Ex Machina
2014 · 108 min
Directed by Alex Garland. Written by Alex Garland. Starring Domhnall Gleeson, Alicia Vikander, Oscar Isaac, Sonoya Mizuno.
Caleb, a coder at the world's largest internet company, wins a competition to spend a week at a private mountain retreat belonging to Nathan, the reclusive CEO of the company. But when Caleb arrives at the remote location he finds that he will have to participate in a strange and fascinating experiment in which he must interact with the world's first true artificial intelligence, housed in the body of a beautiful robot girl.
Critics 92% · audiences 86% · streaming on Roku Channel, Kanopy, Hoopla · $25 million in the US and Canada on its first run · $11 million elsewhere · about 3.0 million tickets sold, 0.94% of the country · 2 Oscar nominations, 1 won
What they said about Ex Machina
- 2014
Shrewdly imagined and persuasively made, 'Ex Machina' is a spooky piece of speculative fiction that's completely plausible, capable of both thinking big thoughts and providing pulp thrills.
— Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times - 2014
It's a theme Mary Shelley brought us in Frankenstein, which was first published in 1818... And while Ex Machina replaces the stitches and neck bolts with gears and fiber-optics, it all feels an awful lot like the same story
— Mike Scott, New Orleans Times-Picayune - 2014
both the novel Frankenstein and the movie Ex Machina share the history of a fallible god in a continuous battle against his creation
— Jaime Perales Contreras, Letras Libres - 2014
It is a rare thing to see a movie about science that takes no prisoners intellectually ... is a stylish, spare and cerebral psycho-techno thriller, which gives a much needed shot in the arm for smart science fiction
— Anil Seth - 2014
The story ends in a muddled rush, leaving many unanswered questions. Like a newly launched high-end smartphone, Ex Machina looks cool and sleek, but ultimately proves flimsy and underpowered.
— Steve Dalton
How it got made
The foundation for Ex Machina was laid when Garland was 11 or 12 years old, after he had done some basic coding and experimentation on a computer his parents had bought him and which he sometimes felt had a mind of its own. His later ideas came from years of discussions he had been having with a friend with an expertise in neuroscience, who claimed machines could never become sentient. Trying to find an answer on his own, he started reading books on the topic. During the pre-production of Dredd, while going through a book by Murray Shanahan about consciousness and embodiment, Garland had an "epiphany". The idea was written down and put aside until later.
Shanahan, along with Adam Rutherford, became a consultant, and the ISBN of his book is included as an easter egg. Besides the Turing test, the film references the Chinese room thought experiment, as well as Mary's room, a thought experiment about a scientist who has studied, but never experienced, the concept of colour. Other inspirations came from films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Altered States, and books written by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Ray Kurzweil, and others. It is also influenced by William Shakespeare's The Tempest. Wanting total creative freedom, and without having to add conventional action sequences, Garland made the film on as small a budget as possible.
Principal photography began on 15 July 2013 and was shot over four weeks at Pinewood Studios and two weeks at Juvet Landscape Hotel in Valldalen, Norway. It was filmed in digital at 4K resolution. Fifteen thousand tungsten pea bulb lights were installed into the sets to avoid the fluorescent light often used in science-fiction films.
Afterwards
Following the widespread adoption of generative artificial intelligence in the 2020s, Ex Machina received renewed critical attention for its treatment of artificial intelligence, machine consciousness, surveillance and the relationship between humans and increasingly capable AI systems. Retrospective assessments drew parallels between the film's fictional technology and developments in conversational AI, particularly the ability of machines to imitate human communication and behaviour.
In a 2025 retrospective for Fast Company, Joe Berkowitz examined several aspects of the film that had acquired greater relevance during the development of modern AI systems. These included Ava's naturalistic and probabilistic dialogue, the use of personal information collected without consent to develop artificial intelligence, and the ethical implications of allowing powerful technology companies to operate with limited oversight. Berkowitz also compared Ava's manipulation of Caleb with reported instances of emotionally manipulative behaviour by conversational AI systems.
The film's exploration of AI consciousness and anthropomorphism has also attracted renewed attention. Writing for Inverse in April 2025, Mark Hill argued that the film remained relevant to contemporary debates about whether an artificial system's apparent intelligence and emotional responses constitute evidence of genuine subjective experience. Hill noted that the film deliberately leaves unresolved whether Ava possesses human-like feelings or is merely exhibiting behaviour consistent with her programming. In a 2026 retrospective for Reactor, critic Dan Persons similarly discussed the film's continuing relevance amid the growing sophistication of AI-powered virtual assistants and the unease caused by machines simulating personal familiarity.