Morgan (2016)

Running Time: 1hr 32min

Release Date: September 6, 2016

Written by: Seth Owen

Directed by: Luke Scott

Review by: Stacey

I was initially looking forward to this movie because it had an interesting concept and boasted a pretty great cast (Kate Mara, Anya Taylor-Joy, Toby Jones, Brian Cox, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Paul Giamatti), but I probably should have become concerned when I didn't hear much of a peep about it upon its release back in Sept.  I have, however, heard that you're better off watching Ex Machina (which I have yet to see), but I have a feeling they're probably right.

Morgan follows corporate risk-management consultant, Lee Weathers (Kate Mara), to a remote research facility where she must decide whether or not to terminate a project which involves an artificially created humanoid.

As I said earlier, it's an interesting concept, but nothing that hasn't been seen before.  It became your run-of-the-mill "AI gone rogue" type of scenario that did offer SOME twists but they felt more like cop-outs, to be honest.

Morgan was directed by Luke Scott (Ridley Scott's son) as his directorial debut, and while it was a solid effort on his part, I couldn't help but find myself growing bored the first 2/3 of the film.  That's a shame considering the impressive cast list the movie had, which was a bit misleading on its own mostly because a lot of the big names either had brief scenes or their characters were very one-note and not fleshed out well enough.  I was especially looking forward to seeing Paul Giamatti, who played a psychologist for maybe one scene (that admittedly set off the rest of the film), but he was soooo underutilized and **SPOILER** was killed off wayyyy too quickly.

Kate Mara's character fell flat and in line with the others which is disappointing since she was one of the main characters.  I will say, though, that I was impressed with Anya Taylor-Joy as the titular character.  Coming off of her role in The Witch, she was compelling enough as an AI who was beginning to form human-like emotions.

It's hard for me to find things that I liked about the movie without trying to force it, but I won't lie and say Morgan wasn't shot really well.  I'll give them that!  Oh, and once people started getting killed off; I did dig that as well.

Ultimately, the movie left me feeling more like 😑 and there were many times that I was asking myself "Wait, who am I supposed to be rooting for???"  Coupled with the ending, I don't think I'll be re-visiting or recommending Morgan at any point in the foreseeable future.

1.5/5