All the pieces are there; they just never quite come together in a way that feels fresh or original or scary or interesting or anything that a film with limbs in both science fiction and horror could strive for. In the end, the feature debut from director Luke Scott (son of Ridley) just sits there like a well-filmed blunt instrument. From writer Seth W. Owen, MORGAN has a great setup. Kate Mara stars as Lee Weathers, a corporate “quality control” expert for a tech company, arrives at a secret lab owned by her employer to assess a very special, very secret project that has recently resulted in one of the location’s scientists getting badly hurt by…something. Lee is greeted agreeably by some of the staff, but we quickly figure out that they are being nice to her primarily because she has the power to shut down the entire project, in which they are all emotionally invested.
The cast of MORGAN borders on exceptional, with the likes of Rose Leslie (“Game of Thrones”), Toby Jones (“Wayward Pines”), Chris Sullivan (“The Knick,” “Stranger Things”), Boyd Holbrook (GONE GIRL, “Narcos”), Vinette Robinson (“Sherlock”), Michelle Yeoh (CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON), and Jennifer Jason Leigh (THE HATEFUL EIGHT) making up the team. I don’t think I’m ruining anything by saying that what the researchers are attempting to develop is a form of artificial life that can function like a real human. To what end, we’re not exactly sure. But this being a film about a corporation’s rights to potentially end this program going head to head with a group of scientists who see themselves as something resembling life-giving artists, you can probably guess one side of this equation is up to no good.
The first part of the film is about build-up and background. We learn about the failed attempts to bring this being to life, and then we meet Morgan, a human-looking intelligence (played by Anya Taylor-Joy, who gave a career-establishing performance at the beginning of the year in THE WITCH), who is growing into adult form at an accelerated rate and has a tendency to get violent when she gets emotional or feels threatened. The incident that brought Lee to the compound involved Morgan gouging out the eye of Leigh’s character with seemingly little provocation. Morgan can talk, express, analyze and approximate emotions with an alarming clarity, but she has difficulty establishing who is her friend and who means her harm. Lee’s job is to observe a psychological evaluation and decide whether to continue with the project or bring it to a close. As one scientist states to her, “You’re an assassin.”
In the film’s best extended sequence, psychiatrist Dr. Alan Shapiro (Paul Giamatti, in full curmudgeon mode) sits across a table from Morgan and practically dares her (it? The proper pronoun to attach to Morgan is brought up more than once) to lash out. She’s smart enough to know that if she does, she’ll likely be put down. Taylor-Joy’s work here is actually quite nuanced; she balances the approximation of emotional responses with a concerted, strained effort to hold back from expressing them. She’s no robot (like Ava in EX MACHINA), but we get a sense she is programmable to a degree. And it’s that struggle to defy certain protocols versus reacting as is her nature that makes Morgan such an interesting creation.
MORGAN’s second half is where things begin to crumble, both in the plot and in the manner in which it is executed. Rather than create a slightly challenging story that allows us into Morgan’s fractured thought processes, the movie devolves into a brutal bloody mess and a waiting game to find out who lives and who dies when Morgan escapes. I have to wonder, if that’s all this work was going to become, why bother getting us to care so much about how Morgan sees the human world—none of which comes into play as things play out. An 11th-hour reveal involving the project’s real leader (Brian Cox, a welcome addition at any point, in any film) doesn’t really do much for the proceedings either, and I had figured it out much earlier in the surprisingly short running time (92 minutes).
There are few things more frustrating as a moviegoer than seeing a strong premise betrayed by the inability by the filmmakers to stick the landing. Hell, I wish the landing were the only issue here. And while MORGAN looks sensational (all credit to cinematographer Mark Patten, a second unit director of photography with several recent Ridley Scott films, including THE MARTIAN), it feels unfinished and underdeveloped. None of the actors falls short, but at a certain point, they have virtually nothing to work with. All of that being said, I think when director Luke Scott gets his hands on a better script, he might really be able to pull together a film more worthy of his abilities.
