7/10

Alex Garland, writer of ’28 Days Later’ and ‘Sunshine’, makes his directorial debut with the stylish and science fiction thriller, ‘Ex-Machina’. Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson) is a programmer at an internet search giant. He wins a competition to spend a week at the private mountain estate of the company’s brilliant and reclusive CEO, Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac). Upon his arrival, Caleb learns that Nathan has chosen him to be the human component in a social study with evaluating the capabilities, and ultimately the consciousness, of Nathan’s latest experiment. That experiment is Ava (Alicia Vikander), a breathtaking A.I. whose emotional intelligence proves more sophisticated and more deceptive than the two men could have imagined. ‘Ex-Machina’ is a film i enjoyed greatly for it’s abstract views on real life encounters of the everyday human. Personal interraction under surveillance, religious creationism, nature Vs nurture in the discussion of homosexuality, and even empowering feminism all play a big part in the structure of such a smart film. To take this movie at face value, is not only degrading to the movie, but it’s not seeing the movie with your eyes wide open. There is so much that i would love to talk about with the hidden meanings in the movie, but this review is more about the elements that made me enjoy it. The movie has some tone issues from it’s one hour and forty-five minute run time. It’s a very slow burn that builds some decent tension, but it never got higher than where it remained comfortable. As a result of this, the ending is a little anti-climatic. It’s probably the only problem i really had with the film, as it’s technical aspects are very enticing to the human eye. The wonderful score from Geoff Barrow creates a very faint dark synth composition that creates a steady mix of beauty and dread. There’s great sound editing in the film that mostly comes from soundproof backgrounds. Each scene is encased in a bubble of silence, and this is done very well as the whole movie takes place in a sealed research facility. Because of that quiet, you feel the loneliness of the characters and their situations. Awkward interractions weigh even heavier when they have nothing but the walls to bounce off of. The acting was really good. By this point, Oscar Isaac could act himself out of a paper bag. There’s a lost art to his method acting that makes it possible for the audience to laugh at his sarcastic wit one second, and then hate him for the bastard he plays the very next. To juggle such emotions makes him able to portray any character, and i for one can’t wait to see him in the new Star Wars film. I was also quite impressed with Vikander’s portrayal of the A.I at the focus of this film. She is always careful never to deliver anything recognizable as human emotions, as she is unfamiliar with the traits that a human body carries. It’s hard to recommend a film like this to anyone who needs a film to deliver everything neatly packaged on a silver platter. Garland instead relies on self interpretation to an old motive used in ‘Frankenstein’ which shows the relationship between creator and creation. The film does a solid job distancing itself nicely from others of its breed, for lurking beneath the heady stuff is a tense, frightening film about the next step in technological evolution. ‘Ex-Machina’ takes it’s time to explain an idea. The real treasure lies within those ideas, and it’s because of that, the film has great re-watch value.