The movie Ex Machina opened a little wider this week so I got to check it out in the theaters. This is a sci-fi film about a programmer brought into a house/lab to perform in a modified Turing Test on what appears to be a sentient (and very attractive) “female” robot. In a series of face-to-face conversations, the man has to determine if the robot is really thinking for itself… or if it’s just programmed simulation. Then he has to decide if it really likes him… or if it just wants him to think it (she) likes him.

This is a good, intelligent and twisty mind-game of a movie. It’s smart enough to know that we might be trying to out-think it and it covers a number of these bases… so I appreciate that a great deal. What the movie is lacking though is heart or believable human emotions. There’s a situation in this movie that seems to be calling for more disgust or outrage or pity than the movie really presents… the movie is kind of cold and distant. Which might be intentional…. kind of like how 2001 is trying to be cold and distant.

Which isn’t to say the movie is bad… it just doesn’t rise to the emotional level it needs. And that’s a definite see-saw for a movie to balance. Too much and you wind up with pseudo-scientific schmaltz, too little and you wind up leaving little comprehensible room for the irrational things flawed human characters might do. I’d prefer a smart movie to one that just tugs on the heartstrings (unless that’s its goal) so I give this flick a little leeway.

There’s a lot of dialogue in the movie centered around the nature of consciousness, reality, and sentience. Oddly, I don’t think it was quite as smart and meaningful as perhaps it was aiming to be. That was probably intentional to assure that it didn’t get too abstracted out and lose a non-scientific audience. I get that but it did remind me that a lot of the themes and topics done here were done many many times before in various episodes of, say, Star Trek.

The FX behind the humanoid and very female robot are pretty startling given the indie nature of the film. Only about 25% of her appears to be human flesh, the rest transparent skin so you can see her mechanics inside. She’s played by a very pretty actress and her sensuality (for lack of a better term) is intentional to the movie’s themes. I wasn’t sure, watching the trailer, whether this was going to be a smart flick or an exploitation flick and the movie lands on the side of the former (with some skin – and questionable morals – to spare).

As an aside, this film has a heavy synth score that reminded me a lot of the recent horror flick It Follows which itself was inspired by John Carpenter-style synth music from his great late 70s and early 80s movies. I think Ex Machina is trying to suggest a similar throwback themes of 1970s sci-flicks like The Andromeda Strain.

Anyhow, I can recommend this movie if it comes to a theater (or tv screen) near you. It’s a twisty bit of mind trickery that will likely leave you wondering and thinking about it afterwords. Perhaps not as deep as it could have been but at least it tries.

Score: 84