Morgan

It takes a superhuman effort not to think about Ex Machina, the hit indie Sci-Fi drama from last year, while watching Morgan.  Both are set in secluded mansions in the middle of nowhere, where an artificial lifeform of some sort has been created, and now sits in isolation in a vast basement lab.  Both also deal with how people react to this artificial life, and create some kind of personal relationship with it.  That's where the similarities end.  Whereas the earlier movie treated its premise and audience with thoughtful intelligence, this one is severely dumbed down, and ends in a mess of wasted potential, gore and idiotic characters.

Not all movies have to be smart in order to work, but if the characters in your movie are so dumb you start to wonder how they get dressed in the morning without causing physical harm to themselves, then maybe you're playing it a little too low in the brains department.  The thing is, most of the characters in Morgan are supposed to be brilliant and noted scientists.  And yet, they act like your common horny teenage camp counselor waiting to be hacked up by Jason Voorhees in your standard Friday the 13th movie.  These are people who don't see the wisdom in sticking together, and frequently wander off into dark areas that they clearly shouldn't.  Also, if you are pointing a gun at a monster who has viciously murdered the rest of your friends, don't just stand there and let the monster casually walk up to you and pull the gun from your hands.  I know that the movie is trying to argue that there is some kind of personal connection between the scientists and the monster they've created, and so they hesitate to destroy it.  But, when they keep on making the same mistakes over and over and never learn, it stops being painful and just becomes infuriating.

So, just who is this monster?  She's an artificially created human who goes by the name of Morgan.  She's chronologically five years old, but due to rapid aging, she has the appearance of a 16-year-old, and is played by Anya Taylor-Joy, that bright newcomer who starred in The Witch a few months ago.  Not only does Morgan possess advanced aging and intelligence skills, but she also possesses super strength, which she unfortunately has started to lose control of.  When one of the scientists (Jennifer Jason Leigh) visits Morgan in her underground room one morning, Morgan viciously attacks her, gouging out an eye.  The corporation funding the experiment has decided to send a risk management consultant named Lee Weathers (an unenthused Kate Mara) to check on the progress, and see if the project needs to be terminated.  Lee meets the various scientists who created and have been raising Morgan in an isolated mansion home the past five years, and then gets to meet the project face-to-face.

There is something off about Morgan from the moment we meet her.  She is polite and mannered, but she also seems to be holding something back.  A psychologist (Paul Giamatti) has a sit-down interview with Morgan, and unwisely tries to antagonize her during their session, which triggers another violent response within her.  Lee decides that the project needs to be terminated, but it's too late.  Morgan has developed a will to live, and will do anything to survive.  From this point, the movie stops asking questions about the ethical nature of the experiment (not that it didn't go too deep into these questions to begin with), and turns into a standard slasher movie, where everybody makes the unwisest decisions possible.  We also get a few uninspired martial arts fights, which are edited so rapidly and ineptly that it can be impossible to tell what's going on at times.  First time director Luke Scott (son of filmmaker Ridley Scott, who produced this film) spends the first half of the movie never quite rewarding our curiosity by asking the obvious questions its premise brings up.  What's worse is that he seems to completely abandon any notion of intelligence, and goes for total hack tension and bloody gore during the second.

I'm going to have to be careful in describing what happens next, as Morgan does have a plot twist that is revealed during the last five minutes.  However, I was able to pick up on it within the first 20 minutes or so of the film.  I kept on hoping I was wrong, but when the final revelation was made, my heart sunk.  There are a number of clues throughout the film, though I can't really describe them in any detail without spoiling the ending.  All I will say is that the final revelations are incredibly disappointing, not because I predicted them so early on, but because I wanted my hunch to be wrong.  It's lazy instead of shocking, and it's far too easy to predict, especially if you watch the performances of certain actors, and how the other actors react to them.  Again, I am doing my best to be vague here.  It's just too easy to figure out, and not worth the trouble the movie goes into hiding it.

Maybe I should have seen the disappointment coming, as the movie is being launched over Labor Day Weekend, which is traditionally a dumping ground for films studios have little faith in.  But, it's release date should never be a symbol of quality.  Morgan could have easily been an intelligent and thought provoking thriller, but the script doesn't want to play smart.  Instead of thrilling or shocking us, it relies on tired old slasher movie cliches that have no place being near a film like this, that could have asked so many interesting questions.

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