prefers guilt to intelligence

Rating: 5/10 (30 July 2016)

Ex Machina is a dumb film masquerading as intelligent, doing so by enveloping itself in subjects too complex for the common viewer, whose simplest response is guilt by association.
The story is of a genius who has designed a real artificial intelligence - a robot so complex, it's human. But it's also robot, aware of its nature.
A second, extremely obvious character is introduced, the straight man to the funny man (here replaced by the dramatic man), whose sole purpose is to make mistakes to drive the plot forward.
The second character proceeds to make such mistakes, setting up the boring finale.
Ex Machina never asks important questions; the robots are human, and while on one side depicted as being more than, they have the most blatant human fallacies, fear of death, emotions, want of freedom, yet to enact upon these feelings they use some super-conscious which, if existent, would not make them do said actions.
Does a machine aware of its machine-ness, need to be "free"? Does a toaster fear death?
In the end Ex Machina is the story about a guy who keeps a girl locked up for his sexual pleasure, and yet it pretends to be more. It guilts the viewers into feeling for a subject who does not feel for itself.
I would not recommend this film; it's short on intelligence, long, slow, insulting to the viewer, and uses the cheapest tricks to drive the story forward.
It's just the story of a sex slave. NOT of a superior intelligence.
5/10