What I Watched -- Ex Machina

S indulged my paranoid and horrified-by-technology side and picked out Ex Machina to watch recently.  It's about a reclusive tech mogul named Nathan who has spent his time alone designing and perfecting AI machines -- not surprisingly designed to look like beautiful women.  Nathan brings Caleb, an unsuspecting employee, to his high-tech and extremely secluded home for reasons that aren't entirely clear to Caleb at the time he arrives.

Caleb comes to learn that he is there to play a part in a Turing Test.  Nathan has built extremely sophisticated artificial intelligence, which is in the form of a woman named Ava.  Nathan has tried to program Ava to think like a human. Things take a dark turn when Caleb and Nathan find themselves at odds, and Ava's role remains a bit unclear.

What was especially hilarious about our first attempt at viewing Ex Machina is that we watched the digital version, and at the height of the tension, there was an error in the file and the film froze.  Not kidding.

We waited for a while, hoping it would sort itself out.  When it didn't, I closed and reopened the file, skipping a bit past that point.  That didn't help either.  Then I started thinking that that was the ending -- just a weird, tripped out freeze frame that leaves you hanging, wondering what happened.

S did some research and it turned out that the freeze frame is not the ending, so we picked up a copy of the DVD from the library and finished it out that way.  The actual ending was frustrating in some ways, but also held extremely true to the whole theme of the film.

Bottom line: a highly disturbing film, both a great and horrifying experience.