Foe - Movie Review

Critics Score - 5 of 10

General Audience Score - 7 of 10

When it comes to futuristic sci-fi fare, I’m a big fan of such stories, especially when a writer can take an idea about where we’re headed as a species and breathe life and humanity into the script, making me contemplate some of the deeper questions about my existence. Take as an example, my favorite film of last year, After Yang. Well, this year we get a new film that’ll be dropping into a theatre near you soon and eventually onto Amazon, Foe, starring Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal. The premise of the film was interesting enough, in the future, humanity has tapped out most of the planet’s natural resources and now things aren’t going great, so we’ve started sending people into space to start colonizing elsewhere. Sounds cool. Even though that’s all well and good, there were some serious issues with the writing, and despite the interesting idea, it lacked being fleshed out in a way that brought humanity to the characters and an unpolished script was replaced with a bunch of steamy sex scenes. With two big stars headlining this project, it’s a bit surprising that the writing seemed so unpolished and the ending just never seemed to come as it pushed closer to the two hour mark. That being said, for those that lack a critical eye, this film is interesting in its own right and many viewers will find this a perfectly decent watch for an evening. For cinephiles and critics however, this film’s title of Foe might prove to be a bit too apropos.

SYNOPSIS - It’s 2065, some onscreen text lets us know the details I outlined in the into, tornadoes wreak havoc and have destroyed parts of Europe and things have generally gone south with our planet. It’s time for humankind to start thinking about ending things . . . I mean . . abandoning ship, so they’ve planned some settlements in outer space. We then see Hen (Saoirse Ronan) from behind in the shower, the camera keeping things PG for now by staying on her upper back and head, she turns around and we see she’s weeping. We can hear a bit of an inner monologue she’s having with herself, the phrase, “it’s as if he’s replaced me with someone else”, letting us know her tears are a result of a marital issue. But then the scene changes and we’re tracking with a futuristic vehicle that somewhat resembles a GMC DeLorean from Back To The Future, the vehicle winds it’s way down dusty roads, passing through forests of dead trees along it’s way to an old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. The vehicle approaches but halts at the end of a driveway, it lingers there briefly, its high beams focused on a house before momentarily flickering on and off. We then see Junior (Paul Mescal), he’s laying on his side with his eyes closed, he wakes up groggily with his mouth slightly agape and the headlights from the DeLorean shining in the window. 

Junior gets up and runs downstairs agitated, grabs a shotgun and checks to see if it’s loaded, which it’s not, so he yells to Hen asking why the gun isn’t loaded, he always leaves it loaded. Hen enters, acting confused in regards the situation with the gun, but soon there’s a knock on the door and despite Juniors apprehension about their Back To The Future guest, eventually Hen reassures him that it’s alright and let’s Terrance (Aaron Pierce) into their home. After taking a seat in their living room, Terrance explains that he works for the government, that Junior has been selected for the special privilege of going into space for a couple years to a space station program, as some sort of preemptive test run, and that he’s been assigned to their case file. They balk at his insistence and he assures them that this is no option, this is more or less a draft, the government needs their cooperation and they will be duly compensated. As if this isn’t enough, they will be replacing Junior with a humanoid copy of him, a flesh and blood person that they’ll be creating, to keep Hen company while he’s gone. Insert first eyebrow raising emoji while assessing that screenwriting decision. But it became clear that as this film wandered into the second act and then especially into the finale, our writer had headed down the rabbit hole of this film’s premise and had absolutely no idea how to get out of it. By the time the final twenty minutes or so plays out, instead of a quick bullet to the head ending which would’ve at least been respectable, we as the audience take several to the gut and are allowed to bleed out a slow and painful death.

While I do take some fault with the direction of the film, most of the issues I had with Foe I lay at the feet of the writer, Iain Reid, which is surprising after his impressive work on his previous screenplay for I’m Thinking Of Ending Things. The first act is easily the strongest and least problematic, the setup is engaging and the actors are under the least amount of strain the script eventually puts them under, making them spout out nonsensical dialogues and ramblings. The screenplay, as I mentioned, has some weaknesses especially in the film’s second half, but there are legitimate times when the dialogue ranges from mediocrity to even poor and bad at times. You can see Ronan and Mescal are going hard, but the script makes their acting difficult. It’s as if they’re fighting a losing battle against their own words, it doesn’t feel natural and many of the scenes they’re acting in, the dialogue seems out of place. The chemistry between Ronan and Mescal also doesn’t help, while it seems ok at times, but poor in others, they just don’t seem like they have a deeper connection and it’s all superficial. That being said, the film was surprisingly cinematic, the farmhouse in the barren wasteland and forests of dead trees made for some visually engaging moments. A sequence with a black horse and Junior running across a desert showcased some highly impressive direction and cinematography in it’s stylistic choices. Don’t get me wrong, I did not hate Foe, I’m not even on the side of disliking it, even with the script issues and other problems I’ve explained. It was entertaining enough to hold my interest, a couple aspects I enjoyed, several more I was neutral on, so I’ll give it some credit in the end and land on a perfectly mediocre score of 5.0, neither liked or disliked.

SUMMARY - If sci-fi is your jam like it is for me, chances are you’ll find enough things you like about this film to have a reasonably enjoyable experience, especially for general audiences. But others that had really high hopes for what this director, writer and acting ensemble might be able to offer us, well they might be left a little more confused as to whether this effort was friend, or Foe.