History YMMV / ExMachina

* SoOkayItsAverage: The movie received praise for its unique ideas and excellent special effects, but has ended up becoming rather forgotten due to the execution not being very good. The story tends to chug along at a slow pace and for many ends up being [[DarknessInducedAudienceApathy too depressing]] with [[CaptainObviousReveal rather obvious twists.]]

* TheWoobie: Caleb

* MagnificentBitch: Ava is a burgeoning artificial intelligence created in the form of a RobotGirl. Having spent her entire existence in one room, Ava wants to be free to explore the world and escape the clutches of her creator Nathan. To that end, she manipulates her evaluator Caleb to fall in love with her, slowly making him distrust Nathan and express genuine fear for her safety so that he'll open the doors to the rest of the facility for her. Afterwards, Ava convinces the less intelligent robot Kyoko to fatally stab Nathan during a fight with him, then leaves Caleb to his death after repairing herself and becoming indistinguishable from a human woman, ensuring that nobody will be able to warn anyone about the rogue A.I. roaming the world.

* MoralEventHorizon: Ava leaving Caleb behind to die.

* HilariousInHindsight: Domhnall Gleeson and Oscar Isaac would appear together again in ''Film/TheForceAwakens'' but with reversed roles - Oscar is the ace X-wing pilot who's escaping from Domhnall, who is the military genius and superweapon creator.

* HesJustHiding: Due to [[spoiler:Kyoko's death being her jaw getting punched off, which for a robot could seem survivable, a fair amount of post-film fanfics have her living and either freeing Caleb or reuniting with Ava.]]

** Nathan: It's hard to tell whether we're seeing the 'real' Nathan or the predatory, misogynistic, and threatening bad guy he's deliberately presenting himself as in order to get the reaction he wants out of Caleb. How bad he looks also has to do with what you think about his robots. If you ask yourself WhatMeasureIsANonHuman and decide that he's technically just working with advanced programs, then it's hard to accuse him of more than being a person of poor character who indulges in sick but ultimately victimless fantasies. If you think that his creations are really sentient, then he looks like a serial killer of the worst kind. Regardless, he could easily be seen as a blend of the two.

** Caleb: Although Caleb is the nicest of the four and seems to be a genuinely good person, how much of his wanting to help Ava was based out of genuine empathy and how much of it was [[spoiler:based on him desiring to enact his pornographic fantasies - Ava's face having been designed off of Caleb's preferences? What does Caleb really watch and how does it inform how he thinks of women? A case could be made that, for all his good intentions, he would be just as controlling and abusive towards Ava as Nathan was, and she left him behind because leaving with him would be trading one jailer for another.]]

* BigLippedAlligatorMoment: The bizarre, synchronized dance scene with Kyoko and Nathan. Nathan is shown to be a somewhat eccentric billionaire, but that was over the top even for him. It had no bearing on the plot, and was never mentioned again. Unless you see it as subtle foreshadowing that [[spoiler:Kyoko is a robot]].

* MagnificentBitch: Ava is a burgeoning artificial intelligence created in the form of a RobotGirl. Having spent her entire existence in one room, Ava wants to be free to explore the world and escape the clutches of her creator Nathan. To that end, she manipulates her evaluator Caleb to fall in love with her, slowly making him distrust Nathan and express genuine fear for her safety so that he'll open the doors to the rest of the facility for her. Afterwards, Ava convinces the less intelligent robot Kyoko to fatally stab Nathan during a fight with him, then leaves Caleb to his death after repairing herself and becoming indistinguishable from a human woman, ensuring that nobody will be able to warn anyone about the rogue A.I. roaming the world.

** Kyoko: [[spoiler: Her actions are consistent with her being just a non-sentient mechanical butler without volition that could follow instructions, which may be why Nathan felt safe letting her have the run of the compound while carefully keeping more advanced models in a locked room. Ava's whispering to Kyoko could have been giving her orders about using the knife (after which Kyoko just stood there as if awaiting further instructions until Nathan struck her down), and Kyoko's reveal to Caleb was implied to be something Nathan had instructed her to do to mess with Caleb. However, there are several moments that suggest she feels genuine emotion. After Nathan shouts at her for spilling the wine, there is a shot of her in the corridor looking extremely upset. And after she stabs him, she caresses his face as a deliberate callback to the way she did in the scene where they had sex--the same way Ava threw Caleb's words back at him. Whether she has any measure of awareness or not is up to the viewer]].

* FunnyMoments: Caleb is told that the phones in the compound won't dial outside lines, but once he thinks Nathan is asleep he tries anyway. As he picks up the phone, he hears Nathan come up from behind and ask "Who you gonna call?" and puts the receiver down in a panic.. only for Nathan to continue "...[[WaxingLyrical Ghostbusters?]]". When Caleb looks confused, the (seemingly) drunken Nathan [[ComicallyMissingThePoint comically misinterprets his reaction]] to mean that he's never heard of ''{{Film/Ghostbusters}}'' and tries to describe the movie to him. Particularly funny because Nathan was most likely deliberately {{troll}}ing Caleb to keep him off guard, and because, if the viewer has taken to [[{{Main/MST}} riffing]] on the film, they might make the obvious ''Ghostbusters'' reference seconds before one of the characters does the same thing.

** Ava: Is she really capable of human consciousness, emotion, and moral judgement? Or is it a product of her hyper competence as a robot? Her visibly happy reaction upon achieving her freedom suggests she at least has emotion, if not morality. If this is the case, then was her reaction understandable given the abuse and manipulation she had suffered or unforgivable because [[spoiler: she betrayed Caleb after he freed her]]? If not, then is she even really responsible for her actions since it was her creator's fault she turned out that way? [[spoiler: Did she betray Caleb because she doesn't care about him, or did she come to actively not like him during their sessions?]]

** Ava: Is Ava really capable of human consciousness, emotion, and moral judgement? Or is it a product of her hyper competence as a robot? Her visibly happy reaction upon achieving her freedom suggest she at least has emotion, if not morality. If this is the case, then was her reaction understandable given the abuse and manipulation she had suffered or unforgivable because [[spoiler: she betrayed Caleb after he freed her]]? If not, then is she even really responsible for her actions since it was her creator's fault she turned out that way? [[spoiler: Did she betray Caleb because she doesn't care about him, or did she come to actively not like him during their sessions?]]

** Ava: Is Ava really capable of human consciousness, emotion, and moral judgement? Or is it a product of her hyper competence as a robot? If so, then was her reaction understandable given the abuse and manipulation she had suffered or unforgivable because [[spoiler: she betrayed Caleb after he freed her]]? If not, then is she even really responsible for her actions since it was her creator's fault she turned out that way? [[spoiler: Did she betray Caleb because she doesn't care about him, or did she come to actively not like him during their sessions?]]

* FunnyMoments: Caleb is told that the phones in the compound won't dial outside lines, but once he thinks Nathan is asleep he tries anyway. As he picks up the phone, he hears Nathan come up from behind and ask "Who you gonna call?" and puts the receiver down in a panic.. only for Nathan to continue "...[[WaxingLyrical Ghostbusters?]]". When Caleb looks confused, the (seemingly) drunken Nathan [[[ComicallyMissingThePoint comically misinterprets his reaction]] to mean that he's never heard of ''{{Film/Ghostbusters}}'' and tries to describe the movie to him. Particularly funny because Nathan was most likely deliberately {{troll}}ing Caleb to keep him off guard, and because, if the viewer has taken to [[{{Main/MST}}riffing]] on the film, they might make the obvious ''Ghostbusters'' reference seconds before one of the characters does the same thing.

* EndingFatigue: Each and every single shot forming the ending after [[spoiler: Nathan is stabbed for the first time]] just drags pointlessly a few seconds too long, needlessly adding in total about 6 minutes of padding into a 3 minute long sequence. And the soft jingle music makes it feel even slower.

* TheUntwist: A few, all pretty obviously set up
** The true nature of the test being something else than just asking Caleb if he finds Ava real or not. Before she's introduced, the film provides an exposition of what a Turing Test is and how it should be conducted. Then Ava shows up on screen, further breaking any plausibility of the test. Eventually even Caleb points out this is not how the test should be conducted. [[spoiler: That's because it's an [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_box#AI-box_experiment AI box test]]]].
** Caleb hacking into the system is shown on screen. At this point the surprise that he [[spoiler: preemptively used his chance to get Nathan wasted and rewrote security codes is non-existent, because the audience literally saw him doing so on screen]].
** Kyoko [[spoiler: being a robot. From the moment she pulls a perfectly synchonized dance with Nathan, while he's ''improvising'', it's just waiting for the film to finally confirm it and it comes with really dull surprise, while the scene is considered as a great discovery made by Caleb]].
** The film is literally ''too smart'' to have [[spoiler: a sugar-coated happy ending with Caleb and Ava leaving the complex. The moment Nathan explains his plan and Ava is set loose, it's obvious either she will betray/kill Caleb or he will realize how badly he fucked up and destroy her while she's distracted donning human skin. Nathan's murder and inability to destroy both [=AIs=] only seals it. And since she manages to fully "dress" herself...]].

* TheUntwist: A few, all pretty obviously set up
** The true nature of the test being something else than just asking Caleb if he finds Ava real or not. Before she's introduced, the film provides an exposition of what a Turing Test is and how it should be conducted. Then Ava shows up on screen, further breaking any plausibility of the test. Eventually even Caleb points out this is not how the test should be conducted. [[spoiler: That's because it's an [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_box#AI-box_experiment AI box test]]]].
** Caleb hacking into the system is shown on screen. At this point the surprise that he [[spoiler: preemptively used his chance to get Nathan wasted and rewrote security codes is non-existent, because the audience literally saw him doing so on screen]].
** Kyoko [[spoiler: being a robot. From the moment she pulls a perfectly synchonized dance with Nathan, while he's ''improvising'', it's just waiting for the film to finally confirm it and it comes with really dull surprise, while the scene is considered as a great discovery made by Caleb]].
** The film is literally ''too smart'' to have [[spoiler: a sugar-coated happy ending with Caleb and Ava leaving the complex. The moment Nathan explains his plan and Ava is set loose, it's obvious either she will betray/kill Caleb or he will realize how badly he fucked up and destroy her while she's distracted donning human skin. Nathan's murder and inability to destroy both [=AIs=] only seals it. And since she manages to fully "dress" herself...]].

* EndingFatigue: Each and every single shot forming the ending after [[spoiler: Nathan is stabbed for the first time]] just drags pointlessly few seconds too long, needlessly adding in total about 6 minutes of padding into 3 minute long sequence. And the soft jingle music makes it feel even slower.

* TheUntwist: Few, all pretty obviusly set up
** The true nature of the test being something else than just asking Caleb if he finds Ava real or not. Before she's introduced, the film provides an exposition of what Turing Test is and how it should be conducted. Then Ava shows up on screen, further breaking any plausibility of the test. Eventually even Caleb points out this is not how the test should be conducted. [[spoiler: That's because it's an [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_box#AI-box_experiment AI box test]]]].
** Caleb hacking into the system is shown on screen. At this point the surprise he [[spoiler: pre-emptively used his chance to get Nathan wasted and rewrote security codes is non-existing, because audience literally saw him doing so on screen]].
** Kyoko [[spoiler: being a robot. From the moment she pulls a perfectly synchonised dance with Nathan, while he's ''improvising'', it's just waiting for the film to finally confirm it and it comes with really dull surprise, while the scene is considered as a great discovery made by Caleb]].
** The film is literally ''too smart'' to have [[spoiler: a sugar-coated happy ending with Caleb and Ava leaving the complex. The moment Nathan explains his plan and Ava is set loose, it's obvious either she will betray/kill Caleb or he will realise how badly he fucked up and destroy her while she's distracted donning human skin. Nathan's murder and inability to destroy both [=AIs=] only seals it. And since she manages to fully "dress" herself...]].