So this is by Alex Garland, the guy who did Annihilation. I was hoping for something as weird and interesting as that, but didn’t get it. The movie is… fine. It’s a movie about a guy being flown into a billionaire’s weird mountain fastness and then meeting an AI robot, and it’s all very competently done. The cinematography is attractive, in a kind of cool, high-end retail catalog way. The acting from Oscar Isaac, the other guy, and the robot actress is all very good. The writing is solid, there’s real tension in the movie, it has things to say.

And yet for some reason, I don’t know, it didn’t grab me at all. It felt like it was ticking off checkboxes and going through a by-the-numbers story even as it, strictly speaking, wasn’t. I really don’t have much more to say about it; I have no major critiques other than that it just kind of washed over me without connecting. Not exactly recommended, obviously, but also I wouldn’t disrecommend it. In the olden days, it’d be the “watch it if it’s on when you’re flipping through channels and you’re bored” scenario.