Morgan

★★★☆☆

As mankind catches up on its obsession and fascination with artificial intelligence and the evolution of digital consciousness, films exploring similar themes have been captivating interest and intrigue. Currently deemed as science-fiction genre films, the perfect integration of artificial intelligence and genetically engineered human clones might not be so distant from reality.

Luke Scott’s latest feature film Morgan was intended to study in detail such a scenario in the form of a synthetic human experiment that went wrong. This was remarkably accentuated by compelling performances from the film’s lead characters, in particular Kate Mara (who plays risk management consultant Lee Weathers) and Anya Taylor-Joy (who plays the title character Morgan).

Both characterisation reflected an ice-cold aura over them, one that is sufficient to cause curiosity towards the line between machine and man. Along with cold and crisp photography and a relatively bleak production design and location setting, technical details brought out the coldness of the futuristic world.

Scott and his screenwriter Seth W. Owen dove straight into a violent incident involving Morgan and a human being that prompted a review and response. The build-up of various characters and context came across as stale but steady in the first third of the already concise 92-minute film. Things only became interesting when the plot thickens with a psychiatric analysis of Morgan.

With an emotion-void face most of the time, it was difficult for the audience to predict Morgan’s next course of action. What motivates the logic algorithm – does ‘she’ kill those who pose a threat to ‘her’ or those ‘she’ bear a grudge against? This provided much of the thrills and horror experienced to keep viewers entertained.

Morgan’s approach towards dealing with an impaled human victim and an impaled deer was different. Despite not an obvious reference, it prompts further to think about ‘her’ brain logic circuitry. Perhaps Morgan prefers to allow the one she holds a grudge against to suffer in agony while allowing the one she cares for to end misery with a quick death.

The collective decision by the human characters in the favour of Morgan as seen in the middle of the film evoked a superficial thought about how much mankind understands of humanity. Toying with the notion of inventing human life, what really scares people is how mankind believes that humanity can be simply synthesised by science.

With the advancement of knowledge, science and technology, mankind finds access to achieve many great feats. We can clone human beings, we can code artificial intelligence, we can construct autonomous robotics, but we can never create humanity – the very quality that makes mankind… human.

Morgan is a film that is just like its title character – while it attempts to explore the dynamics as a synthetic human being, it doesn’t embrace the intrinsic quality of humanity.

Also published on InCinemas.sg