10 Awesome Sci-Fi Twists You Never Saw Coming
6. Ex Machina - Ava Fools Everyone
Ex Machina is one of the best science-fiction movies to come out in the past couple of decades, and while it has a slow build, and pacing that might make a snail ask the director to hurry up and get a move on, it's absolutely brilliant and surprising.
In the film, Caleb Smith is invited to a secluded compound owned by the company's CEO, Nathan Bateman, an incredibly enigmatic man who values his privacy. He arrives to learn he was brought there to help him put a robot he created through the Turing Test, which is used to determine whether or not a machine can be genuinely capable of independent thought and consciousness.
Throughout the film, Caleb works with Ava, who has a feminine form and a human-looking face, but there is no doubt she is artificial. As Caleb interviews Ava, he forms a relationship with her and comes to believe she is in danger of having her personality erased and rebooted when Nathan determines he needs to work on fixing her.
The twist comes at the end when it's revealed Ava was working Caleb the entire time, manipulating him in nuanced ways so he would do what she wanted, ensuring her freedom. The film concludes with Nathan dead, Caleb trapped and unable to escape, and Ava joining the world as a human woman nobody would ever waste a moment in thinking she wasn't real.