Foe review - unsettling sci-fi drama

Garth Davis’s Foe is cast from that classic science fiction mould that uses a fantastical premise to explore the commonplace, yet profound aspects of our lives; in this case, the intricacies, dissatisfactions and anxieties of a marriage.

At the same time, it offers the sort of unsettling mystery and killer twists that have made the similarly inclined Black Mirror such a success.

The time is 2065, with the planet in the grip of a now familiar (and all too likely) environmental catastrophe; in particular, the world is ravaged by drought, with all eyes are on the stars for a new home.

Somewhere in the Midwest, Junior (Paul Mescal) and Hen (Saoirse Ronan) are living alone on their isolated, barren farm; he works in a chicken factory, she in a diner. It’s a small, narrow life. Until one night, a stranger knocks at their door.

This is the smooth, smug, creepy Terrance (Aaron Pierre, pictured below), a suit for the space company OuterMore, who announces that Junior is being considered for a lengthy posting to the company’s space station, to prepare for the planet’s migration strategy. “We prefer the old ways of living,” Junior protests. “But you don’t farm it, do you,” the newcomer observes, as dry as the land outside the window. There seems to be no choice in the matter. But they needn’t worry, he says: nothing will happen for a year or so, and in the meantime an AI replica of Junior is being prepared, to keep Hen company during her husband’s absence.And so the couple wait, and fret. It’s clear that they have not been happy; the fear of being apart reminds them of why they fell in love in the first place, and the next year becomes an idyll in their relationship. But then Terrance returns, moves in, and gets Junior ready for his departure.

What ensues is a deeply psychological nightmare, orchestrated by the devilishly ambiguous Terrance. And unless you’ve read Iain Reid’s source novel, both the reality of what’s happening and the outcome are, whatever you may think you know, difficult to predict.

While director Garth Davis, who adapted the novel with Reid, offers tiny glimpses of the world outside the farm, and little touches of future tech, the focus is very much on the old, rambling building, the sweltering days and nights, the mind games at play. The result is intentionally claustrophobic, but can drag at times, as though the film itself is wilting in the heat. Some may find it a little too insulated, wanting more of the bigger picture, the global plight, scientific expansiveness, the stars. Imagine an Interstellar in which Matthew McConaughey never leaves his own dustbowl farm, and goes mad playing with his watch: if you’d have found that disappointing, then Foe may not be for you.

But Reid is an author with a provocative and leftfield imagination, whose earlier novel was the even stranger I’m Thinking of Ending Things (more effectively, nay brilliantly adapted by Charlie Kaufman). And Foe is a film that becomes stranger, richer, and more troubling the longer it goes on.

All three actors admirably create an atmosphere of distrust and distress, with Mescal and Ronan especially excelling – wringing tenderness, pathos and pain from their characters’ descent into this hellish spin on couples therapy.

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