Ex Machina

The movie is about a programmer, Caleb, who won a lottery to perform the Turing-test on a robot called Ava at the secluded mansion of his employer, Nathan. The Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit intelligent behavior equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human.

The testing is done through a series (sessions) of conversations between Caleb and Ava. When we meet Ava, I was struck by her beauty, and observing the comments online, many are as well. But this is where my first criticism starts: the movie is over-sexualized. The amounts of nudity and sexual innuendo went beyond reason.

The second disappointment of this movie is its predictability. I'm not going to spoil it for you, but it's not hard to imagine what's really going on and how it could end up. There won't be any significant surprises. Although a plot-twist will occur, it isn't enough to bring the movie to a higher level.

Not to mention that some events were just silly. Its one of those occasions where some people are made stupid so the other looks more intelligent. For this movie that's extra bad as its narrative is supposed to be of an intelligent nature.

The biggest challenge of this movie is its pace. It's almost non-existent. A big part of the conversations between Ava the fembot and Caleb are simply not interesting, i.e. the conversations don't add value. Just to be clear, having the conversations is the bread and butter of this movie, but too often the things that are said don't hold much substance. The gist has been made clear, so no need to drag it on.

This movie attempts to be thought provoking. Ex Machina is pop-science which clearly caters to a younger audience. The viewer is not expected to be a deep thinker per se.

I rate it 4 out of 10 stars because the slow pace holds the movie back quite a bit. And the amounts of nudity is simply too much. It's also too pretentious. I'm confident it has the right to be somewhat pretentious, but not as much as this; the movie is not "that" smart. The good thing for many viewers is that it's an accessible "thinking-movie". Those are rare. Would I recommend it? I have to say no, though I don't feel good about it. The wrongs of this movie should not be rewarded I feel, despite the presence of some merit.