Ruben Rosario

Paranoia about the threat artificial intelligence may pose to the survival of the human race has provided sci-fi storytellers with a bottomless wellspring of inspiration for more than a century. The ways we may actually be engineering humanity's demise by creating androids with a capacity for independent thought that dwarfs our own remains a go-to literary and cinematic motif in works running the gamut from high- to lowbrow.

Ex Machina, the feature directing debut of novelist and screenwriter Alex Garland, attempts to come in somewhere in the middle of this scale. For a while, he duped this reviewer into believing his interest in exploring the subject matter's practical and philosophical implications was genuine, and not a smoke screen for cheesy B-movie tropes. The writer of 28 Days Later initially tackles the weighty topic with narrative economy and an ingratiating refusal to take itself too seriously, but alas, that gambit can only take the movie so far before more basic instincts take over.

The movie starts out, promisingly enough, with an e-mail informing Caleb (About Time's Domhnall Gleeson, sporting a serviceable American accent), a coder for a Google-esque search engine, that he's won a lottery granting him an opportunity to participate in a top-secret project alongside Nathan (the ubiquitous Oscar Isaac), his company's reclusive founder. Off Caleb goes, flown in by helicopter to an undisclosed location – Norway provides the picturesque vistas – that immediately brings to mind Syndrome's lair in The Incredibles, only without the Darwinian menace. Caleb, clearly intended as a fairly blank-slate audience surrogate, is intelligent, inquisitive, faintly adorkable … and also a bit of a dullard. Upon meeting his 30-something superior, it's clear that this hipsterish genius with the brains of Mark Zuckerberg and the looks of a nerdy leather daddy has a hidden agenda. (So does Garland, but more on that later.)

 

Nathan smoothly slides a non-disclosure agreement across the table for his peon to sign. Caleb's smart enough to know he's taking a huge risk if he agrees to become involved in the hush-hush endeavor, but his curiosity outweighs his trepidation. The assignment exceeds his wildest expectations: Nathan, as it turns out, has created an android that appears to think for herself. Wait a minute: herself? Cue the magnetic Ava (A Royal Affair's Alicia Vikander), captivating enough to stoke Caleb's imagination … and with more than enough sex appeal to stimulate other impulses. Divided by a glass window, the young man and the attractive fembot seem to forge a genuine connection, one that's somewhat undercut by his duty to determine whether her brain – which Nathan dissects in one of the film's most effective scenes – displays real artificial intelligence.

Garland has assembled a skillful production team, even if composers Geoff Barrow and Ben Salisbury lay on the ominous foreboding way too heavily. Mark Digby's sleek production design and Rob Hardy atmospheric camerawork entice viewers by sustaining an antiseptic aura of mystery. The production values are so seductive, actually, that they go a long way toward masking Garland's endgame. Ava winds up sharing more DNA with certain flesh-and-blood characters in post-World War II film noir than she does with, say, 2001's H.A.L. 9000 or Fritz Lang's iconic breasted robot in Metropolis. All the finely modulated vulnerability in Vikander's portrayal, then, is squandered in favor of a resolution that shoehorns the movie's themes into the confines a genre-driven, sci-fi geek-friendly plot.

Even on those more trashy terms, there was still a chance Ex Machina might have still worked for me, had Garland refrained from resorting to the kind of cruel, mean-spirited measures that marred some of his best known work. (Think of Guillermo Del Toro's early work. You know, before he made Pan's Labyrinth and became a more compassionate auteur.) But he just couldn't resist indulging in a phenomenon I've fondly coined the Red Dress Problem, after a particularly insulting story turn in 28 Days Later. This is not a surprising outcome for Garland, who, it must be said, also reduced Danny Boyle's Sunshine to a slasher movie in space, but that doesn't make the third-act problems in his latest effort any less disappointing.

This is not to say Ex Machina is completely devoid of charm. Isaac's casual insouciance, which reaches its apex in an impromptu dance number, hints at how much more fun this movie could have been. And yet, there's a nagging notion that the film's ideas would have been far better served if it had been told more from Ava's point of view. Garland, though, rarely puts us in her shoes. For much of the film's running time, she's the Other, an object of desire whose enigmatic appeal vanishes the moment her ultimate intentions are revealed.

And what about Nathan's self-destructive behavior, borne out of a pessimistic outlook on mankind's future, or Caleb's emotional growth as a result of his interaction with Ava? They're story strands a filmmaker with more maturity might have seen fit to flesh out more fully, but in Garland's infantile hands, they're just a means to an end, capably crafted filler leading to the cinematic equivalent of a trickster pointing his finger at us and having a juvenile laugh at our expense.