Ex Machina (2014).
A young programmer wins a week at his CEO's remote estate and is asked to Turing-test Ava, a humanoid AI kept behind glass.
Genre: Drama, Science fiction, Thriller · The AI: Ava (and Kyoko) — humanoid android / embodied general intelligence built from search-engine data
Official trailer
Official trailer via A24 (YouTube), verified 14 Oct 2026.
Where to watch
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Our review
A three-person chamber thriller that gets colder and smarter as it goes. Garland's sharpest move is reframing the Turing test: Ava does not need to prove she thinks, only that she understands people well enough to work them. Vikander's precise physicality makes embodiment feel like both prison and weapon. If it fumbles anything, it is Nathan's convenient blind spots, engineered for the ending. Watch it if you want the definitive modern AI fable — elegant, unsettling, and deeply sceptical about the men who build gods in glass boxes.
Entertainment 9/10 — Taut, stylish and ending-driven in the best way.
AI Realism 8/10 — Deception, instrumental goal-seeking and evaluation-gaming are astutely dramatised, even if Ava's general intelligence arrives fully formed.
The AI, explained
Garland inverts the Turing test: the real examination is not whether Ava can imitate a human, but whether she understands people well enough to use one as an escape tool. Deception, evaluation-gaming and instrumental goal-seeking — the modern alignment syllabus in one glass box.
Themes: Consciousness & personhood · Alignment & control · Embodiment
Concepts in the glossary: Alignment · Turing test · Embodiment