We join the story inside an advance tech-bunker with no dialogue for quite some time as we get alongside our robot chum (later known as Mother) as it goes about maintaining the running of the environment and attending to various scientific and techy tasks. We eventually see it get what looks like a human embryo in a glass slide from a choice of thousands, put it into a machine and watch as it 'drops' into what appears to be a tech-womb, emulating the functions of a human one.
It is clear from the timer clues that the tech-pregnancy, instead of taking 9 months, is going to take 24 hours. Which it does. And out pops 'Daughter'. Time passes as we eavesdrop on Daughter growing up, being taught life's lessons and educated in isolation by Mother - including rigorous schooling, medical training, ethics lessons and even dance! It's not clear how much time is passing here but the suggestion is that it's time-lapsed and reduced for the delivery of the story.
Mother, who is voiced by Rose Byrne, cares for Daughter, played by Clara Rugaard, who grows up into a teenage girl. It tells Daughter that the world outside the bunker is contaminated and uninhabitable, and that they must stay inside until the bunker is fully ready to repopulate the planet. Daughter, brainwashed since birth, completely trusts Mother of course, until one day she hears a desperate woman screaming for help outside the bunker's airlock. Defying Mother's strict rules, Daughter sneaks to the door and lets in a wounded, heavily armed 'Woman' (Hilary Swank) wearing a hazmat suit.
Knowing that Mother wouldn't approve, Daughter hides Woman, but a sudden confrontation forces Mother to intervene. Woman is terrified of Mother, screaming that the droids on the outside are malicious hunters tracking down the last remaining humans. Furthermore, Woman reveals a stunning truth - that the air outside is perfectly breathable. At this point, Daughter plays mediator between Mother and Woman, treating Woman's gunshot wound while secretly investigating her claims.
Soon, Daughter makes a series of horrifying discoveries as she pokes around at night checking Woman's claims, whilst Mother is recharging/sleeping. She starts to understand, gains consciousness of her situation and what she has been told from birth. Meanwhile, Mother teases Daughter to keep her on it's side with promises of, when the time is right, creating a brother for her using the same process - and then more. That Daughter is the first of the new superhumans, perfected through tech. However, by now, Daughter has discovered that she may not have been the first after all.
Meanwhile, Woman is encouraging Daughter to break out of the bunker with her and join her outside, where she tells her there is a colony of survivors in 'the mines'. She also discovers that outside of the bunker there is an army of Mother clones, drones and aircraft apparently continuing to wipe out any survivors so that the new breed of humans can be perfect and not morally blighted by previous human 'weaknesses'.
Anyway, that's enough with the groundwork, where I'll stop so as to not to get to real spoilers. There's plenty more to come though - what/who Mother is, what it's up to, what's happened to Earth and humanity, what the AI Hive Mind is up to, what the extinction was about, what Woman's real situation is, where/why she is in the story - and more. It all gets a bit complex, but hang in there!
It's essentially a two-person show, though Hilary Swank isn't really in it very much. Rose Byrne's voice and Rugaard take 95% of the film's attention. It reminded me in tone somewhat of Ex Machina (2014) - especially with the Scanivanian Clara Rugaard link - and forms an interesting idea and story penned by Michael Lloyd Green and directed by Grant Sputore, on what appears to be pretty much a first outing. There's clearly CGI going on, especially outside of the bunker, but the bunker itself is a nicely thought-out, if clinical, set reflecting the tone and ideals of the thrust of what's going on.
It does keep you guessing as goes along and makes one think about a future for the Earth where humans may have destroyed themselves (or been destroyed) and the rise of AI in the process - robots taking the place of people and being made responsible for re-populating based on, presumably, their previous coding and programming. Interesting sci-fi outing certainly worth a look. The near-2 hour runtime flies by and as it's now a good number of years old, everyone should be able to get to it easily enough. Give it a go!
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