A letter from Iman Vellani, the editor of Inverse’s 2023 Superhero Issue.

Foe is a unique story. In Iain Reid’s original novel, readers are dropped into the lives of Hen and Junior, a couple living on a remote farm in the near future. But their marriage is threatened by a stranger who announces that Junior has been selected to travel to an orbital space station. To keep Hen company while Junior is on his two-year assignment, the aerospace corporation the stranger works for will create a biomechanical duplicate of Junior, right down to his personality and memories. Readers of Foe will notice a structural quirk: only some characters get quotation marks with their dialogue. It’s a clever narrative trick the author uses to reveal a jaw-dropping twist.

But in Garth Davis’ feature adaptation of Foe, the filmmaker had to figure out a different way to lay out this twist. Inverse chatted with Davis about environmental metaphors, working with Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal, and what he makes of that elusive ending.