A.k.a. Ex_Machina

D/S: Alex Garland. P: Andrew Macdonald, Allon Reich. Cast: Domhnall Gleeson, Alicia Vikander, Oscar Isaac, Sonoya Mizuno. UK dist (Blu-ray/DVD): Universal.

Fresh-faced programmer Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), one of many razor-sharp coders working for Bluebook (a near-future version of Google), is stunned to learn he’s won first prize in the staff lottery: a week alone with the company’s founder, reclusive gazillionaire genius Nathan Bateman (Oscar Isaac). It’s a dream come true, and the bewildered lad is soon choppered to Bateman’s remote and rocky retreat to meet his hero. The great man– a hard-drinking, shaven-headed, hipster-bearded, regular-guy-wannabe – informs Caleb that the lottery’s a sham, and that he’s really been summoned by design: carefully picked, in fact, to assist Bateman in a little experiment.

Quite a significant experiment, it turns out. For Bateman has made a breakthrough in artificial intelligence and created Ava (Alicia Vikander), an uncannily lifelike female android. To verify that Ava can pass for human, Bateman needs Caleb to subject her to the Turing Test – an intensive Q&A to probe her personality, at the end of which Caleb will tender his verdict. But complications quickly arise. Caleb finds himself increasingly drawn towards Ava, and it seems his feelings are reciprocated; not only that, but during a brief power cut (one of many that have recently plagued Bateman’s high-tech home) Ava warns him that Bateman is not to be trusted…

To say anything more would be a disservice to this consistently smart and engrossing thriller. Though certain plot specifics recall another British-made A.I. drama, Caradog James’s cyber-hottie actioner The Machine (2013) – and, of course, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), whose Voight-Kampff test and replicant romance are echoed here in rather different form – Ex Machina reveals a refreshing originality at play. In the confident hands of writer-director Alex Garland, ideas around since Mary Shelley and Metropolis acquire a cutting-edge gleam. Eschewing shoot-‘em-up thrills and the flashier trappings of most screen SF, Garland presents instead a sinuous psychodrama, determinedly minimalist, replete with ambiguity, misdirection and Pinterish mind-games.

Performances are strong, with Oscar Isaac a model of compact menace as the internet Frankenstein (whose easygoing charm slips, now and then, to reveal something harder and colder just underneath). Domhnall Gleeson (son of Brendan) makes a likeably starstruck naïf, more than capable of holding his own in a debate over stochastic programming, but notably less confident in his dealings with a sexy robotrix. As Ava, Alicia Vikander has probably the toughest job of all: to imbue a mass of circuitry with a human soul. She pulls it off extremely well, blending waiflike vulnerability with a voracious curiosity for a world she’s never seen. Tension between the three is drawn out with expert precision, building to a ruthlessly logical payoff.

Dialogue is lively and believable, with only one groaner of note, Gleeson’s predictable invocation of Oppenheimer’s “I am become Death, destroyer of worlds” (a line fast becoming as overused as Hamlet’s “more things in heaven and Earth”). Music and visual effects are used sparsely but effectively. The film looks a treat, with a rigorous formal austerity suggesting Pedro Almodóvar’s The Skin I Live In (2011) and Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin (2014) as possible inspirations; its interplay of textures, from the coolly inhuman lines of Bateman’s Starck-inspired pad to the fractal exuberance of its mountain surroundings, ensures the film is never less than ravishing to the eye. (The plentiful helpings of nudity don’t hurt, either.) Given that my only previous exposure to Garland’s work was via the distinctly underwhelming 28 Days Later (2002) and Dredd (2012), the success of Ex Machina (his debut as director) is all the more remarkable. It’s clever, intriguing and, at times, disarmingly funny. It’s well worth your time.