Spoilers for Garth Davis’ Foe are ahead. If you haven’t seen the sci-fi drama, you can check it out now in theaters.
Many of the best sci-fi movies feature an epic plot twist. Take Arrival and Interstellar for example, both films simultaneously blow your mind, and have you contemplating your humanity. Well, the latest science fiction film to hit the 2023 movie schedule, Foe, features a pretty epic (and unexpected) twist that needs to be broken down. Luckily, after speaking with the film’s cinematographer, Mátyás Erdély, I have a good understanding of what went down in this intimate story about AI, and how they pulled off the big reveal at the end of the film starring Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal.
Before we hop into the nitty gritty of this movie’s ending, first let’s review the basic story. This book-to-screen adaptation based on Iain Reid’s novel of the same name follows a couple, Jr. (Paul Mescal) and Hen (Saoirse Ronan), after Jr. is selected to be part of a group that goes to a space station to see if it's habitable. When a man, Terrance, shows up at their rural farm to discuss this proposition, he also explains how when Jr. leaves, they’ll give Hen an AI version of her husband. However, we’re not made aware of when the switch happens. So, the ending of this sci-fi drama revolves around the audience figuring out that we’ve been watching AI Jr. this whole time.
What Happened At The End Of Foe?
The beginning of the end comes when we find out that the Jr. we’ve been watching for the majority of the movie is actually AI. The human version of Hen’s husband returns from his space mission, and it’s determined that the artificial intelligence version of him needs to be laid to rest.
It’s a jarring experience watching one man witness his AI clone’s demise, and as Jr. calmly watches the proceeding, Hen freaks out.
After AI Jr. is gone, the human Jr. and Hen try to work out their marriage. Throughout the entire movie, it’s made clear that Mescal’s character is very stuck in his ways, and doesn’t want change. However, Hen desires her own agency, is curious about the world, and wants to leave their farm. The two have a conversation about how Ronan's character developed feelings for AI Jr. while human Jr. was gone, and he gets extremely mad, in a scary way.
This leads to Hen giving her husband a letter with nothing written on it – something she told Terrance she would do – and leaving their farm. Then, a green light is shown, which we discover is how AI is activated, and what I took to be an artificial intelligence Hen appears at Jr.’s home.
In the end, it seems like AI Hen and Jr. live happily in their home, and Mescal’s character is not forced to adapt or change with the times. Meanwhile, human Hen is seen flying away. We don’t know where she’s going, but we know she finally got what she wanted.
Foe’s ending hinges on the moment we find out that the Jr. we’ve been watching for the majority of the movie is not the human version. It’s a major, and mind-boggling, reveal, and the cinematographer, Mátyás Erdély, broke down how they pulled it off while speaking with CinemaBlend.
How Foe’s Cinematographer Filmed Paul Mescal’s Big Plot Twist
When I saw Foe, what immediately struck me during the plot twist was how Jr. reacted to seeing a being who looked and talked exactly like him. At that point, AI Jr. is freaking out and begging those around him to not put him down. Meanwhile, human Jr. is very calmly watching his doppelgänger struggle.
While this shot is mind-boggling to watch, and Mescal's two performances show off his range, it was actually quite simple to shoot as Mátyás Erdély explained to me:
It's actually much simpler than I originally imagined. Basically, we're shooting these scenes twice, once with Jr. and once with J.R., which were these two characters names, you know one for the AI and one for the real person. We just had a very strict breakdown of what are the shots that we're gonna see them both at the same time? And then we would frame, we had a [body] double. So we shot some of this with a double. So if it was out of focus or if it was partly visible, we would use the double. So it's super simple. But if it's both characters then we would shoot one pass with J.R. and then one pass with the other character and then it's in post, the effects would merge these two images together.
Throughout our interview, Erdély told me that they shot this movie as simply and as practically as they could. This included the massive plot twist where Paul Mescal plays two characters at the same time. It turns out that the harder part of shooting this film, and building to the end, came with how they created the first two-thirds of Foe.
How Foe's Creative Team Kept The Plot Twist A Secret From The Audience
While shooting the reveal about the two versions of Jr. was fairly easy, keeping this fact a secret proved to be a bit challenging. Mátyás Erdély elaborated on the conversations he had with director Garth Davis about how they would shoot the story since Hen knows about AI Jr. and the audience doesn't. He said:
I think what was even more interesting is that when the film starts, Hen, Saoirse’s character, obviously already knows. And we had a lot of conversations with Garth about how do we deal with that fact? How do we shoot her? But, [in] creating this tension, obviously, we cannot reveal that something is off. But we also have to have something, you know? We as filmmakers, we have to deal with that somehow. So that was this very fine line of what we were able to do and what we were not able to do.
Ultimately, Davis wanted the movie shot “very straightforward” so they wouldn’t reveal anything to the audience. However, Erdély noted that even though he used his camera to show how life literally was for Hen and Jr., you can sense that something is wrong because of Ronan’s complex performance. She’s in the know the entire time, and her “inner struggle,” as the director of photography put it, is what helps us better understand the bigger picture.
In the end, the audience has to come to terms with the horrors of what’s happening in this movie in real-time. There really isn't much warning; it's just clear that something is off. The plot twist and the AI reveal are unsettling, it’s also the final nail in the coffin of this couple who has been on the ropes for a long time. The plot twist emphasizes their differences, and drives them to make life-changing decisions – for Jr. it’s to stay home, and for Hen it’s to leave.
If you are interested in watching or re-watching Foe, you can do so by checking it out in theaters. Also, it’s an Amazon Studios film, which means it will likely be available through a Prime Video subscription at some point in the near future.
