FOE– 2 STARS

LESSON #1: HIDE DARKNESS IN THE MUNDANE– Normally, psychological thrillers utilize layer upon layer of dichotomy to hammer their points and twists home. A character who appears demure or quiet is often set up to become more than they seem. The same can be said for pastoral or mundane settings where hidden danger or festering evil can be positioned to lurk behind the idyllic trimmings. Foe, the new Amazon Prime Video film from Lion director Garth Davis, fleshes itself out with this very tried-and-true vibe.

Based on the novel of the same name by screenwriter Iain Reid (I’m Thinking of Ending Things), Foe is set in the not-too-distant future where water and arable land are premiums after decades of climate change and overpopulation. Heat and drought are prevalent and rain is rare, forcing most citizens to live in more protected, sustainable, and monotonous urban cities. Solution-seeking agencies like Outermore have linked up with the government to start space station colonies above the dying planet. The Climate Migration Strategy initiative has left rural landscapes like the American Midwest barren of both growth and people in Foe’s setting of 2065.

Junior and Henrietta, played by Afterun breakout Paul Mescal and four-time Academy Award nominee Saoirse Ronan, have avoided that trend and separated themselves to the country. The married couple have taken up residence on Junior’s old family farm and work small jobs (he in a chicken factory and her as a roadside diner waitress) to make ends meet and live within their DIY means. It’s just the two of them and their limited bubble of preserved culture in the form of old records and a piano in the basement that rarely gets played.

That semi-seclusion is broken by the arrival of Terrence, played by rising star Aaron Pierre of Old and Brother. He is an Outermore representative arriving with a warning sold as good news. Junior has been selected to travel to and work on one of the corporation’s orbiting installations for a two-year term. The couple has a year to prepare and, when Junior is gone, here’s the real rub. Outermore will provide a biomechanical duplicate of Junior to stay behind and take care of Hen and the house while he is gone.

LESSON #2: CHOICES THAT AREN’T CHOICES– First and foremost, Junior is livid with this forced assignment. He chose this isolated life to avoid these types of scenarios and doesn't want to leave his wife. In arguing with Terrence, the sliding scale of words comes out. “Selected” or “gifted” feel more “drafted” and “conscription” in traditional military terms, along with the appropriate penalties for denying such an order. True to form, Foe gets you thinking what you would do in the same predicament.

After one year of the two-year preparation period, Terrence returns to accelerate Junior’s departure and stay in their house. His task is to observe, test, and interview Junior and Hen in order to develop the proper replacement version of the husband programmed with the most essential, specific, and intimate of details. The ensuing intrusion and dissection unravels our lovers towards the brink of madness.

LESSON #3: SO, WHO’S THE BOT?-- Now, as soon as the proposition of an android replacement is presented in Foe, a good science fiction audience immediately knows something’s up. One or more of our three principal actors is going to be an engineered imitation or we wouldn’t be here for two hours with Garth Davis poking and prodding the stability of marriage. Viewers will be waiting with their nets to catch the shoes that drop, where the mystery is who and, more interestingly, when the proxy arrived.

The linchpin of Foe becomes Saorise Ronan. With a strong and near-Method effort at being constantly jaded and exhausted, Paul Mescal impressively spends the majority of the film withering in the wringer he’s sent through by Terrence. He’s going for broke. Meanwhile, the real palpable depth of Foe comes from Hen’s female perspective. Since the beginning of the film opened on her crying in the shower, our perception of Hen has been the bigger question mark than the stranger Terrence. 

LESSON #4: THE IDEAL QUALITIES OF A SPOUSE– Many of the private asides in Foe stick on Ronan. Her Hen appears to be undergoing an internal tug-of-war about Junior’s situation. Was that fragile woman crying in the shower really entirely happy living with her husband in the middle of nowhere absent from culture? Is she trapped there while her husband is being granted an escape or new course in life? What if a replicant can be boosted and made with the best or most accentuated ideal qualities of your absent spouse? Would that substitution improve your life or would that be living a lie?

Playing off the very contemporaneous– dare I say trendy– topic of artificial intelligence going around in movies, the whole elevator pitch of Foe from Garth Davis paradoxically dangles both obviousness and intrigue. True to Lesson #3, something clearly has to bend or break. Yet, matching Lesson #1, everything about Foe simmers very slowly inside its own mundanity of setting and characters. Manifested threats and fears that are surely meant to go somewhere– especially those filling Ronan’s character– never seem to build with enough suspense or severity. Instead, confounding absurdity festers where psychological headiness should be challenging our morals and comforts. 

As an exercise of filmmaking, Foe’s ideas are muted even further. The static cinematography from Mátyás Erdély (Son of Saul) employs excellent framing to soak in the desolate grasslands of Australia standing in for the American Great Plains, but the color grading done in post-production cloaks the whole film in a filter of dusty haze viewers have to nearly squint through to see. The diegetic music choices are not very unique or edgy next to a fairly flat score from Oliver Coates (Aftersun), Park Jiha, music video specialist Agnes Obel. There’s a creative slightness that does not escalate a trippy premise that needed some additional atmosphere.