“Foe,” based on a novel by Iain Reid, is a dreamy and forlorn science fiction parable about the evolving nature of personality, the imperamence of relationships and the limits of science and technology.

Set in a very near climate changed future (2063) in the middle of the Next Dust Bowl, it’s basically a three character play about the conflicts that arise as an even more unpleasant future than their unsustainable present is faced.

Those in charge have determined “It’s time to move on” and the contrary voices that we hear now and are still protesting in that future “then” have been apparently shouted down.

“Why would you spend money ‘up there’ instead of fixing things down here?”

A stranger rolls up to a remote, arid and weathered farm homestead in the Breadbasket of the World, America’s Midwest.

The trees have all died, save for one that “Hen” (Henrietta) waters as she wonders “What if the rain never comes?”

Hen, played by Saoirse Ronan, gets by working as a waitress in one of the vast swaths of America that were already emptying-out before the Earth’s ecology reached its tipping point.

At least she has Junior (Paul Mescal), her husband, the heir to this “fifth generation” farm. But he’s not farming. He works in the gigantic chicken-raising and processing silos down the road.

He’s a bit limited, short-tempered, instinctively mistrusting and ready to greet any unexpected knock at the door with his shotgun. Not that Hen lets him keep it loaded.

“I just don’t want to catch anything” suggests that they’re still cautious after the latest pandemic.

Then Terrance (Aaron Pierre) comes in, an all-knowing bureaucrat who addresses them by name, and once he’s inside, is full of questions, all of them leading to a proposition.

He’s the one that prods them with “It’s time to move on.” His offer, from the higher ups (allegedly) is that they’ve been “selected” for Outermore space station — “a new planet” project. It will be the final destination for humanity, one last move at the end of decades of the “climate migration” that has so roiled Planet Earth.

But it turns out only Junior has been “selected,” owing to some “specific skills” Terrance insists he has. As the thoughtful, intellectually-curious piano-playing Hen is plainly the brains in this house, Hen and the audience may wonder about that.

It’s just that Terrance is gently insistent, claiming their spare bedroom as he moves in to “test” and train and prepare the mercurial Junior, who veers between being flattered and being furious.

“Are you THREATENING us?”

Australian director Garth Davis earned the viewing audience’s benefit of the doubt with his very fine and emotional “Lion,” so we should be willing to mull over the various sets of “Foes” in this allegory — Hen and Junior vs. Terrance, humanity vs. The Earth, science vs science-doubting “Middle America” and Hen vs. Junior, as he is now, as he was then and as he might be forever into the future.

Because the film opens by defining this New Age’s “human substitutes,” “conscious” thinking artificial intelligence. As we suspect, Terrance isn’t who he seems and his mission isn’t what he says, although it still has a lot to do with Junior.

The film’s science fiction trappings — chicken “processing” taken to its logical “efficiency, climate change and migration computer-modeled out, The State’s new tech for control and new strategy for survival — are interesting, just not novel enough to feel fresh and engaging.

“Foe” bears the telltale signs of a “Twilight Zone” episode — complete with jolting “twists” — that got out of hand and went on for two hours, despite having 45 minutes to an hour’s worth of ideas.

Pitched in the same, flat, abandon-hope tone, doling out information necessary to simply understanding what the hell is going on in the most grudging ways, “Foe” bores the viewer to tears on the long march towards getting to its point. Points.

Henrietta can sum it up for us, the nature of the relationship of whatever “Junior” she lives with now vs the one she married and the Junior who may be somehow returned to her.

What’s missing is “affection,” “possibilities” and “curiosity” that come with new love, the hope of a better future, of love-making that leads to children, building their lives and a family.

Novelist Reid, who co-wrote the script with Davis, may be talking directly to a generation that across continents and cultures is abandoning hope and institutions like marriage, life goals like raising children, and embracing nihilism and the short term indulgences of narcissism thanks to systemic income redistribution via tax laws written to benefit the few, almost none of them young.

And the movie they wrap messages like this and rising fury over a rigged, oligarchical system that enables the not-smarter-than-us super rich to spend their billions “up there instead of fixing things down here” is a package so downbeat, dreary and hopeless that this message falls on deaf ears and sleepy eyes.

Rating: R, sex, nudity, profanity

Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Paul Mescal and Aaron Pierre.

Credits: Directed by Garth Davis, scripted by Iain Reed and Garth Davis, based on Reid’s novel. An MGM/Amazon Prime release.

Running time: 1:51