‘Ex Machina’ A Stark Sci-Fi Gem (Film Review)

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According to some computer engineers and futurists, humanity is mere decades away from what many feel could be our greatest achievement: artificial intelligence. The concept of true AI elicits a wide-array of thoughts and opinions from the scientific community. Some, like Stephen Hawking, feel that AI has the potential to become the biggest threat to humanity’s continued reign on planet earth. Others, like Ray Kurzweil, believe that AI could become the key to humanity’s survival, imbuing us with a lifespan previously unfathomable and allowing us the opportunity to explore the vastness of our universe.

So when you get down to it, the only thing we really know about what AI might mean for humanity is that we really don’t know what AI might mean for humanity. This unknown is ripe for exploration in narrative fiction and, indeed, films of the last few decades have played to this with varying effect. One would think, however, that the mine would dry up eventually. How many new ways can there be to explore these fears and ask ourselves these questions before the entire topic becomes blasé?

We’re only four months into 2015 and already we’ve had one major release—Chappie—that explores the ups and downs of artificial intelligence. Now, with the release of Alex Garland’s much anticipated Ex Machina, that count is up to two.

Domhnall Gleeson (Unbroken, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows) plays Caleb, a coder working for Oscar Isaac’s (A Most Violent Year, Inside Llewyn Davis) Nathan. Out of nowhere, Caleb is announced as the winner of a company-wide lottery, the prize of which is a weeklong visit to Nathan’s private island for some much needed R&R in paradise. Once there, Caleb discovers that the lottery was a ruse, a ploy to get the talented coder into his boss’s secret laboratory so that he might help him with one final test in his newest project. Nathan, you see, thinks he has developed the world’s first true AI, a robot named Ava (played by Alicia Vikander, Seventh Son). Before he can make that claim, however, Ava must pass the Turing Test—that is, convincing a human of her own intelligence and awareness—and Caleb is her judge. Before he knows it, he’s caught in a web of lies and betrayal as part of a mind game between Ava and Nathan that leaves Caleb wondering who, if anyone, he can trust.

Ex Machina plays like a Hitchcockian thriller filtered through the prism of Kubrick. Garland, known best as the screenwriter for 28 Days Later and Sunshine, is truly a master storyteller who wastes no line of dialogue, and the same can be said for this, his directorial debut. Much of the movie is set up as alternating conversations between Caleb and Nathan or Nathan and Ava, with every scene adding a bit more to the mystery and intrigue that propels the film.

While there are a few minor characters aside from these three, much of the movie rests squarely on the shoulders of our trio. There aren’t a lot of directors that can tell an interesting story with a cast of three but Garland manages to do just that. It helps that his cast is comprised of talented actors giving top-notch performances. Vikander, especially, plays her role beautifully, to the point where we, the audience, haven’t the faintest idea what her true motivations and desires might be. Is she telling the truth? Is Nathan?

The line between humanity and AI is blurred under Garland’s watchful eye. We, like Caleb, are left with a dizzying feeling of confusion as Caleb’s rabbit hole sinks deeper and deeper. Throughout it all, there’s a feeling of impending dread and horror. Here, Garland proves his mastery as not only a storyteller but as a director as well. Much like Kubrick’s The Shining, the audience is left with a feeling that terror might be waiting around every corner. However, like Hitchcock, Garland doesn’t give you the catharsis of a scare, choosing instead to let the unease build and build until the film’s conclusion. This tenseness plays with your mind, adding to the emotional confusion of the entire project.

What had every right to be another tired retread manages instead to be a thought-provoking treatise on what it means to be alive and the nature of humanity. While his conclusions aren’t necessarily different from the conclusions of similar films, Garland is able to present his story in interesting ways. Maybe whether AI is potentially good or potentially bad isn’t so clear a question as we want it to be. Maybe there are shades of grey that need to be addressed. It might just be that an AI’s reaction to humanity depends on humanity’s reaction to it. First impressions are important, after all, so perhaps the question comes down to: How do we want AI to react to us? If the predictions are right, we’ve only got a few decades to figure that out before we’re face to face with the real thing. So maybe we should take the time to figure ourselves out before that happens.