Ex Machina: Movie Review & Summary (BlogsWithSarah)

Just a quick heads up, this review will contain spoilers. (P.S, scroll down to read the summary first).

Artificial intelligence.

A topic I'm sure we've all thought about at some point or another. This film was truly engrossing, with little to no actual action.

The movie could only be described as a psychological sci-fi thriller. Unlike many recent sci-fi movies, Ex-Machina plays with the viewer's emotions, rather than overloads us with dramatic CGI filled action scenes, and leads us to question everything we thought we knew about humankind as well as Artificial Intelligence. In a creative way, it is a PSA to the inventor's of tomorrow. As a society, we take immense pride in technology and the advances we have made over the past few decades, as we should. As the time approaches for these ultimate sources of Artificial Intelligence to come into our lives- literal robots- we need to ask ourselves the hard questions about whether or not this really will benefit us or just leave us, quite honestly, stranded with no place to go and no place to hide. Director, Alex Garland, reveals quite how manipulative the human mind and soon, Artificial Intelligence can really be.

Your view of the movie can be yours, and only yours. Everyone will see this movie differently. Think of it as an inkblot test. Every drop of ink represents a different character, plot detail, setting, visual effect, sound, etc. Although each drop of ink will appear as it is; a drop of ink; the end result will be seen differently by each and every one of us. Personally, I believe Alex is warning us of quite how dangerous Artificial Intelligence is. The former image of Ava is a robot who truly feels like a girl, with human emotions, the ability to move, the ability to love, etc. But, as we see in the end, Ava also possesses the ability to hide and fake all of that. Ava has been given the emotions of every single cell phone user across the world, and as a result she possesses the emotions of every one of them and the ability to manipulate those emotions for her own personal gain. She is however also able to block out those emotions. When she needed to, she forgot her "love" for Caleb in order to pursue her own happiness.

Or did she? Could it be that Ava never loved Caleb to begin with. Maybe Caleb was in fact a part of this whole scheme. Maybe the scars on his back at the beginning of the movie were more then just scars after all.

MOVIE WARNINGS: Trigger warning for self harm, some scenes with nudity.


MOVIE SUMMARY

It centers around Caleb Smith, an employee at a fake search engine company, "Bluebox", who wins a trip to spend a week with the man behind the company, Nathan. From the start, you can tell that Nathan and Caleb do not mesh well. The awkward tension surrounding their first meeting is quite cringeworthy.

Eventually it is revealed that Caleb is not in fact at the house/lab/secluded cabin place just to spend a week with Nathan, but is actually there to test Nathan's new creation, an AI/robot named Ava. Caleb is immediately fascinated by Ava, and Ava also discovers newfound feelings for Caleb. Just when Caleb is starting to get a grasp on the experiment, things get weird. Gruesome information is revealed surrounding Nathan and the past of his work with Artificial Intelligence.

Caleb, believing he has forged a bond with Ava, has begun to discuss his feelings with her. Due to Ava being constantly monitored, she has found a way to create power outages wherein she is able to talk to Caleb without Nathan, her creator, listening in. During one of these conversations, Ava warns Caleb not to trust Nathan and after learning of the outcome of Nathan's previous AI endeavours, Caleb thinks up a plan with Ava to help get her out of the lab. The plan is to get Nathan drunk the following day, steal his key card (Caleb's key card does not have access to Nathan's private rooms), and change the security settings so that during power outages, the doors will automatically open instead of lock.

This is where things get confusing. During this time, Caleb figures that Nathan has likely found a way to continue to tap into their conversation during power outages and forges a second plan- a real plan. In this plan, Caleb has already changed the security settings whilst Nathan was drunk the previous night, and is going through with the rest of the plan the following night.

As expected, Nathan figures out the first plan and confronts Caleb, however when Ava's room suddenly unlocks, Caleb reveals to Nathan that the initial plan was in fact a cover-up. This leads to a not-so-intense showdown between Nathan, Ava and another AI, Kyoto, wherein Nathan is left to bleed to death, Kyoto gets destroyed by Nathan. Ava retreats to a room where Nathan has kept the remains of his previous AI projects (he would remove the artificially created brain and discard the body in a separate room) and in a slightly creepy but symbolic scene, covers herself in the artificial skin of another AI. Caleb has woken up at this point, however Ava has told him to stay put, so he is awaiting her return.

In a twist of events, Ava walks straight past Caleb and leaves him in the lab with no exit. She takes on her new life as a free human being and Caleb is left trapped, feeling helpless.

Let me know what you think of the movie in the comments below. If you've watched this movie and written a review, leave me a link to it as well.

Thanks for reading! Have a great day,

Sarah