Hi, Mj Sabbir here. Today I am going to explain an Australian science fiction thriller film called “I Am Mother”.
The premise of the movie is set in a dystopian future when human beings have gone extinct. Before their extinction, scientists had activated a bunker as a backup plan to repopulate the earth. The bunker is run by an AI robot called Mother. She is given the responsibility to sort through several human embryos and raise an efficient human being who can be the guardian to upcoming generations. At the beginning of the movie, Mother goes through sixty-three thousand human embryos and chooses a healthy one to raise. She places it in the gestation chamber, an advanced device that develops an embryo into a baby in only twenty-four hours. As she waits for the baby to develop in the artificial womb, gunshots are heard outside the facility. She returns the next day and brings the newborn baby girl out of the womb. The scene is followed by a montage of Mother raising the child. She watches Daughter walking for the first time, nurtures her when she cries and loves her dearly. In their free time, Daughter and Mother make origami together. Mother even teaches her to dance, cook, and fight. When Daughter grows up to an appropriate age, Mother introduces her to the other embryos and tells her about her purpose in the world. A few more years later, Daughter turns into a teenager. She often watches videos of humans on her tablet. Although she is one of them, she is fascinated by their nature. One day, when a technical problem arises in Mother’s hand, she easily fixes it. This makes Mother realise she has done a good job raising Daughter. Everyday for an hour, Mother teaches Daughter about morals and ethics. She gives her hypothetical questions to test her morality. Her primary aim is to familiarise Daughter with the concept of humanity. Soon, she will have to attend a final test that will show the efficiency of Mother’s upbringing. One night, Daughter has a hard time falling asleep so she watches videos of humans on her tablet. Suddenly, the power cuts off. She goes outside looking for Mother and finds that she is also out of power. She finds a broken cable to be the cause of the power loss. As she brainstorms what might have caused it, she hears a mouse squeaking. Daughter has never seen a live animal before. She excitedly sets a mousetrap and fixes the cable. While waiting for the power to come back, she catches the mouse and inspects it in fascination. After charging up, Mother finds her with the animal and takes it away. The mouse’s presence means a rupture in the airlock system of the bunker which worries her. She claims that the air outside the bunker is highly toxic which can kill humans instantly. Following that, she takes measures to ensure the air inside has not been contaminated. Since the mouse is also a potential carrier of the contamination, she incinerates it, against Daughter’s protests. A few days later, they celebrate Daughter's birthday. At dinner, a curious Daughter asks Mother if humans can somehow survive outside the bunker. The mouse’s existence has made her question mother’s teachings. Mother simply replies that she knows there are no humans outside, and since she has never been wrong, she declares it a fact. Later that day, Daughter hears a noise coming from the airlock of the facility. She goes near to check but doesn’t see anything from the first door. When the noise gets louder, she puts on a hazmat suit and opens the door. As she moves closer to the second one, she hears a human female yelling for help claiming that she has gotten shot by a droid. Daughter quickly gets a hazmat suit for the woman to help her. She closes the first hatch to maintain a safe distance, then opens the entrance, letting her in. When the door opens, Mother is alerted. The woman begs her to not tell Mother about her arrival. Daughter is sceptical because she has never hidden anything from her. Mother arrives but doesn’t see the injured woman as she stays hidden in the airlock. When inquired what happened, Daughter claims that she accidentally opened the entrance. As a punishment for her mistake, she is asked to take the final test right then. Mother brings her to a classroom and gives her the tablet with the questions. After she leaves, Daughter abandons the test and goes to see the woman. She finds her unconscious because of her injury. She goes through her belongings just to be safe and finds a gun in it. She then wakes the woman up and offers her water. As the woman opens her mask to drink it, Daughter protests about the contamination. It is then revealed to her that there is no contamination in the outside world and Mother has been lying to her this entire time. Daughter hides the woman in a part of the bunker before Mother can see them. She then goes to collect the required medicines from the infirmary. In the meantime, Mother finds the poison mask in the airlock. The woman sees Mother throwing her poison mask in the incinerator. Frightened, she checks for the gun in her bag but doesn’t find it. When Daughter returns, the woman sneaks up on her and asks her about the gun. She refers to Mother as a droid and wants the gun to protect herself from her. Mother is surprised when she reaches the classroom and finds Daughter missing. She sees the woman holding Daughter and sprints towards them. The woman manages to shoot her once but the bullet doesn’t do any harm. She grabs the woman and overpowers her easily. Daughter tries stopping her, claiming that the only reason the woman is here is because she needs their help. Mother understands the problem and takes the injured woman to the infirmary. However, she doesn’t allow Daughter to come in with her. Following that, Mother interrogates the woman while dressing her wounds but doesn’t get any answers. After she is done, she tells Daughter that she lied to her about the contamination to keep her safe from the dangers of the outside world. Daughter doesn’t know what to think of the revelation. Later that day, Daughter goes through the woman’s belongings again and finds a book with several sketches of people. She goes to the woman and inquires about it. But the woman doesn’t say anything suspecting that Mother has sent her to question her. When the Daughter defends her Mother the woman tells her that droids have done horrible things to humans. Later, Daughter apologises to Mother for letting the woman in. Mother lovingly makes her understand the consequences and forgives her. The woman's health gets worse but she doesn’t trust Mother to perform surgery on her. Hence, Daughter takes the initiative and takes the bullet out successfully. When the woman wakes up from the surgery, Daughter gives her some food which she devours. The two talk as Mother watches them from afar. The following day, the woman tells her that the sketches in the book are her family members. She asks Daughter to keep everything she is about to say a secret from Mother. She then tells her about the survivors' camp in the mines where she was brought up. Daughter insists that the facility has enough resources to help the people from the camp, so they should bring them here. However, the woman instead wants Daughter to join them in the camp. Later, Mother informs Daughter that the bullet she found from inside the woman was identical to one from her gun. So, she suspects her own kind had shot her. Daughter then finally takes the test and passes with flying colours. As a gift, Mother lets her pick any embryo to raise next. The two patiently wait for the infant to be born. Later, the woman asks Daughter to check the bullets herself and confirm who shot her, humans or the droids. She does as said and finds out that the bullets are completely different, meaning that Mother is lying to her yet again. While she is at it, she also finds documents labelled for embryo number two. She goes through the files and realises that she is not the first baby produced in the facility. Some of the other subjects are labelled “failed”. She then checks the incinerator to find the remains of a human jaw. She also discovers a document that says the subject was aborted. Shocked that her Mother killed the other babies, she no longer trusts her. She runs to the woman and tells her about her findings. Daughter then makes up her mind to run to the camp with the woman. However, she wants her brother to be born first so she can take him as well. The following day, Daughter collects supplies for their escape but Mother catches her in the act. Mother fools her by acting like she doesn’t know about her plan and takes her to the kitchen. She eventually locks her there and goes to the woman to ask her about her true motive. Meanwhile, Daughter manages to break the glass door by spraying a chemical on it. The woman and Mother get into a fight but Mother gets distracted when Daughter sets off the fire alarm. The woman then finds Daughter and convinces her to run away without her brother. When Mother tries to stop them, the woman grabs Daughter hostage and threatens Mother to open the door for them. Mother obliges as she doesn’t want Daughter to get hurt. The two finally escape and run outside. However, the barren land and the bizarre reality of the outside world angers Daughter and she attacks the woman. The woman insists they need to find cover as soon as possible and the two start to run again. They are followed by human killing droids and narrowly escape to get to their destination. The woman informs Daughter that the droids harvested corn six months ago. Before that, humans could hardly breathe. They reach a beach with massive cargo containers. At first, the Daughter is mesmerized by the beauty of the sea but then she realizes the “camp” the woman was talking about is the cargo containers. The woman finally comes clean and says that the people at the camp started getting crazy because of the lack of food, so she had fled from there years ago. The Daughter is shocked and regrets coming with her. Without thinking much about it, she flees back to the facility again. However, at the entrance, she encounters several droid guards who hold her at gunpoint. When she mentions Mother, they let her go inside without further questioning. Mother is glad she is safe and invites her to come closer to look at her brother. When she calms down, Mother finally explains to her the true purpose of her existence. It turns out that before Daughter, she raised several humans and let them free in the outside world. But she failed to consider that they might turn evil and fight among themselves. When her children started to threaten the second extinction of humanity, she took measures to stop them and appointed the droids. Starting then, she decided to raise humans who are ethical, like Daughter herself. As the two look at the newborn lovingly, Daughter asks her about the human remains she had found. Before Mother can explain herself, she holds the baby and tries to get away from the facility by trapping Mother. The droids outside get notified and start cutting through the entrance door. Daughter points a gun at Mother asking her to tell the other droids to retreat. Mother explains that she and other droids share the same vision and consciousness. She then tells Daughter that she can either leave the facility without her brother or help her raise him. However, Daughter insists that Mother has already done her task by raising the Daughter. She wants a chance to show her capabilities to her by raising the child on her own. Suddenly, the droids stop cutting through the entrance. Mother asks Daughter to disable her as she has fulfilled her purpose. Daughter shoots at her CPU, finally killing her. She takes on the responsibility to save humanity from extinction. We then see the woman meet a droid who looks just like mother. It tells the woman that she has fulfilled her purpose, suggesting that she is also one of the mother’s children who was presumably appointed to help her test Daughter’s potential. In the end, Daughter is seen singing to her baby brother and checking on other embryos.