There’s one good reason to watch the chilling sci-fi oddity The Pod Generation

polygon.com:

The Pod Generation is an aesthetic in search of an idea.

Sophie Barthes’ low-key sci-fi movie about future fads in pregnancy and birth is impeccably designed and shot, with set and production design that feels like the natural cultural end of the pastel and pretty “Instagram chic” look that’s turned into a shorthand for bloodless, sterile artificiality in certain kinds of visual horror stories over the past decade. The film’s future tech is almost plausible, and its understanding of human nature and the push and pull around new technologies is spot-on. But it’s a film without a purpose or a punchline, a series of images that peters out with an unsatisfying whisper of an ending.

That said, there’s one solid reason to watch The Pod Generation, now that its brief theatrical run is over and it’s widely available on digital services: the central performances from Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke and Chiwetel Ejiofor, as a couple navigating their choice to grow their first child in a trendy, pricey pod. The material they’re given is often slim and simple, but they lean into it with everything they can offer, and find the relatability in characters who feel more like symbols than like people.

Clarke and Ejiofor play Rachel and Alvy, a couple living in a blissfully pristine and packaged near future where just about everyone seems to be mildly to moderately high at all times. Everything in their world is curated and marketed to a fault: If someone wants to experience nature, they can rent a kind of moss-lined nap pod for a brief encounter with plants and fresh air. If they’re feeling unbalanced, there’s an AI therapist just up the block. People largely speak in pleasant undertones, as if they were all being paid by the minute