Movie Review: Ex-Machina

A couple of weeks back I came down with a cold and had a day at home during the week where all I did was watch episodes of Jessica Jones and watched a movie I've been dying to see, Ex-Machina. It's a movie I wanted to see in theaters and like a ton of movies this year never got around to doing it. Luckily it just recently came out on Amazon Prime so while I was hopped up on Dayquil I sat down and watched it.

Ex-Machina stars Domhnall Gleeson (from one of my favorite movies of all time About Time) who plays Caleb a guy from a tech company (similar to Google) who's offered a week retreat with the companies CEO Nathan played by the brilliant Oscar Isaac. From the moment the helicopter touches down near Nathan's place you can tell that something weird is going on. What transpires is one of the most visceral movie experiences I've ever experienced. While Caleb is being pressured into this experiment you as the viewer are along for an incredible ride. 

So why bring Caleb out to the CEO's house for a week? Well Nathan is building a robot with human like artificial intelligence. From there the movie takes a ton of twists and turns (some you will see coming others you won't) and ends with a truly remarkable conclusion. I don't think I've been as blown away by the end of a movie in a long time. It's just not something your going to predict even an hour into the movie.

What I love most about Ex-Machina is that it brings to light conversations that the world is going to have to face in the near future. AI is already here and its going to continue to get better so how we as a world are going to face it is going to be interesting to see. This movie although a little ahead of its time was an engaging movie that has kept me thinking about it long after the credits.