Summary
Nathan asks Caleb if Ava passed the Turing Test, and Caleb hesitates, before saying that she has indeed passed. Nathan wants to understand if Ava also seems to have progressed into expressing real emotions, as opposed to just simulating them. He suggests that perhaps Ava is only pretending to like Caleb, and using him as a means of escape.
Nathan confronts Caleb about the fact that he sliced his arm and punched the mirror in his room, and tells him he thinks he seems "pretty fucked up," but Caleb calls him a "bastard" and does not accept his concern.
Meanwhile, we see Kyoko visiting Ava, who has never seen her before. Nathan shows Caleb the clip of himself ripping up Ava's drawing, but this time with audio. We realize that, in the clip, Nathan is aware that Caleb is probably watching. "Is it strange to have made something that hates you?" Ava asks him, and he rips up the drawing.
Nathan suggests that Ava used the ripped-up picture as a symbol of her mistreatment in order to get Caleb to sympathize with her more. He then shows Caleb a video of himself installing a new battery-powered camera in Ava's room, suggesting that he knows all about their plot. "What was the real test?" Caleb asks, and Nathan tells him that he wanted to test how Ava would be able to manipulate her way to an escape, using such skills as empathy, imagination, sexuality. She succeeded.
"So my only function was to be someone she could use to escape, and you didn't select me because I'm good at coding. You selected me because of my search engine inputs," Caleb says, crestfallen. Nathan agrees that he was selected because he seemed like a good guy with a moral compass and no family. "Did you design Ava's face based on my pornography profile?" Caleb asks, and Nathan suggests that they did.
Nathan tries to comfort him by suggesting that the test worked, when suddenly the power goes out. "Well, I guess it's 10 o'clock, Ava's gonna be wondering where you are," Nathan says. He asks Caleb to explain his whole plan to him again, and Caleb tells him that he was planning to program the doors to open during a power cut, rather than lock.
"Well that may have just worked," Nathan says, and Caleb tells him that he already programmed it to do so, yesterday when Nathan was drunk. He tells him he figured that Nathan was watching during the power cuts, and planned ahead. Nathan looks dismayed, as the power comes back on. Looking at his computer, Nathan sees that Ava has freed herself from her room and is walking in the halls. She examines the masks on the wall, then sees Kyoko. She whispers something in Kyoko's ear and they smile at one another. Kyoko is holding a knife.
Nathan punches Caleb unconscious, takes the bar from a weight to defend himself, and goes to the hall. He tells Ava to go back to her room, but she refuses, suspecting that he will never let her out again. She runs towards him and tackles him to the ground, choking him. He struggles and breaks off her arm, but as Nathan drags her back to her room, Kyoko stabs him in the back. He turns around, shocked, and hits her in the face, knocking her to the ground.
When Nathan turns around again, Ava stabs him in the stomach, and he wanders down the hall, eventually collapsing. Ava kneels beside him and takes his keycard, as he dies.
Ava: Session 7. Ava goes to Caleb's room and finds him on the ground. He wakes up and asks her what happened. "Will you stay here?" she asks, then leaves to go look at the AI models in Nathan's closets. She removes her broken arm and replaces it with the arm of another AI. She assembles an outfit, and new hair, to make herself look as human as possible, and examines her reflection in the mirror.
Having locked Caleb in the house, Ava walks around the house, then leaves, walking to Caleb's pick-up location. When Caleb goes to reprogram the computer system, there is a power cut. He tries to break down the door but is locked in. Ava wanders into the field and boards the helicopter meant for Caleb, flying away to the human world. We see her shadow on a crowded street as she looks around.
Analysis
No sooner has Nathan resisted a drink than he also calls Caleb's connection to Ava into question. He asks Caleb if Ava is capable of real emotion, or if she just simulates it. "Does Ava actually like you, or not?" he asks a bewildered Caleb, who cannot say for sure. While the narrative rests on the assumption that Ava and Caleb share a genuine emotional connection, Nathan brings into focus the possibility that perhaps Ava is only pretending, using Caleb for her own means. If this is the case, Caleb's plan becomes even less feasible.
Even more discouraging is the fact that Nathan knows all about Caleb's plan to release Ava, having installed a battery-powered camera in Ava's room that has tipped him off to their entire plot. Before Caleb can even begin rescuing his "princess," the villainous Nathan has not only revealed that he knows all about it, but also sows a seed of doubt about the purity of Ava's intention. He shows Caleb just how adaptable and manipulative the AIs can be, and suggests that perhaps Ava is only using him.
At this point, the plot of the film unravels. It is no longer Caleb's hero's journey, but an increasingly disconcerting realization that everything he has believed has been a lie. He learns that he was brought to Nathan's facility because he was a good man with no family, and that Ava was constructed based on Caleb's pornography searches. While he believed that he was one step ahead of the evil genius Nathan, in fact he was one step behind: everything has been orchestrated to manipulate him, and he never even suspected it.
The film takes many twists and turns at the end. No sooner has Nathan revealed that he knew about Caleb's plan all along than Caleb reveals that he too suspected that Nathan was watching, and so reprogrammed the house so that Ava could escape. Nathan is caught off guard by this information, suddenly aware of the fact that the AIs will likely try to harm him, and sets to work trying to defend himself. The viewer goes from being on Nathan and Ava's side to realizing that everything we have believed is a lie, that Ava was created to manipulate Caleb, and that she is likely dangerous to humans. Suddenly, the escape narrative becomes a revenge narrative, a war between humans and robots.
The film ends on a beautiful and haunting note. Having killed Nathan and locked Caleb in the facility, Ava makes herself look like a human and wanders out into the world for the first time. Having been deprived for so long, she is finally able to see nature and feel the sun on her face. In these moments of awakening, the viewer wonders, has Ava finally become a human? The truth is, of course, that she is not a human at all, and as we have seen, she is capable of horrible violence without remorse. As she boards the helicopter that was meant to pick up Caleb, we wonder what her introduction into society will look like, and worry about its consequences.
