Name : Michael Phillips / Alias : Chicago Tribune
Garland sidles up to some large ideas, some more provocative than others, and his premise hints at the costs of perpetual, omnivorous surveillance.

Name : Trevor Johnston / Alias : Time Out
A bit more intelligence would not have gone amiss.

Name : Joe Williams / Alias : St. Louis Post-Dispatch
With a stellar cast and seductive look, "Ex Machina" is a sleek contraption for capturing our imagination.

Name : Manohla Dargis / Alias : New York Times
While Mr. Garland wants to tease your brain, he's an entertainer, and in time ditches science and philosophy for romance and action.

Name : J. R. Jones / Alias : Chicago Reader
Its aura of cool menace is largely attributable to Isaac, stealing his every scene as the smoothly bullying CEO, and production designer Mark Digby, who created the millionaire's sleek, high-tech mountain fortress.

Name : Anthony Lane / Alias : New Yorker
"Ex Machina," despite the stutters, slowly finds its grip and starts to squeeze.

Name : Richard Roeper / Alias : Chicago Sun-Times
The Swedish actress Alicia Vikander ("The Fifth Estate") infuses Ava with the just the right mixture of iciness, vulnerability and mystery. It's a star-making performance.

Name : Richard Corliss / Alias : TIME Magazine
The year's most seductive high-IQ drama.

Name : James Berardinelli / Alias : ReelViews
In the final analysis, the movie doesn't offer much about the subject that hasn't been previously explored, but the soil is fertile and many ideas germinate.

Name : Cary Darling / Alias : Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com
Alex Garland brilliantly brings the past into the present with the near-future tale Ex Machina, a stark but dazzling meditation on intelligence, consciousness and morality that discreetly uses special effects in service of story, dialogue and character.

Name : Joe Neumaier / Alias : New York Daily News
"Ex Machina" shows there's still life left in tales of artificial intelligence.

Name : Colin Covert / Alias : Minneapolis Star Tribune
"Ex Machina" is a tense tale of artificial love so intelligently crafted and edgy that I adored it myself.

Name : Inkoo Kang / Alias : TheWrap
A chilly yet engrossing drama, elevated beyond its four-people-locked-in-a-house framework by the eerie beauty of the production design and the thoughtful curiosity of Garland's screenplay.

Name : Ignatiy Vishnevetsky / Alias : AV Club
Make no mistake, this is a film of ideas-sadder, quieter, more delicate than the Hollywood sci-fi standard-where every sliding wall of opaque glass suggests something about technology and the way people would use it.

Name : Wesley Morris / Alias : Grantland
The writer and director, Alex Garland, keeps the movie so full of doomy atmosphere that expecting the worst sort of becomes a treat. But gradually the hypnosis wears off, the mystique dissipates, and banalities take over.

Name : Claudia Puig / Alias : USA Today
For a first-time director, Garland seems assured. His sharp, sparse dialogue and meticulous direction are equally compelling, and the trio of lead performances are top-notch.

Name : Soren Anderson / Alias : Seattle Times
"Ex Machina" is an exquisite puzzle box of a picture. It baffles. It unsettles. It intrigues.

Name : Joe Morgenstern / Alias : Wall Street Journal
Sizzlingly smart and agreeably sententious, Mr. Garland's film transcends some all-too-human imperfections with gorgeous images, astute writing and memorably strong performances.

Name : Ann Hornaday / Alias : Washington Post
"Ex Machina" is a smart, exceptionally stylish head trip.

Name : Guy Lodge / Alias : Variety
Garland's long-anticipated directorial debut synthesizes a dizzy range of the writer's philosophical preoccupations into a sleek, spare chamber piece .

Name : Stephen Whitty / Alias : Newark Star-Ledger
Although "Ex Machina" is small and talky - it has just four characters, and the only action comes at the end - it also looks good. The set direction is interesting and evocative. The effects impress but don't overwhelm.

Name : Kenneth Turan / Alias : Los Angeles Times
Shrewdly imagined and persuasively made, "Ex Machina" is a spooky piece of speculative fiction that's completely plausible, capable of both thinking big thoughts and providing pulp thrills.

Name : Amy Nicholson / Alias : L.A. Weekly
It's the film version of an iPhone: small, expensive-looking and a touch overhyped - plus an addictive sales pitch for whatever Garland makes next.

Name : Rene Rodriguez / Alias : Miami Herald
Garland's primary concern is his flesh-and-blood characters, even though they are not nearly as showy (or beautiful) as his main attraction, the vulnerable, delicate girl with a heart of steel and wires.

Name : Kyle Smith / Alias : New York Post
It doesn't quite add up in the end, but it's heady stuff anyway, dense with moments of shivery beauty and frightening ideas.

Name : Lindsey Bahr / Alias : Associated Press
By going deep on a simple construct, Ex Machina establishes itself as a unique and deeply unsettling psychological thriller that's both necessary and unforgettable.

Name : Rafer Guzman / Alias : Newsday
A neat psychological thriller for the digital age. Great performances compensate for a slightly slim story.

Name : Mick LaSalle / Alias : San Francisco Chronicle
It's hard to imagine another director squeezing as many shades and colors from his screenplay as Garland did, and from now on, it would be understandable if he insisted on directing everything he writes.

Name : Ty Burr / Alias : Boston Globe
"Ex Machina" isn't quite "Citizen Kane" for an era of Internet tycoons, but it suggests that that's not such a bad idea.

Name : Liam Lacey / Alias : Globe and Mail
A clever film with one indelible performance from Isaac.

Name : Chris Nashawaty / Alias : Entertainment Weekly
Ex Machina is beautiful and ominous and features another delicately nuanced performance from Isaac, who's quickly making a habit of them. But in the end, for all of Garland's ambition, his reach winds up exceeding his grasp.

Name : Lisa Kennedy / Alias : Denver Post
[A] methodically absorbing sci-fi drama.

Name : Stephen Dalton / Alias : Hollywood Reporter
For dystopian future-shock fans who can look beyond its basic design flaws, Garland's feature debut functions just fine as superior pulp sci-fi.

Name : Steven Rea / Alias : Philadelphia Inquirer
Like stage actors who live and breathe their roles over the course of months, Isaac, Gleeson, and Vikander excel, and cast a spell.

Name : Tom Long / Alias : Detroit News
"Ex Machina" takes its time, wrestling with questions of responsibility, morality and compassion while getting ever weirder. At its heart is Ava, played with a fine blend of innocence and quiet panic by Vikander.

Name : Bill Goodykoontz / Alias : Arizona Republic
It's great when a movie messes with your head.

Name : Peter Howell / Alias : Toronto Star
Ex Machina packs a scientist's brain inside a thrill seeker's body, much like the nubile robot within it.

Name : Mark Jenkins / Alias : NPR
Reasonably diverting until its predictable (and predictably misogynistic) outcome.

Name : David Edelstein / Alias : New York Magazine/Vulture
Clever novelist and screenwriter Alex Garland makes a half-dandy directorial debut with Ex Machina, a sci-fi film that - like much of his work - fakes excitingly in the direction of breaking new ground before turning formulaic so fast.

Name : Christy Lemire / Alias : ChristyLemire.com
Ex Machina is the best movie I've seen all year.

Name : Peter Travers / Alias : Rolling Stone
I know, I know. You've seen all this A.I. stuff before. But never like this. Garland is hot for ethical shop talk on what defines humanity or lack of same.