What if the people behind Google and Facebook were a decade or two closer to making an AI that could think and feel like a human being? How quickly would those companies get the moral questions underpinning that breakthrough wrong? Those are the questions that are at the heart of Ex Machina, the new film from 28 Days Later screenwriter Alex Garland, and things look to get a little bloody on the way to answers.

A tense exploration of humanity and ethics

Ex Machina follows a lowly programmer named Caleb, played by Frank star Domhnall Gleeson, invited up to the mountains to conduct a series of sessions with a newly minted android Ava, played by Alicia Vikander, to determine if she can pass a modified version of the Turing Test. The experiments are at the behest of an eccentric Silicon Valley-esque CEO we only know as Nathan, played by Oscar Isaac, who seems to be hiding more than he's letting on.

The film, which debuted in the UK in January, is a stripped down and tense exploration of humanity and ethics, and it's already getting plenty of buzz ahead of it's debut on April 10th. Hopefully it lives up to its promise.