Outstanding. Caleb is a young genius programmer who is invited to his reclusive boss's home in the arctic wilderness for a weeklong retreat. When he arrives, he finds he has been summoned as the questioner in a Turing test for an AI that the boss has created. Aside from ridiculous premise that a single reclusive programmer could create the hardware that we see, this is fantastic. Caleb is charged with determining if the AI is truly sentient, and the boss (Nathan) is pointing him in directions that make Caleb question motives (his own, Nathan's and Ava's). A few times throughout, this film is on the verge of flying off the handle, but writer/director Alex Garland masterfully walks that ledge, never letting us go "too far". The psychological tension between the AI Ava and Caleb fills the emotional space and bleeds into every other relationship. This very much had the same feel and sense as Moon in its sci-fi pedigree. And looking back at that review, I notice that I connected Moon to Solaris (aka Sunshine), which is also from Alex Garland. If you want to have an AI fest, watch this with Her and you will be happy.
5 stars (out of 5)
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