Ex Machina, the directorial debut from novelist and screenwriter Alex Garland (The Beach, 28 Days Later, Sunshine, Dredd), owes a great deal to Alan Turing. For one thing, its premise is directly inspired by what we now call the Turing Test – his suggestion that, if a machine were sophisticated into fooling someone communicating with it into believing that it could think and reason, then it really could think and reason. There, Caleb’s introduced to Ava (Alicia Vikander), a robot who, were it not for her translucent torso and limbs, could easily pass for human. But are Ava’s emotions genuine, or simulation? This is what Caleb has to decide through a week-long series of interviews, which take place in an eerily sterile room akin to a drained fish tank. Garland’s affinity for the sci-fi genre, evident in his earlier screenplays, is all over Ex Machina. Although its special effects are almost seamless – witness Ava’s a superb amalgam of flesh-and-blood performance and CGI – Garland’s film is first and foremost a psychological thriller. Everything, from its brightly-lit cinematography and geometric set design, is calculatedly put together to leave us unsettled and scanning the screen for clues. Vikander is the film’s fulcrum; she’s both its emotional centre and its greatest mystery. Her performance is subtle and restrained, and Garland gives her an almost ethereal presence. Like Ava’s character, it’s hard not to scan her every twitch and fleeting glance for clues. Just how human is she, really? Ex Machina is a poker game of obscure agendas and blurred morals, convincingly written and refreshing in its elegance and lack of narrative clutter. Ultimately, it’s the moral questions that linger the most: if and when we finally do create artificial life, what duty of care would we have to it? How would it reflect our own failings as a species? What would our treatment of it say about us as human beings – our desires, and our capacity for exploitation and cruelty? If you’re looking for an intelligent, disquieting science fiction film, this one’s unmissable. Ex Machina is out in UK cinemas on the 21st January. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.