Garland directs one of his stories for the first time with an addition to the AI genre, and gathers critical acclaim largely for eschewing excessive histrionics or didactic exposition of what is going on in the mind of the burgeoning consciousness at the centre of the film. Of all the recent films on the theme of a machine reaching self-awareness, Spike Jonze's
Her is by far the closest in the sense that while the machine is the centre, it is a conflicted human trying to make sense of how he feels about the machine that is the actual heart of the story. Of course, this has to be a man and it's quite easy to see how the machine, again in the form of an attractive woman, represents the mystery of womanhood altogether for the agonised nerd facing her. This standard arrangement would be nice to get away from if the genre still has any fuel in its tank.
As it is,
Ex Machina is capably acted, well shot with impressive effects and gets under the skin in a genuinely disconcerting way at times, albeit mostly in the interaction between the unhinged inventor and the naïf protagonist employed by him to test his creation. However, there is also too much that is left unanswered by the film, being so taken with its style and clinical intellect while leaving the new-born entity a closed book. Or, indeed, a tin man.
6/10
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