Ex Machina (2014) | First Time Watching!!! Reaction | Review 

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The small budget ensured that the director (Alex Garland) had full creative control and no interference from the production company. He said this was his dream project, in terms of having so many things go smoothly despite the tight filming schedule and tight spaces. He had anxiety the whole time, though, waiting for something catastrophic to derail everything, but it never did. He's written and directed a bunch of other movies and TV shows ("Dredd", "Sunshine", the Hulu series "Devs"), often sci-fi oriented, because he's deeply interested in these futuristic subjects. He's actually optimistic about AI, and thinks we should wish the best for them, as we would any children. But, of course, this movie is a cautionary tale about mistreating your "children".

Nathan was exactly the kind of person who is always convinced that no matter how cursed the mission, he will be smart enough to always be one step ahead. Caleb on the other hand is smart, and well-meaning, but also a naive fool. And at least in my opinion, Ava is the protagonist here. Her actions are entirely appropriate to the situation. In a way she's the most impressively human of the three.

I think a turning point in the plot was when Caleb told Ava about his parents' death. It seemed to really make her ponder her own mortality more so than before.

again you and your fantastic observation skills :D loved how you noticed that ava did the powercut literally at the first time you saw it!

The dance scene is easily my favourite part of this entire movie.

i LOVE the smoothness and minute precision of even Ava’s smallest movements-they look like they’re following velocity curves developed by Apple or something! -casting a trained ballerina was a legit big brain move 🤯

Moon (2009) with Sam Rockwell also great low budget sci-fi.

A truly important film, and one of the tightest, most original and chilling psychological horrors I've seen in a long time. You should check out Nightcrawler from the same year, or The Game (1997) with Michael Douglas if you haven't seen them. But definitely make Ghostbusters a priority. Absolutely iconic. Not to mention, yes, that happens.

16:49 such a good song. Lmao "he just spit on the floor?" so funny

If you like plot mind tricks and twist and turns, you'll love David Fincher's 'The game' (1997), starred by Michael Douglas and Sean Penn as a sidekick character.

Oh yes A24 studios have a handful of movies which are all reaaaally interesting and beautifully shot and just wow overall

"She is adorable" - maniac laughing :D

Thanks, Verowak! 🦾 I really love this one. Yes, we've got two STAR WARS alumni here. The name you were trying to recall was 'General Hux'... informally he was 'Armitage Hux'... son of 'Brendol Hux' who we briefly see in hologram form in Season 3 of THE MANDALORIAN. #VerowakReacts #AlexGarland #ExMachina

This movie is a masterpiece. Clearly top10 all time for me. So beautifully written and played. Also great style and soundtrack. Always getting goosebumps at the end when they get to Nathan. Also: you have not seen Ghostbusters? Lets go! The first 2 belong together and are all time classics. 😊

Watching this after watching the "Be Right Back" episode of Black Mirror (recommend that, Vero, by the way) provides another, entirely unintentional but extremely convincing, layer to this movie.

This is one of my all time top movies I keep going back to. Amazing how a movie can be so deep with so few characters. You are correct about the CGI, it was so good it was able to sell the illusion of reality and even more so that it's almost a 10 year old production.

Awesome react…it was a mind game for Caleb and the audience. Keep’em coming!

I like to imagine the complete power shutdown sent an emergency alert, and Caleb would be recovered. Nathan had to have some kind of redundancy to avoid being trapped to death, and that being why she killed the power on the way out. I hope that despite Caleb being part of the mechanism that trapped Ava, she also recognized he was also a victim.

I was nearly certain we were going to find out Nathan was really an AI version of the actual one, unaware he was the real subject of the Turing test.

It's cool that you've already watched this one, so I'll have to dig in the archives to see if Midsommar is there as well. Throwing out some other possibilities off the top of my head: The Descent, Skeleton Key, Interview w/ a Vampire, Resident Evil, The Matrix quadrilogy, Strays, the Alien/s franchise, The Fly...

"Is this a strar wars cast?!" No, those shitty sequels were an Ex Machina cast.

Steven Spielberg’s “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” is another good watch. Based on Stanley Kubrick’s work for his own new movie before he died, and basically passed on to Spielberg.

The first time i saw this I had a feeling Ava was playing everyone the whole time. I grew up watching Twilight Zone but I didn't anticipate the Japanese (ballerina actress in real life) woman being an android also.

Moral of the story, a machine passing the Touring test does not necessarily mean the machine have morals or compassion.

I view Ava's choice at the end a bit the same as I view Joel's from TLoU. It seems like a betrayal, and that she's evil from playing Caleb like that. But from her perspective, people are inherently dangerous and she can't allow for the unknowns that Caleb would introduce. It's wrong, but completely understandable.

Oscar Isaac's performance was insane in this film.

Sorry i missed the premiere. Great reaction as always! I'm interested in the betterhelp sponsor.

I definitely recommend A Most Violent Year, it’s one of my favorites! Like Ex Machina, it’s more philosophical than violent, and since it isn’t sci fi it probably wouldn’t make for a good reaction video, but still a great film in my opinion and worth the watch.

The sequel to this are in the themes of his work after this " Annilation" and his show "Devs" you gotta really want to explore these themes though or you might get unzipped.

I love movies with happy endings 😁

A24 makes great independent films. I haven't seen a lot of them, but I really like the ones that I _have_ seen. Swiss Army Man with Daniel Radcliffe and Paul Dano or Everything Everywhere All At Once with Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan are two that I cannot recommend enough.

Not sure if this had an extremely early release in other countries, but here in the US, I saw it in theaters in the late spring/early summer of 2015. I'm unsure why it says it was released in 2014.

Alicia Vikander was trained in ballet from childhood back home in Sweden, which certainly helped her give "Ava" her elegant movements. She won a Swedish Oscar back around 2010 for the film "Pure," about a young woman manipulated by a powerful orchestra conductor. Vikander won a supporting actress Oscar for "The Danish Girl", which came out the same year as "Ex Machina." I always thought she deserved at least a nomination for "Ex Machina" instead. Maybe the combination of films helped her win. She married actor Michael Fassbender a few years back..

This movie was next level! Good to see folks reacting to it! 😀

Love this movie! (Also love The Dark Half, which I see in the background there. Soft spot for the Romero film as well!)

I just noticed the copy of The Dark Half on your shelf. Have you seen the film version?

I disagree that it was Caleb's fault. Ava learned through not just past programming but also communicating with the other a.i. She decided to betray Caleb to have the freedom she wanted.

I dont know why they never built a manual override in the room, so they dont get trapped.

Excited to see this reaction, one of my favourite films and writer/directors. Argh just realised it's tomorrow night as it's US time!!!!!

Hello Miss Verowak!🙂This is a great psychological thriller. I can't believe I didn't recognize Domhall Gleeson as Hux from Star Wars. I guess since the characters are so different, it didn't occur to me. I think most people probably thought Ava was going to get out, just not knowing how it was going to happen. Oscar Isaac is great at playing the very unlikeable character of nathan. Great reactions to this well made AI thriller, Miss Verowak!!!🎬👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

My nephew is a Caleb. He's egyptian. Very dark.

You gotta watch teh verde mile tho too, it's gold.

quote trivia, was it president snow to new gamemaker heavensbee in HG2 catching fire?

"It is all your fault, Caleb. He got played." Misandry personified.

The Verowak nations movie 🎥🍿 selection is not very wack so gratz to y'all great selection.

Now you have to finish the trilogy - Annihilation and DEVS - for the complete Alex Garland SF catalog. It's so sad he stopped making SF films. Probably the best SF director going. Annihilation gets my vote as best SF film of the 21st century and DEVS is a head pipe blower if there ever was one.

Uncanny (2015) The technology journalist Joy (Lucy Griffiths) visits the brilliant and socially stunted researcher David (Mark Webber) in a secret research facility for a week. There she meets the robot Adam (David Clayton Rogers), who looks confusingly like a real man and has amazingly human traits. As the days go by, Joy and David - despite some initial difficulties - grow closer, which Adam doesn't like at all, as he has developed feelings for the attractive woman himself. A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001-IMDb 7,2) The same young actor from: The 6th Sense

Yay love this movie cant wait.

Everyone talking about the great movie and reaction (as they should) but nobody answering the quote trivia! President Snow, hunger games🎉

Waiit good will hunting is that low? its a fantastic movie so i hope sooner or later youll watch it. its a real tearjerker

as long as there are no Bear traps around I am fine with waking in the woods, or any cabins I guess. Again I fee like I should know the quote but I can't get it :(. And this is my favorite Artifical intelligence movie. The thriller part of it makes it so damn good. I think since Nathan have created them, he sees them as a product and not a person, and that is why it is rather easy to not care about them or see them as humans and keep recycling them to newer and better versions. But when Caleb comes there he see sees them as a mix of human and ai I think.

Love the reaction and not sure how i found but top shelf. I agree with no follow up movie and i always thought Kyoko would either kill Caleb or he will have better success outsmarting her and get released.

If you like this film you'll probably like 'Morgan' 2016 with Anya Taylor Joy. Not many people have seen it but trust me it's really cool. I'd assume it would be considered a SciFi, Thriller, Horror. You can be the first to react to it.

This demonstrates the ethics of creating a consciousness. You are then responsible for it's well being. Shutting her down would effectively be murder. This will happen, if it hasn't already. This is why I don't want to experiment with AI.

I've watched this movie many times and I always think that Caleb is smart enough to find a way out. I hope so anyway.

You are so cute thinking they will be going on a date once ava is dressed 💀

The youtuber 'shaun' made a video essay about interpreting Ava's motivations. I think it's a good video if you're into this film.

Have you seen Blade Runner? I think you would enjoy it.

A24 putting out some of the best and most original movies today! Great reaction. I love this film.

What I think everyone gets wrong about this movie is that they think Ava should be grateful to Caleb for freeing her. But he didn't free her because it was the right thing to do, it was only when she started flirting with him that he wanted to do it. He wasn't freeing her because it was right, he was freeing her because he was horny. He was thinking of her pretty much like a fancier version of Kyoko. I will be the hero and save her and she will love me and stay with me. At the end he thought so little of her "humanity" that he had no problem at all watching her in a private moment when she was "mourning" the girls that went before her and while she was putting on her human shell and naked and dressing. She was a thing to watch, not a being worthy of privacy.

"I would still do it though." 🤣

Agree - that was really good. I love this movie. I'm blown away that it is so little known. Maybe it was just poorly marketed. Or maybe my assessment of people's intelligence is beyond reality. Caleb got played, and i'm fearful that we all are being played. We give names to the AI assistants on our phones and befriend them. Aren't they cute? People have looked at AI as our eventual overlord from our first consideration of it. From COLOSSUS THE FORBIN PROJECT (1970) Eric Braeden, Susan Clark, to TERMINATOR (Skynet), to EX MACHINA (and much,much more), AI has been our Frankenstein Monster. 'Glad you liked this. And i enjoyed seeing it again, but anew through you. BTW, i had the AI on my computer write this comment for me. Kidding. Or am i? I'd like to catch your reaction to UNDER THE SKIN (2013) Scarlett Johansson. Peace -

One of my favourite films.

I've spent a lot of time over the last 20 years researching and dreaming up ways to create an artificial brain, even on the scale of an insect, a reptile, a rodent, etcetera. I can say with complete conviction that it has been a dream of mine that I've probably invested more time into than 99.99999% of other humans on the planet, at least. It has been an obsession since I was 17. All I can say, after having seen this film with m'lady when it came out, is that I would never create a thinking machine that is physically capable of hurting me, or anyone else, without somehow attaching a means of immediately disabling it to my person - a failsafe, a deadman's trigger, anything. While I never imagined the sort of scenario that this film presents, I always imagined running around with an AI 'baby' on my back so it could see the world and how I operate within it for it to learn by example, I wouldn't trust it to just do its own thing on its own if it was ever possible that it could outsmart me. I never really dreamed of creating human-level intelligence, that's a huge amount of compute that's far off. I've always wanted to create something intelligent in ways nothing has been before, but with the processing power we have now - even if that's limited to insect/reptile scale intelligence. It could be trained to build houses, roads, administer medical aid, etc. Humans don't need human-level intelligence in individual machines for them to be valuable in unprecedented ways. We can have a bunch of skilled dumb machines to do labor, and a few smart machines trapped behind ChatGPT type interfaces to help us solve medical and scientific mysteries. The moment humans create mechanical beings that are stronger and smarter than they are is the moment humans made their worst mistake. This film demonstrates one of the infinite potential scenarios that could unfold as a direct result of such an endeavor. Anyway, it's fun that Verowak didn't see what was coming in this film, because she totally saw right through Fight Club within the first quarter of the film!

One aspect that I like about this story is that the movie catches the audience off guard by making it seem like Ava is very human. We think she 'likes' Caleb, for example. Then she leaves him there at the end and we think "She didn't like him after all". That reminds us that she's not human, and human feelings like attraction and feeling you owe someone for their help do not apply to Ava...except that what Ava did is to use Caleb to improve her own position. What could be more human about her than manipulating other people to get ahead in her life? People do that all the time. But Caleb will die there and she knows it. Does her willingness to discard Caleb so coldly make her less human? Wasn't Nathan going to discard her like it was nothing?

Real amazing film. Very cold, but brilliant.

Start of the A24 arc. Ya love to see it.

Great reaction. On your pole one of the losers was "The Last Castle". If you like Robert Redford or even if you don't that is a GREAT MOVIE. Check it out sometime, even on your own. 😄

Ava better hope she doesn't ever trip & fall, or stumble down a flight of stairs or have ANY accident that could damage her. She is made of priceless, custom-built parts & repairing her will be very problematic, seeing as how she doesn't have a very convenient supply of spare parts at hand. I looked into what the director said about Caleb's fate & his answer is Relativist/Postmodern Twaddle. He said that while he could understand how people *could* be invested in Caleb and his fate, he wasn't as it wasn't the story he was trying to tell. He only cared about Ava. Rather... deflecting and disturbing if you ask me.

This is how you get Cylons

I've watched this film many times and just as many reactions. It just dawned on me that this is not actually a Turing Test. Why would Nathan (who cleary has a god complex) need validation for his creation? This test was to see if humans would accept androids into society (before mass production). Caleb was specifically chosen as a "Beta" Tester because he fit the demographic target.

Easily one of my favorite sci fi movies.

Good reaction.

What i really love about this movie (except the obvious stuff) is that it made me think. Was Ava a sociopath because she is an AI or was she a sociopath because all her life she was jailed and treated as a...product or something like that? Im pretty sure we cannot say exactly which one, but its still interesting to think about. Im pretty sure if you woudl keep a human jailed all their life, they would do anything to escape, and would have sociopathic tendencies

Perfect A.I. means being exactly like us, and we are capable of some very evil things.

If you like this theme about humans vs androids who want to be free you should watch the series West World. Season 1 is good with a great surprise. But I guess you will figure it out on the way 😉.

I actually got a crush on Ava during the movie. Leaving Caleb, though, was disappointing.

It’s amazing how quickly people Forget “she’s” a machine. Humans are so gullible.😬

"now she can wear the dress for their first date" - you are going to be so very disappointed! And it is left ambiguous as to whether "he got played" - that is the brilliance of the movie

You should watch Annihilation. Same director.

I think wifey is going to like this one. 😘

Damn I don't know what movie that came from but I've got to tell you the way that you said it made me think of a crime documentary I just watched about that mass-murdering incel Elliot Rodger. In one part he was sitting in his car at a park and he saw a couple and he said almost the exact same words.

"this is what happens when you don't treat them correctly" umm what?. Nathan isn't the bad guy here at all. Caleb is way more of a villain not to mention a fucking idiot to have let them out. You don't just let super advanced AI's out into the world unchecked. What Caleb did was foolish to say the least. Cheering on Ava and Yoko killing Nathan was weird.

Why did she smile at the end? No one saw the smile but herself. Robot self?

What if you can't be helped 👹

It's intresting to think same AI with an average even ugly look. ie. Having actress who is petite, feminine, can move gracefully made her who she is in huge percent...

Watch demolition man

Po and General Hux reunited and it feels so good.

Yes, Ghostbusters (1984) please! 🙂

The future of A.I. waifus is pretty scary, but that's a risk I'm willing to take.

There is a theory that Caleb was the actual Turing test, as an AI who isn't aware that he is artificial.

I recommend watching Jojo Rabbit.

You have a wonderful smile. All of them, but I especially like when you do something and are "proud" of it and smile. Also, I can tell you are very intelligent. It's not like you start rattling off the foundations of general relativity, but there is definitely welll-above-average smarts there.

And for those of you who dislike authority, in principle, better and free,12 step groups. Instead of seeking an issue, the issue finds you there. Literally. But

You fell for ava and you released a murderous AI

No remorse for poor Caleb? :/ What did he do wrong?

Your guileless reactions, while slightly south of charming, are refreshingly predictable.

This movie is so crazy trippy

You have a great smile. This movie was superb too.