Foe’s potential is immense. The new sci-fi drama from director Garth Davis, who garnered acclaim after 2016’s Lion, stars beloved under-30 actors in Paul Mescal and Saoirse Ronan. It’s adapted from a book by Iain Reid (I’m Thinking of Ending Things). The two Irish stars play an American couple, Henrietta and Junior, living in the Midwest later this century, existing in a world ravaged by a climate crisis that’s caused an unending drought. An unknown man named Terrance (Aaron Pierre) visits their farm, claiming that Junior must go to space to help save the human species while Henrietta stays behind with a clone of her husband. Foe has a solid director, a great cast, and a good-enough premise. The movie, considered against its potential, borders on laughable and cements itself as inane.
The movie thrives when the mystery hasn’t been unraveled and Reid’s script remains amorphous.
The movie thrives when the mystery hasn’t been unraveled and Reid’s script remains amorphous.
- 10/1/2023
- by Michael Frank
- The Film Stage
“Foe” is a grandly muddled dystopian sci-fi movie starring Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal as a Midwestern farm couple in 2065 (they appear to be the only Midwestern farm couple left). When you hear the film’s premise, which makes it sound like a cross between “Interstellar” and “Blade Runner,” you may think it’s going to be one of those movies in which a pair of critical darlings from the indie world leave their low-budget poetic movies behind to plug themselves into the blockbuster machine. But “Foe” isn’t a visual-effects-laden, box-office-fixated lollapalooza. The movie, the bulk of which takes place in the couple’s 200-year-old farmhouse, is small-scale and intimate, and it’s been designed to milk Ronan and Mescal for every inch of their raw actorly integrity.
It opens with Ronan standing in the shower, weeping. We hear her character, Hen (short for Henrietta), in voice-over, thinking back...
It opens with Ronan standing in the shower, weeping. We hear her character, Hen (short for Henrietta), in voice-over, thinking back...
- 10/1/2023
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
At every turn, Garth Davis’s Foe not only fails to adequately redress or rework played-out tropes within its high-concept world, but its examination of marriage and identity is also hackneyed. Written by Davis and Iain Reid, this sci-fi chamber piece feels Frankensteined together, each limb a reminder of more heartbreaking, wondrous, or sophisticated works that reconciling with the end of the world and the fragility of human relationships.
In the dystopia of Foe, new “self-determinative” lifeforms are conceived to take on dirty work in a ravaged land. They’re first introduced to us as an idea via the opening title card, which informs us that Earth’s natural and fertile resources, like water and soil, will become rare and valuable commodities later this century. Then they’re presented as the solution to marital loneliness, such as in the case of Junior (Paul Mescal) being drafted to try a government-funded...
In the dystopia of Foe, new “self-determinative” lifeforms are conceived to take on dirty work in a ravaged land. They’re first introduced to us as an idea via the opening title card, which informs us that Earth’s natural and fertile resources, like water and soil, will become rare and valuable commodities later this century. Then they’re presented as the solution to marital loneliness, such as in the case of Junior (Paul Mescal) being drafted to try a government-funded...
- 10/1/2023
- by Kyle Turner
- Slant Magazine
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