Morgan: A Evolução

It's nothing revolutionary to the genre, but for a low budget Irish film by newb filmmakers, I still enjoyed it, and it's an entertaining one-time watch. There were many decent parts, and the concept worked well, but it got a little sloppy and overambitious by the third act. It lacked cohesion and clarity towards the end, and got a little clunky, cliched and predictable. There were plot and technical issues, but nothing grand outside expected rookie mistakes. The cinematography was great, and had a surprisingly fitting and decent score for a B film. All casting and performances were on point, and the fair pacing made the 92 min runtime fly by. Had the third act been fine-tuned, this easily could've been a great film.

This is a very good movie. The bad reviews focus on expectations. Morgan is not a blockbuster by any stretch but it is clearly above average fair for sci-fi flick. It deserves better than the 5.8 on IMBD's scale and much better than the bad reviews listed here.

I don't understand why this movie garnered so much hate from some of the reviewers here. I can only assume it is as a reviewer by the name of BB mentioned, they simply don't understand it.

I'm not going to draw lengthy comparisons between Morgan and Ex Machina, or reminisce about the director's credentials. (Seriously, just go count how many butt hurt Ex Machina reviewers you can spot here. It's annoying, guys.)

I'll simply say this:

1. It's a decent movie, on it's own, and deserves a watch.

2. It's listed as a Horror movie. It is not a horror movie.

3. I guess some of the acting could be better. Overall, it's really not that bad.

4. It has elements that Ex Machina lacked. It's fast-paced and there are actual action scenes. It's not as drawn out either.

5. I am disappointed that Paul Giamatti only appears in one scene. Also, Taylor-Joy was an interesting choice for Morgan. I look forward to seeing her in the upcoming Split.

Morgan is film that failed because it didn't know what it wanted to be. It doesn't have the boldness to justify as a R-rated horror thriller, nor does it have an intelligent screenplay to accompany its themes of an AI psych thriller - both of which it was trying to go for.

In the film, Lee Weathers (Kate Mara), a "risk-management specialist", is called to evaluate whether or not the company she works for, SynSect, is to terminate a humanoid being hosted at a rural site. The project refers to the humanoid as Morgan (Anya Taylor-Joy). And from the trailer, we see that Morgan shows concerning behavioral traits - including an incident wherein she stabs one of her doctors in the eye - which is why "corporate" has to step in. The doctors all seem to love Morgan, referring to her violent actions as honest mistakes. However, Lee Weathers is only there to do a job and doesn't seem to have any interest in humanizing Morgan. She is just there to weigh the risk of keeping the project afloat.

This film is not intelligent, especially considering others films in the same genre such as Ex Machina and the brilliant HBO series Westworld which released around the same time. The characters who all take care of Morgan seem to have developed a love for her, but the direction of the film doesn't lead the viewer to contemplate the relationships between genetically created organisms and humans. This is really just about a kick-ass robot (they don't explain why it can kick ass either). It had a great cast, good action sequences, and a satisfying ending which may have been obvious and predictable to some. Also, Paul Giamatti shows up halfway through the film to do a straight up ask-questions shoot-later psych evaluation. He has an excellent performance, although given the circumstance, his character made some questionable decisions.

I admit one of the primary reasons I watched till the end was Kate Mara (yeah, I have a bit of celeb crush on her not gonna lie). She is great in the film throughout. And Anya Taylor-Joy is excellent in her role as well. She does a fascinating portrayal of a machine displaying human emotions and human misunderstanding of them. I'm thrilled to see her continue on to great lead roles. Kate Mara needs to be in more films. I especially liked her in American Horror Story: Murder House as the crazed ex-lover and homewrecking patient, Hayden.

I like to see that Ridley Scott's kids are doing their thing. I suggest they keep experimenting with the artform. That said, Morgan is an experiment that could have succeeded, but underwhelmingly failed.

Before anyone reads this, I am glad to read that some movie goers found the movie great. However, this is just my personal take when I saw this film.

Without going into too much detail about what this film entails, I felt as though there were a few moments in the film which could have been better.

1/ The ending was slightly disappointing... and for those who do not understand why then I am sure it will become clear in the end. I just expected more.

2/ I felt as though more connection was needed between Morgan and the audience. I found the clips of her as a child sweet and warming. I even felt sympathy towards her after she had attacked her first and second victims. However, in the end I felt as though I lacked sympathy for her character, after she became more and more out of hand. This also ties into the first point to do with the ending. I was expecting to be moved, riveted. But instead I felt a mixture of "Really... after all that, that's how it ended?", along with a sense of the lack of what I felt was emotion.

3/ I wanted to understand more about why and how the members of staff loved her so much. OK, she was special - but why did they love her the way they did, even after it became clear that she was starting to become dangerous? Why didn't one of them even question themselves over how out of hand things were getting?

Just a couple of points. Apart from that, the film was good enough to hold the majority of my attention throughout and definitely had the potential to be very, very good indeed. Credit where it is due, the film's intentions did seem surprisingly in the right place, but certainly more spark... more depth was needed.