Unintentionally ironic parable about self-styled messianic tech bros.
Alex Garland‘s work, particularly in sci-fi, is as hit-and-miss as big swings often make for.
The hits are really something. Ex Machina (2014) is a psychological chamber play whose Swiss watch components are all perfectly calibrated in its suspenseful exploration of AI and humanity. Annihilation (2018) is a perfectly unsettling, mostly-daytime horror vision of a properly alien presence.
The misses include Civil War (2024), which is as irresponsible as it is uninspired, as well as Garland’s collaborations with director Danny Boyle. The Beach (2000) is a tonally mixed bag. Sunshine (2007) forgoes rewarding payoffs for its thoughtful setups, and instead in simply degenerates into slasher schlock. 28 Days Later (2002) is a glorified student film beyond its handycam aesthetic, with dialogue and performances which do no favours to its undercooked concept. Garland and Boyle form a writer-director combination in which each brings out less than the best in the other.
This speed-run-through of Garland’s filmography is my way of contextualising the specific excitement-to-mild-disappointment journey which comprises this eight-episode mini series, Devs.
Many of the ingredients which went into Garland’s hits are in the Devs recipe too. The subject matter, of course: sinister tech genius exploring the boundary between human and machine. The breathtaking (sometimes literally) score, provided by The Insects and returning Garland collaborators Geoff Barrow (Portishead) and Ben Salisbury. The inventively surreal, anxiety-dream art direction and Mark Digby‘s production design of the creepy Amaya tech company campus, and of the Boiler Room-live-from-the-Apple Store aesthetic of the Devs installation itself, is captured beautifully by Rob Hardy‘s ponderous cinematography.
Between its increasingly sluggish pacing as the series plods along, and Sonoya Mizuno’s inability to emote much less hold the screen as the series lead, Devs drowns in its own import long before it reaches the finish line.
A lot of the Civil War cast is here too: Nick Offerman, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and Cailee Spaeny (who for my money would have made far more of the role of central role of Lily), together with Alison Pill and Zach Grenier, maintain gravitas throughout the series, even as the material itself begins to lose its hold and ultimately evaporate before our eyes. Not helping the series’ narrative disintegration are lead performers who aren’t quite up to the task: Jin Ha, Karl Glusman, and in particular regular Alex Garland player Sonoya Mizuno, who was captivating as the mute, mysterious, possibly abused, and occasionally disco-dancing Kyoko in Ex Machina. Sadly, it seems the more she’s given to do, the less she demonstrates that she is able to do – and Lily, already a thinly-drawn character, has a lot to do as the emotional anchor in a meanderingly heady story full of lofty weirdos in impractically weird places doing obtusely odd things.
The ultimate irony: Devs fancies itself a critique of self-styled messianic tech bros – it’s explicit in the text – in much the way Ex Machina managed so brilliantly. Yet by the series’ Yeats-quoting, “this changes everything” finale, its pretense and portent have come to so outweigh its framework, which was of questionable integrity to begin with, that it collapses in on itself – perhaps inevitably, perhaps less obnoxiously than Sunshine or less vacuously than Civil War, but no less disappointingly given its pedigree. Or, to put it simply: like so much of the tech bubble, Devs writes cheques it fails to cash.
Further Viewing
When Alex Garland gets it right, there’s plenty to appreciate. Ex Machina (2014) for its control of information, and as a Turing Test of its audience…
… and Annihilation (2018) for its conception of the truly alien, and as a metaphor for self-destruction: