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Ex Machina * Alex Garland (2015)

And again a philosophical scifi. The genre seems to be booming.

Caleb is a promising programmer at a Google-like company. He is selected for a special experiment at the house of his boss, Nathan. Nathan lives in a remote forest in an extremely futuristic house where he is working on AI (artificial intelligence) robots. It is Caleb’s task to interact with the robot (Ava) and when he gets the idea that he interacts with a human, the AI has passed the test.

Ava proves to be a manipulative robot who sets out to seduce Caleb. Of course Nathan follows the two’s every move. The film is very slow and somewhat meditative, but inspite of throwing up some questions about what consciousness is, it is not convincing. Some of the obligatory surprises are visible a mile away and especially when the director felt the need to explain a bit more towards the end, things become a bit flimsy. The end contains a major flaw in the story as well.

“Ex Machina” is not a boring film and it is also nicely shot, but there are better films in the hip genre of philosophical scifi.

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