While, on the face of it, Alex Garland’s 2014 film Ex Machina seems like another story about boys and their toys, what we actually have here is a fascinating – ultimately devastating – exploration of the way men think of themselves, the toxicity of the concept of The Good Guy, and the disturbing duality that features in both of those things. The absurdly talented writer achieves this, in his feature-length directorial debut, by using the male gaze as a tool to tell a uniquely feminist tale – a deft subversion, applied in such a way as to almost weaponise it against those men that refuse to engage in introspection.

Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) is a young computer programmer...

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