Null and droid
IN 1909, eventual British Prime Minister David Lloyd George said of the selection process behind the UK’s senior legislative body, the House of Lords, “They need not be sound either in body or mind. They only require a certificate of birth — just to prove they are the first of the litter. You would not choose a spaniel on these principles.”
Today the House of Lords is an afternoon-nap club for geriatrics, but the true lords of culture are in Hollywood, where the less-deserving- than-a-spaniel principle flourishes. How else to explain the existence of “Morgan,” a dull, listless, derivative chunk of celluloid lacking any spark or even basic storytelling ability? It’s a mere gesture in the direction of filmmaking, attempted by director Luke Scott. Just call him Little Lord Luke Scott; he’s the son of director Ridley Scott, whose production company made the film.
A rehash of “Frankenstein” with bits of “Ex Machina,” and, yes, Scott Sr.’s own “Blade Runner” halfheartedly tossed in for fake gravitas, this witless, plodding and predictable sci-fi future caper centers on a “corporate risk manager” (i.e., assassin) played by Kate Mara. She’s investigating a mishap at a secret lab in the mountains where a synthetic humanoid called Morgan has nearly killed one of her many minders.
It’s obvious from the very first minutes that Morgan is bound to get loose and go on a bloody spree, but Scott wastes scene after tedious scene on foreboding — something horrible happened in Helsinki, Finland, on a similar project — plus excruciating psychological-medical-corporate-techno babbling.
Morgan (a blank-eyed Anya Taylor-Joy) is a homicidal lesbian supercyborg who, despite ample reason to be wary of her, is kept under minimal security and has somehow convinced all of her keepers, even the lady (Jennifer Jason Leigh) she stabbed in the eye, that she’s just a sweethearted kid. Mara’s character insists Morgan be referred to as “It,” and the no-nonsense shrink (Paul Giamatti) called in to investigate compares Morgan to “a microwave.”
You’ll arrive at each lumbering plot point five minutes or so before the director gets there, giving you time to wonder about dead ends such as the character whose neck loses a chunk but is then instantly forgotten, or a hinted romance that goes nowhere. Even at 87 minutes, the movie is stretched thin, and when that “Blade Runner” allusion kicked in, I actually winced. Not only is Sonny so creatively bankrupt that he has to raid Daddy’s artistic wallet as well as the literal one, he’s so oblivious that he probably thinks we haven’t noticed.