Underwhelming Brilliance

Rating: 7/10 (30 June 2015)

"By far the greatest danger of Artificial Intelligence is that people conclude too early that they understand it." - Eliezer Yudkowsky I am no intellectual and these theoretical scientific films are not in my wheelhouse, but the trailers looked tense and I heard it had some good reviews so there were some moderately high hopes for Ex Machina.
Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), a computer programmer for the world's largest internet search engine, wins a lottery held by the company. The prize for winning this lottery is a week with the CEO of the company, Nathan. Played by Oscar Isaac, he is a genius who thought of the algorithms of the worlds most complex search engine when he was just 12 years old. A helicopter lifts Caleb to an excluded house in the mountains where Nathan resides and the only people in the complex for the week are Caleb, Nathan and a Japanese maid who doesn't speak any English. Caleb, having no idea of the agenda for the week, is told by Nathan that he is creating a human android with artificial intelligence and that they will be performing a Turing test. Then the movie is split up into Caleb's sessions with the android Ava, and him performing the test to determine whether or not Ava is indistinguishable with a human. Ex Machina is heavily reliant on some character studies, of course of Ava as the plot of the movie is centered on Caleb's tests of her, but also of Caleb himself and Nathan. The relationships between themselves are also very compelling in determining all there intentions and Caleb serves as a detective of sorts, as he determines whether or not Ava thinks as organically as a human and why her creator/programmer brought him there. During this inspection of Ava, Caleb's sympathy and affection towards her grows, and his awareness of her artificial intelligence dims. The touring test is moving forward and through the relationships and suspense of the film, you forget this is just a scientific experiment just as Caleb has. Ex Machina is an expertly made film with an interesting premise. The acting was marvelous and all three of the relatively unknown stars shined in their respective roles (Oscar Isaac, Domhnall Gleeson, and Alicia Vikander). For the first half of the movie it grabs your attention with a gripping force and you hope it just keep getting tighter...but it loosens. The suspense driven between Caleb's conversations with Ava and Nathan just keep repeating and don't amplify nearly soon enough. I caught myself being very cognitive of the time passing and with thrillers that should not be the case. Don't get me wrong, I was never bored or uninterested but Ex Machina just never hits that next level of excitement or intrigue. They sold this film as a game changing thriller in the trailers and it was really just a drama with the mask and some attributes of a thriller. Don't get me wrong, it was an effective drama with compelling interactions but when you sell a movie as a thriller you better get my heart racing more than this. Ex Machina is a well crafted and smart film, but misses that boost needed to be a memorable Sci-Fi Thriller it aimed to be.
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