Ex Machina
(2015) 108 Min.
Rated: R
Country: UK
Director: Alex Garland
Starring: Alicia Vikander, Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac
Links: IMDB | Wikipedia
Rating: ★★☆☆☆
A programmer wins a week stay with a genius inventor and his robot.
Synopsis:
A programmer named Caleb (Gleeson) wins a first prize lottery held by Bluebook, the company he works for. The prize is that he gets to spend one week with the CEO of Bluebook, Nathan (Isaac).
Nathan lives a very remote and highly secretive home. Everything is locked by special electronic card keys and Caleb’s room is in what seems like an underground bunker. Nathan tells Caleb that he really would like Caleb to test out his robot Ava’s AI.
Caleb goes into the testing room and meets Ava who is a robot with a human looking face. Caleb talks to Ava, but during a power outage, Ava warns Caleb that Nathan lies and is not to be trusted. Caleb does not share this information with Nathan and discusses his thoughts on Ava’s AI with Nathan. He will hold a session daily to talk with Ava.
Each time Caleb sits to meet with Ava he is brought closer to the idea of being with Ava and she requests to escape with him during one of the power outages. She also reveals that she is causing the power failures and that if Caleb can write a code to cause the doors to unlock during a power out instead of lock, then she and Caleb can escape.
Caleb encourages Nathan to get drunk and steals his keycard. He finds closets full of robot women in different states of flesh and metal coverings. He watches video of past robots trying to escape and destroying themselves in futility.
Calab is shocked at the footage and cuts his own hand, questioning if he himself is a robot. He bleeds and returns the keycard to Nathan after changing the code.
Nathan sobers up and reveals that he had hidden a camera in the room with Ava and Caleb and knew that they planned to escape. Caleb, however, had already switched the coding so Ava is able to walk out of her room during a power-out.
During this time Nathan knocks Caleb unconscious. He runs out of the room to stop Ava.
Ava talks to the housemaid Kyoko who revealed herself to be a robot. Kyoko gets a kitchen knife and Nathan enters the hall with the two robots. Nathan damages one of Ava’s arms and begins to drag her back to her room. Kyoko stabs Nathan in the back with the kitchen knife. Nathan knocks off part of Kyoko’s face and she collapses, but Ava stabs Nathan in the chest, killing him.
Ava walks to Nathan’s room of robots and removes their skin, placing it as her own so that she looks fully human. She puts on a white dress and walks out of the house. Meanwhile, Caleb has regain consciousness. The power is back on and his door is locked. Caleb tries to scream to get Ava’s attention but she has only one goal: to leave.
Ava walks out into the forest and meets the waiting helicopter that arrived to pick up Caleb at the end of his stay and now instead takes Ava away to join the human world.
Review:
An interesting sci-fi tale from Alex Garland who also wrote 28 Days Later. This seems to be a passion project as it is partially taken from Garland’s own coding experiences and of course influential sci-fi films like 2001: A Space Odyssey.
I do think that the idea of someone administering a Turing test to a robot becoming therefore a pawn in a larger plan by both the creator and the robot to be at the very least intriguing. Though, for me, it does kind of stretch the plausibility that a man would so quickly fall in love and lose his head over a robot. I’m also not a man, so I can’t assume to know how every man thinks.
The cinematography was beautiful, the gorgeous shots of nature and the beautiful modern design of Nathan’s home were pleasing to see. Ava’s design was very well done. All the special effects looked convincing and the film had nice sound design. The soft whir and hum of Ava’s electrical components could always be heard.
Ava’s attempt to escape and Caleb’s eventual entrapment seemed like an inevitability to me and therefore less surprising. The film was a bit too slow paced for me as well. The characters of Nathan and Caleb weren’t particularly engaging, but Nathan does come across as a self-important inventor who isn’t quite as clever as he thinks and it does suit the film.
Overall it is a good, solid sci-fi film. Sometimes that’s the most anyone can hope for. The open-ending might leave some with the desire to know about the final fate of Ava and Caleb, but it’s probably for the best that it ends on a fairy-tale-like ending.