Morgan (2016 film)

Plot

Lee Weathers, a stern and self-contained young woman, is a risk-management specialist for genetic-engineering company SynSect. One of their experiments is a human hybrid called Morgan, who is smarter than humans, and who has an advanced-growth rate (appearing about 19, despite only being 5 years old). Lee is called in to investigate after Morgan used a pen to stab scientist Dr. Kathy Grieff in the eye. Over dinner with the team of eight researchers, Lee (who is revealed to be fluent in Chinese) and lead scientists Dr. Lui Cheng and Dr. Simon Ziegler discuss an incident in Helsinki where 21 researchers were killed.

Psychologist Dr. Alan Shapiro arrives to evaluate Morgan, and when he taunts her, she kills him. Lee decides that Morgan is too unpredictable, and must be terminated. The scientists, who have raised Morgan from birth, have grown attached to her and cannot bring themselves to kill her. As Lee is about to do so, the scientists inject her with sedative and imprison her in the glass cell in which Morgan had been held. They plan to escape with Morgan, who instead kills most of them, while Ziegler commits suicide.

In the scientists' house, Cheng is recording an apology for the failure of the experiment, in which she hints that the company was developing people to be used as weapons. Morgan was their latest experiment, in which they attempted to add more human emotions, only to find that the result was harder to control. After Cheng has finished, Morgan enters the room and suffocates her. Lee escapes the cell and rushes to stop Morgan, able to initially match her in a short fight. Morgan breaks away, takes a car, and flees with Dr. Amy Menser, who Morgan says is the only one of the scientists who was a real friend to her.

Lee and Skip Vronsky pursue the pair. Lee locates the vehicle they were using and instructs Skip to wait for her by their car, continuing alone. Morgan and Lee have a final showdown, seemingly matched in strength and speed. Finally, Morgan knocks down Lee, and as she falls, Lee is impaled on the branch of a fallen tree. Morgan begins to flee again, but Lee catches up and kills her. Lee shoots the surviving handlers, Menser and Vronsky, getting rid of any witnesses to what happened.

The executives at SynSect are sitting in a conference room while calmly discussing what happened. It's suggested that Lee is actually an earlier, less emotional prototype of a human hybrid weapon, and they conclude that she is a superior model to Morgan. Elsewhere, Lee is shown making a gesture with her hands, the same way that Morgan had when Dr. Shapiro asked her how she felt about injuring Dr. Grieff.

Production

Morgan, a sci-fi thriller scripted by Seth W. Owen, was placed on the 2014 Black List of Best Unproduced Screenplays. With 20th Century Fox attached as financier and distributor, Ridley Scott's Scott Free Productions was set to produce. On March 10, 2015, Kate Mara was announced as having been cast in the lead role, corporate risk-management consultant Lee Weathers, while Luke Scott, son of Ridley, was set to make his directing debut, with Ridley Scott producing, along with Michael Schaefer and Elishia Holmes. Anya Taylor-Joy was also added to the cast in the title role of a genetically-engineered being. On April 29, 2015, Paul Giamatti and Toby Jones were cast as a psychologist and chief scientist in charge of the lab facility, respectively. Boyd Holbrook was also set to play a nutritionist at the facility, and Jennifer Jason Leigh and Michelle Yeoh were later cast in supporting roles.

Filming

Principal photography on the film began on May 26, 2015, in Northern Ireland.

Box office

In the United States, Morgan was released on September 2, 2016, and was originally projected to gross around $6 million from 2,020 theaters in its opening weekend. However, after grossing just $615,000 on its first day, weekend projections were lowered to $2 million. It went on to open to $2 million, finishing 18th at the box office. In its second weekend it grossed just $495,000, finishing 21st at the box office.

Critical response

Morgan has received mixed reviews from critics. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 40%, based on 129 reviews, with a weighted average score of 5.1/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Morgan neglects to develop its decent premise, opting instead to settle for a garden-variety sci-fi thriller with more action than ideas." On Metacritic the film has a score of 48 out of 100, based on 33 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.

Keith Phipps of Uproxx praised the film's setup but criticized its execution, writing, "It floats a few interesting ideas it can’t develop and it doesn’t know how to ratchet up the tension or fold those ideas into thrills. And it’s not like that can’t be done with this premise, as Ex Machina already demonstrated." Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film one out of four stars, ranking the film #4 among his worst films of 2016 and saying: "The only thing worse than the first three-quarters of Morgan is the supposed payoff, which veers from the dumb to the really dumb to the so-dumb-you’ll-hardly-believe it".