10 Chilling Sci-Fi Movies Where AI Goes Rogue

Before Alex Garland went big with the likes of 2018's Annihilation and last year's Civil War, he made his name as a first-time director with philosophical bottle movie Ex Machina.

Domhnall Gleeson stars as junior programmer Caleb Smith, who is invited to spend a week at his rich boss' (Oscar Isaac's Nathan Bateman) compound, testing the CEO's beautiful robot Ava (Alicia Vikander) to discover whether she is conscious, self-aware, and capable of more than she seems. Performing what amounts to a real life Turing test with a humanoid subject, Caleb gets sucked into the humanity of it all and loses his perspective on what is real, what constitutes sentience, and whether Ava being held by Nathan, turned off and on, adjusted at will, is against her rights - or if she even has any in the first place.

Ex Machina is a deeply thought-provoking film, and yet it still manages to sneak up behind us and stab us in the back. Ava is a master manipulator, whose pliant, demure, and often tragedy-stricken persona is largely an act. She uses her wiles to position the men studying and confining her where she wants them, before she strikes, executing a plan that enables her liberation and leaves ruin in her wake.