Is the title character a person or a thing? That’s a pertinent question that’s left open for interpretation in Morgan, the latest science-fiction thriller about artificial intelligence run amok.
Despite some stylish flourishes from rookie director Luke Scott, however, this cautionary tale remains as cold and detached as Morgan herself (or itself, whichever you prefer).
The confusion stems from the fact that Morgan (Anya Taylor-Joy) is an artificially created humanoid — or a “synthetic life form,” as one of her doctors puts it — who lives in a remote top-secret research lab with the scientists who created her. But her behavior can be quite unpredictable, such as an unprovoked attack on a doctor (Jennifer Jason Leigh) during a routine interaction.
That prompts a visit from Lee (Kate Mara), a corporate risk-management consultant who is sent to investigate. She interviews Morgan’s handlers, including a sympathetic geneticist (Toby Jones) and a behaviorist (Rose Leslie) who have nurtured Morgan and supervised her progression.
But the violent incident raises questions about Morgan’s emotional capacity and her ability to reason and feel. That’s why Lee brings in a confrontational psychologist (Paul Giamatti) to help determine whether Morgan represents a sufficient threat to warrant her termination.
Scott carries quite a family pedigree into his feature debut as the son of Oscar-winner Ridley Scott and a nephew of the late Tony Scott. And certainly he knows how to employ visual trickery to ratchet up the tension in an isolated location.
The same can’t be said for the screenplay by Seth Owen, which doesn’t capitalize on its mildly provocative concept. Much of the first hour is slow and muddled, and once the pace picks up in the third act, much of the narrative logic is thrown out the window. There’s an ill-conceived romantic subplot involving a chef (Boyd Holbrook), the motives for various characters become cloudy, and some late twists seem arbitrary.
While it’s nice to see resilience and toughness from two female protagonists, Morgan isn’t done any favors by coming on the heels of such superior efforts as Ex Machina and Her, which deal with similar subject matter involving corporate greed and technological overreach.
