Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		2.5

Morgan Blu-ray Movie Review

Ex Machina, with an emphasis on the "ex" part.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 13, 2016

It’s pretty much impossible to view Morgan without comparing it, either subliminally or overtly, to last year’s Ex Machina. Both films dabble in the exigencies of artificial intelligence, and both feature a “manufactured” humanoid in the form of a female, one who is apparently sick and tired of being kept in what amounts to captivity. Add in an isolated location that features both an improbable house and a labyrinthine lair where the AI individual is being kept, not to mention at least one scientist with a perhaps too close for comfort relationship with the created being (who turns off video recording equipment in order to hobnob privately with the creation), and the comparisons are probably inevitable. Unfortunately all of those comparisons redound to the favor of Ex Machina, not this film, one which offers Ridley Scott’s son Luke his first opportunity to helm a feature film (Dad is on hand as a producer). Some wags might allege that there’s a genetic predisposition in the Scott clan to craft visually arresting films that nonetheless have their fair share of narrative deficiencies, for while Morgan often looks appealing if not especially high tech (something Luke Scott states in the included commentary track was done intentionally), its story becomes increasingly ludicrous and hackneyed as it progresses, leading to a supposed mind blowing “twist” at the end that any armchair prognosticator is probably going to see coming from the opening scenes, especially with a none too subtle “reveal” in a (again according to Scott, intentional) weirdly on the nose (in more ways than one) image featuring a superimposition that involves AI Morgan (Anya Taylor-Joy).

Security cameras, including some which are kind of weirdly placed overhead, thereby giving a straight down view on the proceedings, capture some kind of violent interchange that seems to suggest someone has been attacked pretty violently, with a projectile of some sort sticking out of their eye socket. It turns out that Morgan, who despite being only five years old but who has the body of an adult and the emotional predisposition of a petulant teenager, has stabbed scientist Kathy Grieff (Jennifer Jason Leigh, in what amounts to a not particularly glamorous cameo) in the eye after finding out that there’s tension in the lab about letting Morgan have her freedom out in the wilds surrounding the lab. That in turn has gotten the corporation funding the AI experiment involved more intensely, with investigator Lee Weathers (Kata Mara) sent to look into the situation.

Lee is an interloper invading a scene where a coterie of scientists have been as isolated as Morgan herself for years as they’ve worked on the experiment. Several of the lab types have obviously developed deep emotional tethers to their creation, including Simon Ziegler (Toby Jones), who initially seems to be in charge, and Amy Menser (Rose Leslie), a kind of older sister type who has delighted in taking Morgan outside into the woods to experience the grandeur of the natural world (again, as with Ex Machina, Scott provides interstitial scenes of gorgeous scenery to obviously offer a visual dialectic of sorts meant to point out the artificiality of Morgan’s own existence). There are several other supporting characters flitting around the edges of the story, including the actual head scientist Dr. Lui Cheng (Michelle Yeoh), but it’s indicative of some of Morgan’s story issues that none of these folks is especially well developed. A dinner scene brings them all together, though, and in one interchange (with Lee dropping into Chinese with Cheung for no apparent reason) it's hinted that there have been other AI experiments where the creations have become violent and killed people.

When an officious psychiatrist named Alan Shapiro (Paul Giamatti in an even less glamorous cameo than Jennifer Jason Leigh’s) shows up to take Morgan’s psychological temperature, all hell breaks loose (unsurprisingly, though there’s a great “shock” moment in the sequence). That equally predictably leads to Morgan’s escape from her environment, with Lee taking after her kind of like The Terminator (in more ways than one, but I digress). The film devolves into a kind of silly chase scene in the woods surrounding the lab, leading to actual hand to hand combat between Lee and Morgan. Suffice it to say there’s a fairly high body count by the time Morgan wends its way to its “M. Night Shyamalan moment,” delivered as a coda after the carnage.

Had Morgan appeared before Ex Machina, my hunch is it probably would have come off as at least slightly more innovative, even if some of its narrative hurdles are self inflicted and ultimately on the ridiculous side. Performances are generally quite good, even if Mara is forced to toe a kind of precarious line in emotional responses courtesy of a salient plot point which plays into the overall story dynamics. Giamatti kind of goes nutty in his one scene, but he injects the film with a raw energy that is otherwise lacking. Morgan, much like its titular character, is a hybrid of sorts, never able to properly navigate between being a thoughtful science fiction inquiry and a more shocking horror entry.

Morgan Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Morgan is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. While the IMDb is once again dataless on technical information, Panavision's site states the film was shot with Arri Alexa XT cameras. The look of Morgan is quite interesting, featuring a number of different gradings that provide a fairly wide gamut of tones and even elements like contrast over the running time of the film. A lot of the lab scenes are pretty dim looking, often cast in cool blues and slate grays. Conversely, several outdoor sequences are bathed in buttery yellows, or in flashback scenes detailing a little incident in the woods, in almost reddish or sepia tones. While this gives the imagery a somewhat heterogeneous appearance at times, detail levels are typically very good to excellent, at least when lighting conditions allow. The film doesn't really exploit a high tech, futuristic look (by design), and so science fiction lovers who come to Morgan expecting a knockout physical production and resultant video presentation may be a bit disappointed that the film's visual aesthetic is a bit tamped down at times.

Morgan Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Morgan's DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 offers some great immersive moment both outdoors, where swarms of bees buzz through the soundfield, to the lab environment, where an almost oppressive low frequency hum emanates at times. There's very smart differentiation in the ambiences of the indoor and outdoor environments, and good discrete channelization of specific sound effects. Dialogue is presented cleanly and clearly on this problem free track.

Morgan Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Modified Organism: The Science Behind Morgan (1080p; 19:40) provides some scientific information which supposedly supports the film's kind of outlandish conceit.


• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 6:03) feature optional commentary by Luke Scott.


• Loom (Short Film) (1080p; 20:27) also features an optional Luke Scott commentary, and is in some ways more effective than the feature film. It's a short done in association with Red, evidently in order to promote Red cameras, that addresses, if tangentially at times, some of the genetic modification aspects of Morgan.


• Audio Commentary by Luke Scott


• Gallery (1080p; 3:38) features Auto Advance and Manual Advance options. The timing is for the Auto Advance option.


• Trailers (1080p; 4:07)

Morgan Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Anyone wanting a deep rumination on self actualization might do better than this film's bland "just be yourself" (an actual quote), with Polonius' famous speech from Hamlet springing to mind as a probably obvious (and obviously more profound) alternative. And this fact simply highlights another problem Morgan has to overcome, aside and apart from any comparisons to the superior Ex Machina — it's simply surface deep a lot of the time, content to give lip service to a few supposedly challenging existential issues without daring to really explore them very deeply. Fans of the cast might find enough here to enjoy, and technical merits are generally strong for those considering a purchase.