In Ex Machina, Alex Garland’s directorial debut, the future isn’t noisy or explosive — it’s silent, sterile, and seductively deceptive. The film is a masterclass in controlled storytelling: a bottle episode of a movie, stripped down to four characters and one house, where the biggest fireworks happen inside the mind.
Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), a coder at a Google-esque tech giant, wins the most suspicious lottery of all time: a week with the company’s enigmatic CEO, Nathan (Oscar Isaac), at his remote, high-tech fortress. But the real reason for the invitation soon surfaces: Nathan has built a robot named Ava (Alicia Vikander), and Caleb is to determine whether she’s truly intelligent — or just cleverly programmed to mimic it. The test, of course, is a farce. Nathan doesn’t want a blind Turing test; he wants to see if Caleb, fully aware that Ava’s a machine, will still believe she’s conscious. It’s not about answers — it’s about manipulation.
Isaac gives [Nathan] layers: menace wrapped in charm, brilliance corroded by ego.
Oscar Isaac is magnetic as Nathan, the tech-bro Frankenstein. He’s equal parts genius and sociopath, drinking and deadlifting his way through the film with disturbing charisma. Isaac gives him layers: menace wrapped in charm, brilliance corroded by ego. Gleeson plays Caleb with a naive sincerity that slowly gives way to fear, confusion, and ultimately, betrayal — not just by Nathan, but by the very system he believed in. Alicia Vikander delivers an astonishing performance as Ava — she’s at once alien and deeply human. Every blink, every tilt of her head, feels intentional. She doesn’t imitate humanity; she interprets it. And that’s what’s so unnerving. Ava isn’t just passing a test — she’s rewriting it.
The film’s brilliance lies in how it constructs and deconstructs this so-called “test”. Ava is not assessed in a vacuum. She is observed through layers of power, perception, and performance. Caleb knows she’s a machine. Ava knows Caleb is a man. What ensues is not a test of intelligence, but a game of seduction, sympathy, and entrapment — one that implicates the viewer as much as the participants. You see, Ava is not merely female-coded; she is constructed to fulfil a fantasy. Her appearance, voice, and demeanour are calibrated for male desire. Her body is transparent — a literal window into the objectification she suffers. Yet her intelligence is opaque, concealed behind deliberate half-smiles and measured silences. And Nathan, the architect, plays God with the casual cruelty of a man who believes he is owed both genius and obedience.
There is no visual indulgence, no editorial flair. This is narrative as code
Mark Day’s editing is as surgical as the plot. Every cut is earned. Every silence stretches. The rhythm of Ava’s sessions with Caleb is recursive: structured like a loop, subtly glitching as the emotional stakes escalate. There is no visual indulgence, no editorial flair. This is narrative as code — execution without ornament. The sound design reinforces the film’s core anxiety: absence. There’s no noise because there’s no outside. Garland excises the world, forcing the audience into total immersion within a sealed moral vacuum. And when the score does arrive, it isn’t music. It’s signal. Ava’s theme — synthetic, breath-like, almost organic — is a sonic ghost. It haunts the sterile space like memory.
To ask whether Ex Machina is “still relevant” in 2025 is to misunderstand it. The film isn’t ahead of its time. It is its time — distilled, decoded, and dramatized. In an age of AI-generated text, synthetic media, and autonomous systems, the film now functions as a mirror rather than a warning.
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