Humanity in times like the robot apocalypse can get pretty sentimental, but Chloë Grace-Moretz and Smith anchor the action with believable performances. 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.
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. 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.
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. Instead, Mattson Tomlin plants his story’s lens firmly on the relationship between our leads, with some well timed injections of tension and fighting.Ĭarrying the majority of the first two acts of their story, Chloë Grace-Moretz and Algee Smith are compelling to follow. That would be the action/adventure version of this story – but that’s not the angle here.
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. In fact, there’s a sparse number of sequences where androids are even present for a good piece of Tomlin’s directorial debut. 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.
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. 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.