Ex Machina (15)

Director: Alex Garland

Starring: Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac, Alicia Vikander

COULD you relate to or empathise with a robot that has the same traits as a human being?

Do you think you could trust a machine that matches you on an intellectual level or could you be tricked?

Those are the questions that will be spinning around your mind while watching director Alex Garland's excellent debut feature, Ex Machina.

The film sees Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson), a young programmer at a Google-like company selected in a staff lottery to take part in a secret breakthrough experiment to evaluate the human qualities of a female A.I. (artificial intelligence).

In the style of Jurassic Park, Caleb is taken by helicopter to a remote location in the mountains, off the grid, and that is where he meets 'Ava' (Alicia Vikander).

Garland wrote The Beach, which was adapted into a hit film by Danny Boyle. He also wrote the screenplays for acclaimed movies like 28 Days Later, Never Let Me Go and Dredd.

Getting behind the camera for the first time, Ex Machina is typical of the quality of Garland's work but also excels expectations.

It is perplexing, intense and, at times, a mesmerising experience.

Caleb is tasked with putting Ava through the 'Turing test'.

Named after Alan Turing, the British mathematician who cracked the enigma code, it is a test of a machine's ability to exhibit behaviour indistinguishable from that of a human.

One of the best moments in Ex Machina is Caleb and Ava's first meeting and how their relationship develops.

Ava is a fascinating character thanks to her contradictions.

She is sharply intelligent and yet curious like a child, she is beautiful and yet clearly inhuman, she is graceful but you can hear the gentle whirr of her machine parts.

Meanwhile, Ava's creator Nathan (Oscar Isaac) is watching their test sessions over CCTV.

As fiercely intelligent as he is intense and eccentric, Caleb finds him increasingly hard to work for and things only intensify when Ava starts to develop feelings for Caleb and secretly warns him that Nathan is not to be trusted.

Ex Machina is both a high concept film that deals with the issues of identity and what it means to be human but also a taut, paranoid thriller.

You begin to wonder who is being tested and it will send your mind racing as you try and piece together what is actually happening.

Like Duncan Jones's 2009 film Moon, the movie also benefits from its confined setting, drawing exceptional performances from all three leads.

Domhnall Gleeson and Oscar Isaac will next be seen together in Star Wars: Episode VII but it is Alicia Vikander's performance that really stands out here because there is so much nuance and attention to detail in the role of Ava.

In a way, Ex Machina could be seen as the spiritual successor to Blade Runner as it deals with a lot of the same issues but on a fraction of the scale. It is an unofficial prequel of sorts.

And with technology developing at an incredible rate, it is alarming to think that the issues in this film could become all too real in the not too distant future.