Film Review: Ex Machina

I, Robot

Another week, another bunch of brand new film releases, with this weeks' most anticipated (for me anyway) being Alex Garland's Ex Machina, starring Domhnall Gleeson and Oscar Isaac, both of whom are set to star in that little thing called Star Wars which is out later this year. After discovering Garland had wrote screenplays for both 28 Days Later and Dredd, both of which I love, I was instantly compelled to go and see his latest effort, and his directorial debut. Off we go... 

For the plot, I will try not to give too much away, (I went in to the showing hardly knowing anything) so I will stick to the basic premise which is laid out within the trailer. After Domhnall Gleeson's character, Caleb, wins a competition to spend a week with the CEO of his company, "Bluebook", he soon becomes part of a groundbreaking experiment that focuses on Ava, an AI created by Oscar Issac's character, Nathan, and is asked to determine whether it is capable of exhibiting human behaviour by means of the Turing test. First off, Ex Machina, benefits slightly from last year's release of The Imitation Game, which documented the life of Alan Turing, so those who saw it may indeed have the upper hand already in understanding the basis of the test used in the film. In terms of similarities between the films however, they most certainly end there as Ex Machina is a creepy and claustrophobic, proper sci-fi film, reminiscent of last years' Under the Skin, which I named my top film of 2014. Good start...

Much like Under the Skin, Ex Machina, relies on an overall sense of isolation, with each having very little cast, and both focusing on the differences of what is is to be human against what it is to be considered the "other" or the "outsider". In the context of Under the Skin, the "other" was an alien who had taken the form of Scarlet Johansson, whereas in Ex Machina, the other can arguably be recognised as the AI Ava or Nathan, whose paranoid and untrustworthy tendencies have pushed him into a reclusive lifestyle, where the interaction with Caleb only succeeds through Caleb signing his freedom away. Literally. The secluded nature of the film gives it an overarching feeling of forthcoming dread, especially in the scenes where we witness power cuts, where the sense of danger is emphasised by the colour changes from natural to a bold, blood-like red. 

The film also includes top-notch performances from Isaac and Gleeson, but it is Alicia Vikander's portrayal as AI Ava that really steals the show, so much so that it would have been interesting to see if her, or the film in general, would have been recognised by the Oscars if it had been released only a few months earlier. Although the film does suffer slightly from being rather too slow in places, it is strong and effective addition to the sci-fi genre. I look forward to seeing Mr. Garland again.

Overall Score: 8/10