Overview
A corporate risk-management consultant must determine whether or not to terminate an artificial being's life that was made in a laboratory environment.
Lee Weathers (played by Kate Mara) is a corporate risk assessment analyst, which doesn’t sound a promising job for an action thriller until you realise that this is Hollywood, where considerable latitude to is given to job descriptions in big companies. She is tasked by her boss (played by Brian Cox) to investigate unsettling events at an isolated scientific laboratory where Dr Simon Ziegler (Toby Jones) and Dr Lui Cheng (Michelle Yeoh) and running an experiment into creating artificial life. Since the days of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, human beings meddling in artificial life creation rarely manage to produce a placid, well-adjusted member of society, and so it appears here with Morgan (Anya Taylor-Joy), seemingly a teenager yet with ill-defined special powers and homicidal tendencies.
The movie spectacularly fails to deliver a plausible plot. The tight-knit team of scientists show an absurd level of affection towards the clearly psychopathic Morgan, and a truly carefree lack of anxiety for their own personal safety when things are clearly already going badly wrong. Kate Mara manages to keep a straight face as she plays her character, but the other actors are wasted in under-written roles that fail to engage sympathy. The country scenery is pretty enough and there are some workmanlike action scenes, but this is very much a film by the numbers, and the plot twist at the end is hardly a surprise to even a naïve viewer.
4/10
