Alex Garland, the guy responsible for the screenplays to 28 Days Later, Sunshine and the adaptation of Never Let Me Go, makes his directorial debut with Ex Machina, a smart and suspenseful addition to the much loved subgenre of A.I related Sci-Fi.

It stars Domhnall Gleeson as Caleb, a 26 year old computer programmer working for “Bluebook”, a company that’s like an alternate world Google run by the reclusive tech-genius, Nathan; played by Oscar Isaac, an actor who’s been going from strength to strength since his first leading role in the Coen brothers film Inside Llewyn Davis.

In the films first scene, Caleb wins a computer lottery orchestrated by “Bluebook” that sends him to stay at Nathan’s secluded luxury house for a week, ostensibly for an extended meet and greet. When he arrives, Nathan informs him that his real purpose is to run a series of tests on his latest invention, a humanoid robot that goes by the name of Ava.

Rather than being a simple Turing test, where an interrogator asks a series of questions without seeing the subject and has to decide by the responses alone whether they are speaking to a computer; In Nathan’s test, Caleb has to interact with Ava fully-knowing that she is a simulacra. The question is whether he can see her as a fellow “human” all the same.

But it’s not just Caleb and Ava who are trying to figure each other out. The layers of the story come together piece by piece as each one of the three main characters attempt to gain some understanding of the other two and the relationship’s that they each share. What exactly does Nathan expect of Caleb? How does Ava feel about her creator? Why was Caleb chosen in the first place?

I think that’s why I liked this movie so much. I’ve always been into science fiction, but mainly the kind that deals in ideas rather than big action and explosions. Alex Garland has stated that he wanted to make this film on a small budget so that he could limit outside forces having an impact on the story and he’s done it in the right way. Much like Primer or Moon, two other great low budget sci fi debuts of the last decade, he’s taken a small cast and single location and used it as a building block to create a sense of, sometimes tense, intimacy between the leads.

Alicia Vikander does a great job of giving the Ava character seemingly human emotions. The big question that we, as an audience, are made to evaluate and re-evaluate throughout the course of the film is does she, or does she not, feel? The same question that plays on the character of Caleb’s mind as he goes through a succession of tests with her/it.

Domhnall Gleeson is, surprisingly enough, exactly the right actor for the role. Caleb could’ve quite easily been played as the generic socially awkward, computer programmer type we often see in bigger budget films but he endows him with a sense of unbridled curiosity and unwavering skepticism right from the start. Constantly looking for the real truth behind Ava’s humanisms and questioning Nathan’s motives at every turn.

Oscar Isaac crafts Nathan into someone whose motives are there to be questioned. He’s the alpha male wunderkind, drinking his way through life and playing his cards close to his chest. One thing I really liked was how even though his morality often comes into question; he never crosses the line to becoming irredeemable, at least not in my opinion.

That’s also majorly to Garland’s credit. This time around, being the writer and the director, he gets to take the film from its conception to its completion and you can tell that his vision is the resounding one. It’s not like he’s trying to be Kubrick with 2001, this film doesn’t really rely on a lot of technical camera work so much as letting the dialogue and gestures tell the story. He’s not answering every question as soon as it’s raised. He gives each one time to ruminate in the viewer’s mind and ultimately, doesn’t disappoint, with an ending that ties some loose ends, and smartly, leaves some questions unanswered.

- Nathan Kearney