Ex Machina

Ex Machina is one of those films that tries to get under your skin with quiet precision and just enough weirdness to make you question your own relationship with technology. The premise is simple: a young coder (Domhnall Gleeson) gets selected to spend a week with a reclusive tech genius (Oscar Isaac) and his latest creation, an AI named Ava (Alicia Vikander). What starts as a Turing test morphs into something stranger and far more unsettling.

From the jump, the film’s pacing is deliberate—slow, but in a way that actually works. There’s this constant, prickly tension in every scene that ramps up as the characters play psychological chess. If you’re an impatient viewer, you might get a little antsy, but director Alex Garland’s control over the tone pays off; nothing feels wasted, even though the film never rushes anywhere.

The cinematography is all cool minimalism and glassy surfaces, which fits the sterile, isolated lab where most of the story unfolds. Every frame looks like it could be torn out of a high-end architecture magazine, but there’s an underlying menace that seeps in as secrets start getting peeled back. I loved how the lighting, especially during the power outage scenes, subtly dialed up the claustrophobia.

Oscar Isaac is magnetic—equal parts tech-bro and sociopath—and has a knack for making even the most mundane conversation feel unsettling. Alicia Vikander’s performance as Ava is mesmerizing and genuinely ambiguous; she feels both human and alien, sometimes in the same moment. Gleeson works as a great audience surrogate—by the midpoint, you’re not sure you’d trust anyone in that house, including him.

Here's the thing: Ex Machina knows it's clever. Sometimes it winks a bit too hard; the dialogue occasionally leans into philosophical gears with almost sterile slickness, and it doesn’t always trust the audience to keep up. That self-assuredness can make it feel a tad cold, so if you’re looking for warmth or humor, you won’t find any here.

Even so, the emotional gut punch in the third act lands hard. The script’s raw honesty about power, manipulation, and humanity lingers long after credits roll. I finished the movie wanting to unplug all my devices—and maybe myself, for good measure.