Review: 'Foe' hits theaters as an epic botch job
With everything going for it -- two hottie Irish Oscar nominees in Saorise Ronan and Paul Mescal, an acclaimed director in Garth Davis ("Lion") and a timely sci-fi script based on Iain Reid's bestseller about humans being replaced by replicants -- "Foe" hits theaters as an epic botch job.
What happened? Simply said, all the elements seem to be fighting each other instead of harmonizing. And the thematic dissonance between idea and execution can leave audiences adrift, waiting nearly two hours for a twist ending to stop their misery. Relief never comes.
Ronan plays Hen, short for Henrietta. She's been married for seven years to Junior (Mescal), but the bloom is off their once feverish attraction. That's mostly due to their stifling existence as hermits in an isolated Midwestern farmhouse that's been in Junior's family for 200 years.
Junior has no intention of quitting the place, spending his days handling chickens on an industrial farming assembly line while a despairing Hen works at a conspicuously empty diner. Bleak? That's just for starters.
The year is 2065, a setup for a dystopian thriller with precious few thrills. Last week, "The Creator" -- also about the pitfalls of artificial intelligence -- hit a box-office dead end. Expectations seem similarly dire for "Foe," which keeps pushing for a stubbornly elusive profundity.
Into this dust bowl that chokes the life out of Hen and Junior comes Terrance (Aaron Pierre), a charismatic emissary from OuterMore, an agency that's been drafting candidates to serve aboard a space satellite called the Installation. Hen and Junior are up for anything, but Terrance insists that only one of them can go. And Junior is their man.
Compensation for Hen is that Terrance, who spends forever futilely questioning the couple to bring out their inner lives, will make sure Hen isn't lonely by replacing Junior with an A.I. replicant spouting his own ideas on marriage. That may sound like an episode from the acclaimed techno-paranoia series "Black Mirror," but wishing won't make it so.
"I don't want a robot living with my wife," shouts Junior, rebelling against doing two years of forced service, and stating the obvious with a sense of real discovery. It's even more obvious that "Foe" is a movie that can't get out of its own head.
Charlie Kaufman's take on Reid's 2016 novel, "I'm Thinking of Ending Things," which streamed on Netflix in 2020, built a steadily gripping blend of psychological horror and intellectual provocation out of a previously unexamined life. But Davis, who wrote the script with Reid, can't hope to match that artful achievement. "Foe" suffers from an incurable creative paralysis.
Despite their best efforts at evoking love and erotic longing, Ronan and Mescal fail to break through the constricted borders of their roles. And the twist ending, which is nowhere near as clever as it thinks it is, leaves you feeling even more baffled.
In the end, "Foe" is nothing more than an acting exercise in search of a script that might give it form, dimension and a reason for being. None are forthcoming.
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