This Wal-Mart version of Ex Machina started off better than expected but then got worse and worse until it became so bad I suspect it was ashamed of itself at the end.

The British sci-fi thriller The Machine explores the age-old question of computer technology giving birth to artificial life. Set in a dystopian future where Britain and China are in a protracted world war, a MOD research scientist develops a neural network which he believes could be the key to creating artificial life. Caity Lotz stars as “The Machine” and gives an interesting performance. But, the script is pretty weak and does a poor job at explaining the war and how technology fits into it (other than the generic super-soldier cliché). There are also some leaps in logic and dropped subplots that add to the film’s unevenness. Yet while it’s problematic, The Machine does present some intriguing questions about man’s evolving relationship with technology.

Bit different.

Level "Unremarkable" • 5 :heart: • Entertaining but bad.

There's a neat story here about a genius programmer (Toby Stephens) who assists the military in developing a cyborg super weapon. But he's doing it to get funding to do research that will help him save his daughter who is suffering from some kind of severe brain trauma. He hires an assistant (played by Caity Lotz), whose brilliant work in artificial intelligence will help him reach his goal.

Lotz is really good here, first as the lovely scientist and later as a butt-kicking but tender cyborg. The movie feels like it was done very cheaply as most of the movie takes place in dark labs and other small areas. It's a pretty good science fiction story without any gore that stands out.

Gave it a six for the first half of the movie, second part had to take 1 day break to watch it ... :))

It's silly to see this film being compared directly to Ex Machina when this film preceeded it, and both are entries in an already populated cliché subgenre of techno-Pygmalion films. This one's clearly low budget, but puts on a decent show in the first and second act, has good actors, and you do care about the two leads. It does kind of fall apart in the end, though, where it looks like they ran low on budget and inspiration in what was supposed to be the ass kicking cyborg portion of the film.

It has a kind of epilogue that does kind of smack you in the face with some legit science fiction cred speculative implications, though, where other entries never go past the "aRe mAcHiNeS aLiVe?" premise, so there's that in its favor.

+characters

~premise

-budgetary limitations
-story craft

Great film i preferred it over ex machina.

It looks like a B movie , has a script of series B movie . Fairly predictable and weak

The Machine is another one of the android/AI movies that have come out the last three years. It's clever in its own way, and Caity Lotz does an excellent job as "the Machine". It's a tad slow in some parts, and a has a few inconsistencies that annoy me, but overall it's a very good little movie. The Machine is actually thought provoking and makes you think about the dilemmas we face as machines grow smarter and smarter.

well...sure some parts of the plot could have been developed better... but Caity Lotz is fantastic... nice movie I definitely saw much worse