Garland’s Big Debut.
After celebrating the holidays with gateway horror classic Jumanji (listen), underseen Christmas thriller P2 (listen), and bizarro 1981 slasher Night School (listen), Horror Queers is kicking off 2026 with Alex Garland‘s 2014 feature directorial debut.
In Ex Machina, Blue Book employee Caleb Smith (Domhnall Gleeson) is chosen by his brilliant, but narcissistic boss Nathan (Oscar Isaac) to visit the latter’s isolated home/lab. There Caleb is asked to test the humanity of Nathan’s newest creation, a life-like robot named Ava (Alicia Vikander).
But what begins as a simple Turing test becomes something more extreme as Caleb begins to question Nathan’s motives, while simultaneously falling for Ava. Who can Caleb trust? And what is really going on?
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Episode 368: Ex Machina (2014) feat. Miss Sinclair
We’re kicking off a new year with Alex Garland’s feature directorial debut, Ex Machina (2014). Joining us for the ride is Garland mega-fan Miss Sinclair from Talk Movie To Me podcast.
This prescient film has aged incredibly well: from its portrayal of an entitled tech billionaire to its naive-meets-incel “white knight” protagonist to questions about the ethics of AI. It’s a film filled with questions, which has us posing a number of our own!
Plus: Oscar-winning FX, Ava’s “Alicia Vikander drag”, Joe’s queer cuckolding read, and why we’re planning a trip to Norway.
Cross out Ex Machina!
Coming Up Next: In anticipation of the new Nia DaCosta sequel, we’re revisiting our Patreon discussion from last year about 28 Years Later (2025).
P.S. Subscribe to our Patreon for over 446 hours of Patreon content including this month’s new episodes on Return to Silent Hill, The Creep Tapes Season 2, 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, Primate and – to coincide with Johannes Roberts’ killer chimp movie – we’ve got a brand new audio commentary on the 1995 adaptation of Michael Crichton’s Congo.