Ever wondered what would happen if a team of bright but overly emotional scientists manufactured a humanoid out of synthetic DNA, and then proceeded to lock it in a room? The answer is: nothing good. While the premise of Luke Scott's sci-fi endeavor Morgan is relatively intriguing, the final product falls way short of the mark.
After an unpleasant eye-gouging incident involving Morgan, the aforementioned humanoid (portrayed by the excellent Anya Taylor-Joy), corporate risk-management representative Lee Weathers (Kate Mara) pays a visit to her facility to determine the appropriate course of action for the company that made her. Upon arriving at a dilapidated house in the middle of nowhere, Weathers is greeted by the close-knit group of scientists who have worked on Morgan. The utter lack of character development here doesn't engender any investment from the audience, although it is refreshing to see a cast that's more diverse than you'd expect from a typical sci-fi film.
Morgan's privileges, including being able to leave her heavily monitored, stainless-steel holding cell, are revoked after the incident, though she displays an almost translucent pallor from her time spent indoors and openly pines to go back outside. The juxtaposition of the surrounding forest and creeks with the sterile interior of the facility are a clear attempt to emulate the aesthetic of the 2015 artificial-intelligence magnum opus Ex Machina, but the idea that Morgan can rise to the latter's level simply by imitating its look is wishful thinking.
Things really fly off the handle following the arrival of Dr. Shapiro (Paul Giamatti), a hubristic psychologist who performs a purposefully antagonistic evaluation of Morgan that causes her to become enraged and turn against the scientists. This soon leads to Shapiro's untimely (or timely, depending on one's perspective) demise, as the plot then loses all focus and veers chaotically off-course. In particular, it feels maddening that these scientists lack any sense of objectivity as they experiment on an artificial being that isn't quite human, but acts as if she might be. By contrast, Weathers remains cool as a cucumber, displaying zero emotional response as she tranquilizes Morgan and steps over the bodies left in her wake. Morgan and Weathers are also both inexplicably skilled in hand-to-hand combat, one of several heavy-handed clues that telegraph the movie's big plot twist far in advance.
The aforementioned "company" that is funding these little experiments is shrouded in mystery, but it's revealed to be just a bunch of serious, wrinkly-faced old white guys in expensive-looking chairs at the tail end of the film. The objective they hoped to achieve with these experiments is unclear, and the science component behind everything feels nebulous. For a movie that is so short (it clocks in at 87 minutes), it feels interminable at times. And although the cast are comprised of excellent actors -- including Toby Jones (Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy), Rose Leslie (Game of Thrones, Downton Abbey), and Vinette Robinson (BBC's Sherlock) -- they are left at the mercy of an underwhelming script that aims for the intelligence of something like Ex Machina, but ends up falling flat.