sci-fi action film (and does), but also wants to excel at the low-key character study the production pushed him into (and doesn't). He's obviously a talented individual, and hopefully learned a lot from his directorial debut here; the next time he yells "Action!" will likely produce much more exciting results.

There is, however, a certain reading of the film which could change everything. If seen in this perspective, the movie is actually an incredibly interesting allegory about adoption. Unfortunately, to elucidate this would mean to spoil the film, so readers have been warned.

Spoilers ahead

A Better Reading

With a little bit of backstory, many of the seemingly negative aspects of the film become somewhat understandable. Tomlin, the Romanian-born director, was given up by his biological parents before he was six months old. "I spent my childhood growing up in a very small town in Massachusetts where there was a lot of woods and not a lot of other people," the director told the Romania Journal. This sounds extremely reminiscent of the heavily forested, sparsely populated Massachusetts setting of Mother/Android . In retrospect, the entire film seems to be Tomlin's attempt at working out the trauma of losing his biological parents at a young age, and the healing process of using art to explore this.

The film ends with the young couple having to give up their newborn baby as the android revolution becomes more intense. They've found the transport from Boston to Korea, but the crew will only take the child, not the parents. Sam is bleeding out to death, and will surely die soon; Georgia wants her child to survive and doesn't know if she's capable of ensuring that with the skyline on fire behind her. The director has essentially tied this storyline with his own autobiography, telling the Romania Journal:

Mother/Android is a love letter to my Romanian biological parents. While the sci-fi elements may be familiar, they really just serve as a vessel to get people to watch the movie. When I sat down to write the film, I took the few things I know about my biological parents and adapted them into this story. For a long time I considered making the movie as a drama, set in 1989 during the Romanian Revolution, but it felt to me that for my first film, I would have an easier time getting the movie made if there were familiar genre elements to lean on. I transposed the Romanian Revolution to a fictional Android Revolution and went from there. Ultimately I wanted to tell an extremely personal and vulnerable story.

With this backstory, the sudden gaps in the narrative, the time jumps, and the one-dimensional characters suddenly make more sense-- these are Tomlin's parents as he imagines them, and he doesn't have much to go on. He uses his imagination to create biological parents who loved him so much but, due to tragic circumstances beyond their control, had to give him up. In a sense, this is devastatingly beautiful; the film as a divided subject makes sense, and its division was actually necessary. Without this lens or perspective, though, Tomlin's film is simply half good, half bad.

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Chloe Moretz

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Mother/Android ending explained: Unpacking that devastating ending

"I didn't want any of this for you."

preview for Mother/Android – official trailer (Hulu)

Mother/Android was one of the sci-fi hits of 2022 for Netflix, even if it left viewers devastated by its bleak finale.

Georgia is just days away from giving birth, leaving the couple facing a perilous journey across an android stronghold to reach safety before she gives birth. And if you think that a happy ending is in store, think again.

"When I first read it I was sobbing, quite frankly," Moretz told Consequence of her reaction to the script, adding that "everyone was not okay" when they filmed the final scenes of the movie.

In order to unpack the revelations of Mother/Android 's dark finale, we have to delve into some major spoilers , so look away now if you haven't seen the movie yet.

chloe grace moretz, algee smith, mother android

Mother/Android ending explained

The movie opens with Georgia in front of a fireplace burning some personal mementos as she says in voiceover: "How do you leave someone? Really, truly leave them. Leave them so far behind that it's like you never met."

In flashbacks, we see Georgia discover she's pregnant on Christmas Eve which is awkward timing. Not only does she want to break up with Sam, but the androids used as household helpers turn violent and start attacking everybody. Even people's smartphones start exploding to add to the danger facing humanity.

Georgia and Sam survive this initial uprising though, and we catch up with them as they're surviving in the forest. She is now nine months pregnant and they're attempting to make it to Boston, where the Family Initiative is taking parents with babies to safety in South Korea.

It's implied that the uprising only happened in the US and the rest of the world is safe, but a war is continuing in the US between humanity and androids. With an EMP set up in Boston, it's a safe place for humans. The problem for Georgia and Sam is that the area outside of Boston is an android stronghold.

Undeterred, the couple make their way to Boston, but after an attack by androids and drones, Georgia and Sam are separated. Georgia is rescued by Arthur (Raúl Castillo), an AI programmer who used to work at Raster Robotics.

raul castillo, chloe grace moretz, mother android

Raster was the company that created the androids, although Arthur doesn't know what went wrong. "What went wrong was we built them in the first place," he tells Georgia, before giving her a sort of camouflage cloak that supposedly hides humans from the androids by masking body heat and the like.

Sam has been taken to an android base, where his captors torture him and break his legs. With the help of Arthur, Georgia breaks into the compound and rescues Sam with the cloak hiding her from the androids.

They make it to the army base in Boston where Georgia gives birth to a baby boy that they call Forest. As a result of his injuries, Sam has had his legs amputated, yet that turns out to be the least of their problems.

When Georgia is told by an army lieutenant that the technology doesn't exist to 'hide' humans from androids, she realises the truth. Arthur isn't a human at all... he's an evil android and it was all a ploy to get him into the army base in order to disable the EMP and let the androids attack Boston.

Georgia wasn't hidden in the android base – they purposefully ignored her in order to make the plan work. Arthur goes on a rampage through the base, but Georgia beats him to the EMP. "Boston is going down today, you can't stop us now," he taunts, before Georgia shoots him and activates the EMP.

As Georgia was told earlier at another army base though, this EMP only destroys androids in its range and activating it leaves Boston defenceless. The city will fall eventually, so Georgia and Sam head to the dock and manage to catch the last boat from the Family Initiative.

Unfortunately, they're told that the boat can only take their baby as "the baby's simple, but you're not". Sam also knows that without hospital treatment, he's going to die from his injuries, so he persuades Georgia to let Forest go on the boat: "If he stays here, there's a good chance he'll die. If he's out there, there's a good chance he'll live."

As Georgia writes a goodbye letter to her son, we see the life that she wishes they had play out on screen: "My boy, my son, my love. I didn't want any of this for you. I would have done anything to give you a normal life."

After Forest is taken away to safety, we cut to some unspecified time later and find Georgia alone in Boston. It's the scene we saw at the start of the movie with her burning personal photos of Sam and the photo they took in the hospital of their new family. It's her attempt at moving on with her life after losing her son and her partner.

The movie ends with Georgia agreeing to go with the army to Portland where they're setting up a new base, given that they've lost Boston to the androids.

What's next for her is unclear, but Moretz confirmed to Consequence that she's definitely alone now and Sam is dead. Sorry guys. "That was a question that I always had for Mattson, is whether or not we were going to see that, and he didn't want to," she explained.

"He wanted it to be pretty clear – and that last shot of me staring into the camera and being completely gone in a lot of ways depicted everything that we needed to... When you go through such a harrowing experience and that trauma, you don't react immediately. She probably won't fully process what happened to her for a very long time."

Moretz also revealed that Mother/Android was inspired by Tomlin's own life experience and, as such, it's a hopeful ending despite what it seems like.

"I think there's a catharsis when you look at Mattson and you see the life that he's lived and where he went, from the time his parents gave him up for adoption during the Romanian revolution and who he's become today," she noted.

"I think there's hope ultimately that humanity can move on and humanity and love will conquer all ultimately. We can move forward."

Mother/Android is available to watch on Netflix in the UK.

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Movies Editor, Digital Spy Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies , attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy , initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.

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Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Mother/Android’ on Hulu, in Which Chloe Grace Moretz Elevates Some Generic Sci-fi

Where to stream:.

Mother/Android
Chloe Grace Moretz

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Hulu’s Mother/Android is a thin-sliver-of-hope post-apocalyptic sci-fi thriller from increasingly notable writer/director Mattson Tomlinson, who scripted Project Power for Netflix, and was brought into The Batman writing room to help out Matt Reeves (who has producer credit here). Last seen talking to spots on a green screen that later became Tom and Jerry, Chloe Grace Moretz headlines as a turbo-preggo woman trying to make her way across a hellscape with the baby’s daddy, avoiding the humanoid robots bent on eradicating all humans on their way to world domination. If that sounds like a familiar premise, you won’t be surprised to learn that Tomlinson’s next reported project is a Terminator anime series, which makes you wonder if Mother/Android is just a practice run for his involvement in a big franchise.

MOTHER/ANDROID : STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Is Georgia (Moretz) superstitious? I ask because she finds out she’s pregnant on the very same night the robot apocalypse begins, which seems like a grim coincidence, maybe a harbinger, or perhaps a small-to-medium amount of doom-ridden portent. She isn’t even sure she wants to be with the dad, Sam (Algee Smith), despite his being a pretty sweet guy who loves her and is immediately ready to commit to her and the child. Good thing for her, since they live in a reality where androids are as common as iPhones, and exist to serve humans – think less Rosie the Robot from The Jetsons , more Ian Holm in Alien . And when the robot butlers get sick of serving canapes and plunging toilets, they rise up and become nasty killbots with glowing blue eyes, an event that comes to be known as The Blitz, which is much catchier than The Night the Robot Butlers Lost Their Shit and Started Killin’ Folks.

TIME PASSES. How much time? About nine months, because Georgia’s baby is duuuue. And she’s really gutting it out, sleeping in a tent and wearing a Headscarf of the Weary Traveler, following Sam as he machetes through an East Coast pine forest. Their goal is to reach Boston, a safe zone where they hope to catch a boat to Korea, where the robots have yet to secure their anti-organic rule. Easier said than done, since Sam and Georgia have to pass a military checkpoint populated with gung-ho hoo-rah soldiers who brand their company logo on each other’s prodigious pectorals, and one female doctor who actually shows Georgia some kindness and gives her confidence a little buff-and-polish.

Then our protags have to make it through No Man’s Land, which is said to be very very dangerous, but frankly looks like yet another stretch of forest. But it’s exactly where their plan goes sideways, and if that’s a spoiler to you, would you like to buy this bridge from me? I can give you a once-in-a-lifetime price for it, but it’s only good for right now . There’s a dirtbike chase, a weirdo in the woods named Arthur (Raul Castillo), a lady robot butler with badass zombie teeth, a big third act OH SHIT moment and other speedbumps on the road of life for Sam and Georgia – Georgia, who does so much serious bear-down tenacious-lady stuff in between contractions, nails look at her and go, man, she’s tough .

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: You’ve got a full-metal Terminator premise here, with elements of A Quiet Place , The Road and Children of Men swirled into the mix.

Performance Worth Watching: Between this and fighting sexism/WWII airplane gremlins in Shadow of the Cloud , Moretz had quite a grit-your-teeth-and-sock-’em stalwart-action-lady 2021.

Memorable Dialogue: Mother/Android is the type of movie that includes a line like, “Well, that was the end of New York City.”

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: There’s a peaceful moment in Mother/Android where Sam asks, “Think it’ll ever go back to normal?”, and Georgia replies, “No. I don’t even know if it should .” In moments like this, the movie strains to be about something, to be more than just a flat B-movie survival story. It flirts with commentary on humanity’s hubris and reliance on technology, dilly-dallies with ruminations on the true nature of people, briefly tangos with ideas about masculinity and femininity – and digs relatively deep into motherhood, which finds fertile soil in Moretz’s raw portrayal of a desperate mom-to-be, who’s anxious but confident about giving birth sans doctors or epidurals, yet more concerned about the baby’s wails drawing unwanted attention from Jeeves the homicidal automaton and his kill-happy comrades.

Ultimately, however, the film feels more like a Plot with a beginning, middle and end. A Plot that takes itself a touch too seriously, mind you. Tomlinson doesn’t seem sure if he wants to give us metaphorical-message sci-fi or action-packed sci-fi, and ends up with something in the middle, technically and structurally sturdy, with a moderately thoughtful screenplay, but a bit on the generic side. The director ramps up to a few suspenseful moments, but disappointingly chickens out, cutting away when the drama is too intense, or the action too difficult (or maybe too expensive) to stage and execute. Without Moretz’s ability to convincingly emote while Sarah Connoring her way through the plot, the movie might bland itself right into the oblivion of streaming menus. She saves her toughest moment for the very end, and it’s as tough as it gets. It’s not uplifting, and definitely depressing, but neither is it hopeless. One does, however, walk away with one plain-and-clear message as the credits roll: DO YOUR OWN LAUNDRY, LAZY BONES.

Our Call: Mother/Android is rock-solid, if unexceptional sci-fi that has the good fortune to capitalize on Moretz’s talent. STREAM IT, but don’t expect it to transcend the genre.

Will you stream or skip the Chloe Grace Moretz sci-fi flick #MotherAndroid on @hulu ? #SIOSI — Decider (@decider) December 18, 2021

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com .

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From the moment Dave ( Ewan McGregor ) frantically walks across a deserted parking lot, “Mother, Couch” feels empty. Dressed in a black suit, Dave walks toward a furniture store filled with vintage, handcrafted pieces. At the front desk is the bubbly Bella ( Taylor Russell ), whose father Marcus and Uncle Marco (both played by F Murray Abraham) are away. There Dave’s mother ( Ellen Burstyn ) is sitting on a green couch—it has deep, personal significance—and refuses to leave. Dave’s brother Gruffudd ( Rhys Ifans ) is there too, and soon their sister Linda ( Lara Flynn Boyle ) will arrive to try to coax their mother away from the sofa. It’s an intriguing opening, one tinged with mysteries about these people and this forlorn place, which ultimately fizzles due to its absurdist aims.

After the forced bursts of energy, nightmarish dream sequences, and a strained bit of self-absolution recede, you soon realize that writer/director Niclas Larsson ’s “Mother, Couch,” a morose, nonsensical family drama is about as interesting as the lint between the cushions. “Mother Couch” draws from several wells. Taking place mostly in this larger-than-expected furniture store, the film utilizes a combination of the building’s myriad showrooms as one continuous liminal space whose ambiguous temporality recalls Charlie Kauffman’s penchant for wielding mundane settings to interrogate hidden anxieties. The type of escalating deadpan absurdity that is reminiscent of Roy Andersson is also present. But more than any filmmaker, the entire film suggests Paul Thomas Anderson . From the setting of a furniture store that seems to exist at the end of the world to the franticness of Dave, you can’t help but feel “ Punch-Drunk Love .”

Unlike PTA’s oddball rom-com, however, “Mother Couch” lacks a soul, or at least one worth investing in. From his uneasy relationship with his soon-to-be ex-wife Linda ( Lake Bell ) to how often he forgets to care for his young daughter, Dave isn’t terribly likable. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; Kauffman’s work, for instance, routinely features aloof, self-absorbed people dealing with their own psychological shit. But Dave, who is similarly parsing his past, is too passive, shallow, and boring to make you interested in this world, its actions, its characters, or him. The camera also lacks a point of view. For much of the movie, we’re never quite sure if the film is about Dave or if he happens to be the most interesting person among this lifeless lot.

The script similarly plays hard-to-get. Originally based on Jerker Virdborg ’s Swedish novel Mamma i soffa , Larsson changed and re-tooled much of that story’s content—those alterations are apparent. For much of “Mother Couch,” Dave’s motivations are ambiguous. Larsson further leans on the couch as a heavy metaphor for the inability to process and move on. We discover that Dave’s mother wasn’t the best mom, having children with three different men (hence McGregor, Ifans, and Boyle, each playing a sibling, confusingly having different accents). We also learn that his mother kept the letters Dave wrote to his siblings; he had hoped to use these missives to get to know his brother and sister.

On their own, these are questions, but they are not motivators. Larsson, in fact, doesn’t get to what should be the heart of the film—what Dave wants—until the final twenty minutes. But by the time we arrive there, if we stick around long enough to do so, we’re barely invested enough to care. Instead, Larsson relies on creaky humor, the kind of off-kilter bits that work in existential Swedish works but don’t translate to America, to hold the viewer in check. And it’s simply not enough.

On-the-nose monologues by Burstyn, an underwritten Russell—who seems to be there solely to ogle McGregor—and an overactive score by Christopher Bear that also so desperately wants to emulate “Punch-Drunk Love” but can’t are the other elements that lack substance. And McGregor, who sure is making every drastic actorly choice possible, no matter how saccharine or strained, doesn’t offer much else. The oddness this world teases does come to fruition, turning into a hellish seascape that somehow transitions into McGregor arriving at a pond where surely some form of absolution or closing of a wound will begin. However, that full turn toward the strange comes too little, too late.

I’m sure someone will find solace in a film attempting to emulate the angst that occurs when you have unresolved issues with your terrible parents. But “Mother, Couch” seems just as unresolved and just as terrible. So you’re better off compartmentalizing it, believing that it never happened until one day, the sight of a couch mysteriously gives you narcolepsy.

Robert Daniels

Robert Daniels is an Associate Editor at RogerEbert.com. Based in Chicago, he is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association (CFCA) and Critics Choice Association (CCA) and regularly contributes to the New York Times , IndieWire , and Screen Daily . He has covered film festivals ranging from Cannes to Sundance to Toronto. He has also written for the Criterion Collection, the Los Angeles Times , and Rolling Stone about Black American pop culture and issues of representation.

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Things To Do | Review: A near-great, Steinbeck-inspired ‘Mother Road’ takes off at Berkeley Rep

From left, James Carpenter, Lindsay Rico and Emilio Garcia-Sanchez perform in Octavio Solis' John Steinbeck-inspired "Mother Road" at Berkeley Repertory Theatre.

The playwright has long had a yearning for the West and its denizens, the searchers and the dreamers who haunt its epic landscapes and contentious borders in works from “Santos & Santos” to “El Paso Blue.” Here he revisits the fate of Steinbeck’s immortal Joad family, refugees of the Dust Bowl who came to California seeking refuge from the deprivation of the Depression only to toil, forever penniless, in the fields.

Marked by Solis’ gift for mining the universality of the Mexican American experience, this moving drama reaches for a mythic grandeur that it often attains, but it also still feels like a work in progress in its regional premiere at Berkeley Rep, directed by David Mendizábal. Some crucial characters feel more like symbols than people and the choral interludes, while galvanic in their own right, never feel married to the narrative.

The play revolves around a battered green truck carrying a grizzled old farmer named Will (the estimable James Carpenter) and a young farmworker named Martin (Emilio Garcia-Sanchez) who realize to their great chagrin that they are both descended from Tom Joad. They bristle against that connection at first but eventually come to see that they both share a longing for the land, a sense of rootedness amid a restless culture.

“Mother Road” digs into that universal search for home with the aching beauty of its poetry, which deftly evokes a gritty world, mired in tragedy and streaked with magical realism.

Some of these grand symbols overreach in their grasp for legendary proportions, some moments fall short of their epiphanies and several key characters, particularly Martin’s fiancée Amelia (Cher Álvarez) and the holy man of the land, James (Branden Davon Lindsay), deserve far more depth. Still, the play is so deeply suffused with the playwright’s love for these characters and their plights that it’s hard not to share his affection for all the vagabonds and lost souls, especially the quirky badass sidekick Mo (a wry Lindsay Rico).

In its finest moments, the majesty of the play is breathtaking enough to wish for the playwright to keep sculpting “Mother Road” until it’s moving enough to barrel into greatness.

Contact Karen D’ Souza at [email protected].

‘MOTHER ROAD’

By Octavio Solis, presented by Berkeley Repertory Theater

Through: July 21

Where: Berkeley Rep’s Peet’s Theatre, 2025 Addison St., Berkeley

Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes, one intermission

Tickets: $22.50-$134; www.berkeleyrep.org

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‘MaXXXine’ Review: Fame Monster

Mia Goth returns to Ti West’s horrorverse as an actress fleeing a mysterious stalker and a traumatic past.

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A blond woman in a blue denim top and jeans walks in a parking lot away from a casting call sign.

By Jeannette Catsoulis

A psychosexual thriller imagined in blood red and cocaine white, “MaXXXine,” the third installment in Ti West’s nostalgia-soaked slasher saga, is part grungy homage to 1980s Hollywood and part sleazy feminist manifesto. Darker, moodier and altogether nastier than its predecessors — “X” (2022) and, later that same year, “Pearl” — this hyperconfident feature is also funny, occasionally wistful and deeply empathetic toward its damaged, driven heroine.

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