Ex Machina Review: A Twisted tale of A.I. and the Human Psyche

Ex Machina is one of those movies that will have you thinking about it long after you finish watching, and likely one that you’ll either love or hate. It’s slow, methodical, and the entire movie feels like a build up. Which, in my opinion, just makes this movie even better. The story of this movie follows a programmer named Caleb, played by Domhnall Gleeson, who wins a contest to visit Nathan, played by Oscar Isaac, who is the CEO of the company he works for and spend a week with him in his private, extremely secluded estate. Nathan then explains to Caleb that he wants him to test out his new Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) that he developed named Ava, played by Alicia Vikander. The movie then uses the characters to drive the plot and the narrative creates a dark reality that we must face with Caleb during his week-long stay with Nathan.

This movie will grab you and pull you in and never let you go. I haven’t been so enticed by a film in a while, and since I saw this movie after Mad Max it was a very good streak of movies. The thing that makes this movie stick out to me is the acting. Every single scene — and I mean every single one — would not work if the actors weren’t as great as they are. Director Alex Garland, who is also the film’s writer, also did an amazing job with this script. Even Kyoko (Sonoya Mizuno), who is Nathan’s assistant, has beautiful acting and I honestly can’t praise that enough. The movie starts as a test on the A.I. but by the end you yourself will b…