Summary
The film opens in the offices of a large tech company. An employee, Caleb, gets a notification on his computer that he has won the first prize in an employee lottery. He texts his friends to tell them, and everyone in his office applauds for him.
The scene shifts and we see Caleb being flown in a helicopter over an icy terrain. He asks the pilot how long before they get to their destination, a man's estate. The pilot laughs and tells him they have been flying over the estate for the last 2 hours. The helicopter eventually lands in a large field, and the pilot tells Caleb that he has to leave him there, as it's the closest he's allowed to get to the building, before telling him to follow the river.
Caleb follows the pilot's instructions and makes his way to the building, noting that he has no cellphone service. When he arrives at the front entrance of the estate, an automated voice instructs him to come towards the main console and face the screen, which takes a picture of him. It then gives him a keycard, which opens the door. He wanders in tentatively and hears a piano playing somewhere. He calls out, but no one answers, before wandering out to a deck where the owner of the estate and CEO of Caleb's company, Nathan, is doing some boxing for exercise. He greets Caleb and tells him he is excited for their week together.
Nathan tells him he wanted to have breakfast with Caleb, but has a horrible hangover, so cannot. Caleb asks if it was a good party, and it becomes clear that Nathan was just drinking alone. Nathan says that he thinks Caleb is freaked out by the whole situation, but that he wants it to be more natural and less hierarchical, to just be "two guys."
Nathan tells Caleb that his key pass opens certain doors and not others. He invites Caleb to open a door, which opens for him into the bedroom that he will be staying in. Before Caleb can say anything, Nathan tells him that the reason the room does not have any windows is because the building is not a house, but a research facility. Before he can tell him more about the research project, Caleb must sign a non-disclosure agreement. In the agreement, Caleb realizes that he is signing an agreement to a regular "data audit with unlimited access," and is reluctant. He tells Nathan he needs a lawyer, but Nathan insists that it is standard.
Nathan tells Caleb that he can decide not to sign it, but that he will be missing out on learning about something extraordinary, something which is due to go public in about a year. Hearing this, Caleb signs. Nathan asks him if he knows what the Turing Test is. The Turing Test is an interaction between a human and a computer in which the human does not know they are interacting with a computer. "What does a pass tell us?" Nathan asks, to which Caleb replies, "That the computer has artificial intelligence."
Caleb realizes what is happening and Nathan tells him he is going to be the human component in a Turing Test with an AI that he has already constructed. "If that test is passed, you are dead center of the greatest scientific event in the history of man," Nathan tells him. Caleb responds, "If you've created a conscious machine, that's not the history of man. That's the history of gods."
A supertitle reads, "Ava: Session 1." Caleb examines a glass wall in the facility with some kind of crack in it, perhaps a bullet hole. Looking through the glass he sees the AI, Ava, who walks over and greets him. They introduce themselves and Ava tells him she's never met anyone besides Nathan. Caleb says they need to break the ice, and asks Ava to tell him something about herself. She tells him she's one year old, and that she always knew how to speak, even though language is something that people acquire.
In a meeting later, Caleb tells Nathan how fascinating it was to talk to Ava. Nathan is impressed with how quotable Caleb is, when he calls talking to Ava like going "through the looking glass." He also misrepresents Caleb's earlier comment, suggesting that Caleb called Nathan a God for creating a machine with consciousness. "I didn't say that," Caleb says, as Nathan grabs another beer. Caleb suggests that if they were actually doing the Turing Test, the machine would be hidden from view, but Nathan insists that the real test is to show that Ava is a robot and see if even then the human believes she has consciousness.
Caleb wants to know how Ava works, but Nathan insists that he cannot explain it because he would rather just spend time together. He asks Caleb how he feels about Ava, and Caleb says he thinks Ava is "fucking amazing."
That night, Caleb cannot sleep and turns on the television, which tunes to a surveillance video of the facility. He can see what Ava is doing in her room and watches her for a moment, before there is an abrupt power cut in the facility. A red light comes on in his room and he looks around, confused. A voice on the intercom states that the facility is in a full lock-down and Caleb cannot get out of his room. The power comes back on.
Analysis
The premise of the film is established rather quickly, as we see a young employee at a tech company, Caleb, win a competition and get sent away to the company's CEO's estate within the first five minutes of the film. Little information is given about Caleb or his life in the world before we see him completely disoriented and displaced to an isolated and enigmatic location. His excitement at having been chosen to win his office's competition is quickly replaced with mystification and confusion once he finds himself at the estate, abandoned by the very pilot who brought him there, and left to wander towards his intimidating new lodgings alone.
By starting the film with the protagonist's displacement and alienation, director Alex Garland sets up a plot that resembles a kind of hero's journey. Since we do not know anything about Caleb, he becomes a kind of everyman, a stand-in for the viewers themselves. Caleb is just as "in-the-dark" as we are, an Alice in Wonderland in a curious hall of mirrors. This puts the simplicity of the plot into stark focus. Before we know much of anything, we know that Ex Machina will tell the story of an average man thrown into extraordinary circumstances.
The owner of the mysterious complex that Caleb visits is Nathan, a reclusive, forcibly casual, and rather awkward tech entrepreneur, who insists he just wants Caleb to feel comfortable, while all the while putting him in uncomfortable situations. He informs Caleb that he has a hangover from a night of drinking alone, then abruptly accuses Caleb of being too formal with him, even though he has done nothing to make Caleb feel welcome. He then informs Caleb that his home is not a home at all, but a research facility. The exact nature of this research is kept mysterious until Caleb has signed a non-disclosure agreement, one which binds Caleb to agree to having his data audited regularly for the rest of his life. The random and coercive ways in which all this information is disseminated clearly disorients and overwhelms the soft-spoken and kind-hearted Caleb.
Caleb does not regret signing the non-disclosure agreement when he learns that he is to be participating in a Turing Test with an AI that Nathan has constructed at his research facility. He is excited to be a part of the research, seeing the development of AI as an undeniably positive stride in technology. All of his trepidation about the arrangement of staying at Nathan's house is replaced by anticipation and excitement as he goes to meetings with Ava. Caleb comes alive at the prospect of helping to improve artificial intelligence technology.
There is an ominous atmosphere hanging over the story, even as Caleb becomes more at ease in his new environment. This is partially due to the disorientating realism of Ava—the mystery surrounding her consciousness and the impressive technology. It is also partially due to Nathan's egotism and hubris in response to his invention. He is consistently obtuse and self-involved, doing as little as humanly possible to make Caleb feel at ease, and even twisting Caleb's words into language that can be used to market his AI creation and inflate his own image. He believes that Caleb sees him as a "God" for his invention, and this reveals Nathan's overwhelming self-importance. His awkward grandiosity lends the proceedings an uneasy feeling; for someone who is so self-impressed and dealing with such unknown territory, there will surely be negative consequences.
