Ex Machina Film Review

Ex Machina is a science-fiction thats storyline evolves around the fear of the future, artificial intelligence, and of the blurred line between human life and its imitations, of online surveillance shaping our experiences. Also, it involves the social fear of whether someone actually like you or whether they are faking it, which seems all so difficult with humans, however shows how terribly hard it is with a robot also.

One of my favourite parts about the production of the film is the sounds used within the main scenes. Each time there seemed to be tension the non diegetic sounds being played suited perfectly to what was going on and created an extremely good atmosphere for the audience. The visual effects on the robots were absolutely amazing, when looking at Ava there was almost nothing that could hint to the audience that she wasn't a real thing and made the film extremely good to watch, when Kyoko peels her skin away for Caleb to see the robot she is underneath goes to show how good the producers really were at their job and proved to the audience that this film was extremely advanced with their visual effects. Therefore, the producers did an extremely good job with what they did, and will certainly be able to thrive upon their new reputation that they will have gained.

There are certainly ethical and moral questions to be asked about Ex Machina, as Nathan seems to be a very sexist character, and perhaps they went too far with his character when doing this. This is shown by the way he treats Kyoto as a slave, and the way we see her cooking a lot of the time suits an offensive stereotype of a Womans job to do the cooking, the only other role she undergoes for Nathan is being used for sex, which will mostly likely cause a lot of commotion to the public, and will definitely be very offensive towards feminists. Therefore i believe the film went a bit too far with how sexist it was at certain points and should have been more careful about it.

The characters in my opinion were the best part of the film, i believe they all did an extremely good job with the role they were given. Nathan was possibly way favourite character, as there was always something suspicious about him and an on going tension between him and Caleb that he seemed to be aware of, however we never knew when the time was going to come before he went mad at Caleb which kept an ongoing grab for the audience. Caleb seemed very believable and showed us his vulnerability throughout the whole film, which foreshadowed his fate at the end of the film. His relationship with Ava was fantastic, and created a good hook for the audience as there was so many possible outcomes for their relationship and personal fate. Ava was extremely good at taking on the role of a robot due to her elegance in movement, and created a really believable character for the audience.

As i said, the soundtrack and characters relationships were my favourite parts about this film. However i also believe this was the films biggest mistake in my eyes. This is because, the relationship between characters were built up so much throughout the whole film that it made me anticipate something incredible, which it did in most peoples opinion. For example the tension between Nathan and Caleb was built up so much throughout the film, and we could see that the calm side Nathan was showing was slowly being built up into a lot of anger, and therefore the simple punch Nathan throws at Caleb wasn't enough in my opinion and should have resulted in Caleb trying to hide from Nathan and a big fight undergoing with him, Kyoko and Ava. Also, the fate of the relationship between Caleb and Ava should have been extended as it all happened so quickly, that it didn't really have an affect on me. Therefore i believe Ava and Caleb should have had an extra barrier towards escaping and Ava should have played along Caleb into trying to get past the last barrier in order to escape, and then eventually leave him. Finally, i believe the films complete ending was unnecessary as the film should have ended with Calebs fate sealed which would have hit the audience a bit harder. Whereas instead we see Ava get introduced to the real world, which was all unnecessary and didnt have much of an affect on me personally. Therefore, i believe the ending of the film was a huge anti climax, but the rest of the film was fantastic. 

Overall 5-6/10

Cam Quinn