Ex Machina

Science fiction set in a house in the mountains. Caleb is a programmer at a search company. He wins a draw and will spend a week with the company's owner. He goes by helicopter. The house sits in a valley, the nearest neighbour is hours away, and the building is partly underground. Nathan lives alone. He drinks, exercises and works in a basement. The task is defined. Caleb will test an artificial intelligence and decide whether the machine thinks like a person. Ava is in a glass room. Her face and hands look human, her body is exposed and you can see inside. From there the film proceeds in seven sessions. Each session is a chapter, and in each Ava steers a little more. There are power cuts. The cameras go off at those moments and Ava tells Caleb not to trust his host. What the narrative is interested in is not consciousness but manipulation: the real question is not whether the machine thinks but who is using whom. The dance scene is the most unexpected moment and explains the character in one go. In the last section everyone runs his own plan and the narrative rescues nobody. The visual effects were made by a small team on a low budget; the film won an Academy Award for effects that year, beating far more expensive productions. The house is a Scandinavian hotel and it was shot in Norway. Domhnall Gleeson, Alicia Vikander, Oscar Isaac and Sonoya Mizuno are in the cast. Alex Garland wrote and directed; it was his first film. Who it is for: anyone who likes science fiction with few people and a lot of talk. Who it is not for: anyone expecting action; the film is almost entirely within four walls and the pace is deliberately low.