Beautifully made, but without much purpose

Rating: 6/10 (1 November 2015)

The visual style of this film, the sparse dialog, the acting - all spell 'masterpiece.' The look of the artificial lifeform, and the performances of the three leads are spot-on. The unusual setting. It all works. Ex Machina is an arresting creation.
Intellectually, also, the film tackles some very big questions. What is intelligence? Is our destiny to create our own successors? Should man play God?
Unfortunately, that last question ends up dominating the story. And guess what: it's been done. To death. If you ask interesting questions, you need to come up with suitably interesting answers. Ex Machina does not. It thereby ends up being no more than a beautifully executed regurgitation of, yes, you guessed it, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.
Up until the last reel, it all seems off-beat and original. We're caught up in the fascinating trio of characters: the megalomaniacal computer genius, the young nerd, and the inscrutable AI. But instead of a clever pay-off, or any original statement whatsoever, the film nosedives into tired cliché. Instead of breadth of vision, it gives us only negativity and cheap shocks.
Ultimately, Ex Machina is disappointing and massively unsatisfying, where it promises to be fresh and brilliant. It's worth seeing as an exercise in style, but it could have been so much more.