Morgan
Morgan: "I feel...alive."
Morgan
is directed by Luke Scott (directorial debut) and stars
Kate Mara as Lee Weathers, Anya Taylor-Joy as Morgan, Toby Jones as Dr. Simon
Ziegler, Rose Leslie as Dr. Amy Menser, Boyd Holbrook as Skip Vronsky, Michael
Yare as Ted Brenner, Jennifer Jason Leigh as Dr. Kathy Grieff, Michelle Yeoh as
Dr. Lui Cheng, Vinette Robinson as Dr. Brenda Finch, Chris Sullivan as Dr.
Darren Finch, and Paul Giamatti as Dr. Alan Shapiro.
Lee Weathers, a risk-management consultant,
is assigned by a company to assess and report the well-being and the likely
dangerous aspects of an artificial humanoid being named Morgan. While others
make the decision of whether or not she should be terminated after a bloody and
violent event, Morgan, new to finding her true feelings and her potential to
kill other people, goes on a rampage. Morgan's "family", the doctors
who have taken care of her, must do whatever it takes to help her in the best
way possible, but not without casualties.
Yeah...like I said, bloody and violent.
Secrecy makes people, at least the ones
that I know, curious. Personally, it makes me curious and want more. The
trailer for Morgan is shrouded in
secrecy. All I knew was that it's a science fiction/thriller film about a girl
who isn't a really a little girl and has somewhat superhuman abilities. I also
knew that some s**t was going to happen in the film because blood appeared
throughout the trailer. So as I usually do, I learned more about this movie by
watching it. What I can say is that I feel like there is still a good amount of
questions that haven't been answered (even new questions that I didn't think
I'd ask). I would never fault a movie by having the "more questions than
answers" ideal that some movies have. I think it tried to answer most of
the questions in the first half of the movie. However, the first half of the
movie (mind you, it is 1 hour and 32 minutes long) is slooooooow. Morgan sets up a lot of character
background in the first half and it's not very action-like. The second half of Morgan is very much an
action/sci-fi/thriller film. It's cool as hell to see the hand to hand combat
between a young humanoid girl and an adult who works for a mysterious company.
There's also a good amount of brutality that this little girl can do so that in
itself is pretty damn cool. Here's the thing: I'm fine with films that like to
use the first half of the movie to set the rest of the movie up, but none of
the characters are truly interesting or gravitating. I found no character that
I could actually relate to and that's pretty unfortunate for a film that uses
its first half to let the audience know a little bit more about that characters
that have a role in the entirety of the film. The idea of this artificial being
able to outsmart and outfight humans is unusual, especially with gorgeous
cinematography and good actors at the helm. The only movie that I can think of
that did that extremely well in recent years is Ex Machina (except that that was with a beautiful robot performed
by Alicia Vikander) I just can't get over the fact that the characters
themselves are people that I wouldn't want to go on a road trip on, if given
the choice.
Now this is a scene in which you have to laugh. Why aren't you laughing? Dammit! You're all so straight-faced!
I briefly mentioned it, but I think it
deserves more mention: this movie looks really good. Morgan, the main focus of the film being about a violent girl, uses
a cloak of beauty to add to add to the atmosphere. I don't think it'll get a
lot of mention, but the cinematography really is high quality. I mean, I'm not
a cinematographer, but I'd like to think that Morgan uses this form of art to a very high caliber. After all,
only the best for the son of the legendary Ridley Scott. There are moments near
the ending of the film where a forest is shown. Parts of it look dreary and not
very likely for a film to be in production (most of the time those are the best
places) and parts of the forest look almost dream-like. It's almost like
somebody took the dreams of Paul Bunyon and revealed them to us. Seriously, I
love how this movie looks. Director of Photography Mark Patten shows his
glorious love for this art in Morgan
and it does not disappoint. Now that I think about it, it adds to the aura of Morgan: a confusing mixture of beauty
and horror, but still engaging and leaves you wanting more.
I can't say I loved Morgan or disliked it. I enjoyed it for what it turned out to be.
What I appreciate is its ambition to take the sci-fi genre a bit further into
films we need. Artificial humans are a possibility. I know it sounds crazy, but
cloning is present in today's world so cloning people isn't far off from
cloning sheep and other animals. I can see this as a feasible scenario to show
us how we have to treat it carefully. Am I reading too deep into this? I
honestly don't know. Morgan is a
movie about a rogue humanoid being that kills people. Well, whatever. We see crazier
things on the daily news anyways. I do, however, stick to my thought of this
being ambitious. There are times when I feel like Morgan is perhaps being too ambitious with the way the story is
told, but that's mostly because of the pacing and the characters not being on par
with the whole idea of the film. It's a film about ethics, whether you choose
to believe it or not. I can't say it's the best film or even one of the top
films that deal with ethics, but it's entertaining and it keep you curious
enough to wait until the twist end, which I won't spoil. All I'll say is that I
had an idea at the beginning, but I wasn't 100% sure (just about 80%).
Timing with pacing and undesirable
characters that you'd be likely to see at a doctor's office waiting room really
take Morgan down a big peg, but if
you're interested in seeing a movie that uses secrets as its selling point,
then you should watch it (or at least stream it or something when it comes out
to DVD, Blu-ray, and digital download). I commend the filmmakers for the
ambitious material they decided to shoot and maybe Morgan will help pave the way even more for better films that
involve human-like beings and humans battling it out in drama/thriller/sci-fi
films, but this film just doesn't cut it. If you have a choice of watching Morgan or Ex Machina, a movie with many similarities, I'd make the recommendation
of Ex Machina because it does have
all of Morgan's positives (improves
on it) and none of its flaws. However, choosing Morgan is still a fine choice.
3.5/5
PRO
- Cinematography is beautiful
- Ambitious premise
CON
- Pacing is off (very slow in 1st half; action packed pacing is 2nd half)
- Uninteresting characters
Morgan is rated R for brutal violence and some language
Click here to watch the trailer
Morgan is in theaters everywhere now
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