Foe is one of the few movie trailers I’ve seen in recent years… and it’s both a curse and a saving grace to my viewing experience of this rather plodding film.

It’s set in 2065 where humanity is just starting to colonize space since Earth has become a ruin. In order to appeal to couples for whom they may only take one person, the government promises to replace the missing spouse with an identical robot to make the transition easier.

I’ll try to ignore the nonsensical impracticality of this stupid plan and just look at the movie for its themes. The film is about a couple whose marriage is on the rocks so the idea of them splitting up causes even more tension. It’s ultimately about identity, humanity, love, and the nature of a shifting, turbulent marriage.

In that regard, the movie eventually – eventually – crawls into a place where those ideas are played with in an interesting way. But the vast majority of this flick is made up boring, sluggish, uneventful kludge. I wish I could have connected with it since its themes are interesting… but there’s almost nothing to hang onto.

Part of the problem is that the film doesn’t want to acknowledge a truth that is basically spoiled by the trailer. Kind of knowing that annoyed me (stupid trailers) but was also the only reason I kept watching. But also the movie is called Foe so you know something bigger than a fractured marriage is at play, right?

To be honest though, even without the trailer and title, I think it’d be pretty obvious what was going on. We’ve seen movies before and there has to be a reason for this silly plot to exist… were they really trying to fool us?

I kept waiting for another shoe to drop and find out the whole movie was on a different trajectory all along. It kind of does something like that but only in the last couple scenes and by then it was too late. It left me going yeah, ok, decent reveal but so what?

For the fact that it somewhat achieves its thematic goals, I’m giving it an extra nudge into very flawed but with some good elements territory. A huge pair of editing scissors were needed to get this slug of a film under control.

Score: 62