Review of Morgan (2016) by Kristofer H — 03 Sep 2016

Proper Perspective: The rough draft of Ex Machina gets its own feature length film. Great performances (again) from Anya Taylor-Joy and the cast as a whole. There is a great story in this film, solid psychological thriller, but horror buffs will be disappointed in another poor attempt at marketing a thriller into the genre...

Let's talking about a promising premise that just missed the landing.

Plot in a Paragraph: After "the incident" at a secure compound run by "corporate," Risk Management Consultant Lee Weathers (Kate Mara) goes to investigate the viability of Morgan (Anya Taylor-Joy), an artificially created human, thing, weapon, girl, it. The team that created and fostered her to date is very close to Morgan played by the ensemble cast and after a decision is made on what to do with Morgan, everything hits the fan. People take sides. Everything is not what it seems. What (who) is Morgan?

First off this is a well-cast and well-acted movie across the board. Taylor-Joy and Mara were great individually and the relatively unknown cast of character actors played their roles to a T. You'll recognize Toby Jones (Harry Potter, Anthropoid), Chris Sullivan (Stranger Things), and the Game of Thrones crew.

Overall there were two major problems with this movie. Early on in the movie there needs to be exposition for the audience, so instead of finding a creative way to show the connection between the doctors and Morgan, explain the technology, and describe the incident they literally just described things that a Risk Management Consultant for corporate would already have known. She would have known everything in more intimate detail than they described it to her. Instead of showing, they chose to tell, which is one of the two plot devices used in this movie that takes it down a peg overall.

I really liked this movie. It is a very good thriller that was very much a discount Ex Machina in the approach and idea, execution is what separates these two movies.

This is the directorial debut in a feature film for Luke Scott, son of director Ridley Scott. For a directorial debut, this was a strong effort. He had his father on board producing and took a script from Seth W. Owen who is best known for "Peepers." The directing was solid, the performances were very good, but the script and the ending, which is the other unsatisfying part of Morgan, prevented this movie from sticking the landing.

SPOILER: In the end Mara battled with Taylor-Joy to the point of comical violence and survival. Fall out of the second story, survive. Full speed car chase and crash into a tree, survive. Impaled by a tree, survive. OH WAIT MARA IS AN A.I. TOO!?!?! They telegraphed that early in the movie. The ending was uninspired where Mara kills Taylor-Joy, executes the remaining staff, and corporate decides to develop more of her line in the A.I. series. They could have been adventurous and went in a different direction, but played it safe and it felt unsatisfying. Maybe it was just me. They built Taylor-Joy and made her motivations the ones I cared about, then killed her in an oversimplified way in the final five minutes.

Morgan is worth seeing in theaters. The performances are worth the price of a movie ticket and this is 92 minutes of an interesting story in an above average movie.

Seriously, Ava would have escaped from that window hatch like two minutes into being locked in that room. Come on.