The Non-Spoiler Review: Ex_Machina

Oh man, how do I even start with this one without spoiling anything? First off, it's a surprisingly complex movie (in term of plot themes, foreshadowing and overall deceit) for a cast this small. It's surprising how quickly people become skeptical of each other while essentially isolated in a building for a few days.

The premise is essentially, a CEO named Nathan(Oscar Isaac) of the world's most successful search engine Bluebook selects Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) through a sweepstakes to join Nathan in his secluded compound to run a series of Turing tests (a machine's ability to exhibit behavior similar to human) on his latest humanoid robot named Ava (Alicia Vikander). The biggest theme of the movie is the grey area between humanity and artificial intelligence. Nathan and Caleb are both brilliantly flawed and instantly weary of each other, each assuming their the smartest person in the room.

This is the directorial debut of Alex Garland, writer of such films as 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later, Sunshine (a personal favorite of mine) and Dredd.

I found this movie to be incredibly fascinating and intellectually stimulating while also a being nail-bitingly tense thriller. And while it deals with some complex robotics and scientific anomalies, it doesn't alienate the unfamiliar viewer to the point of feeling lost in the science. It gives everyone enough science and tech information so that we're all on the same page to get it out of the way to we can delve into the meat of the plot. It reminded me a lot of the way Looper doesn't suffocate it's audience with all the science that would make time travel possible.

Ava is the big mystery of the film and it would be incredibly difficult to really say anything about her without giving everything away but I will say that as much as she is being studied by the two men, she's equally studying them. She is the mouse in a maze figuring out a way to the proverbial cheese.