Chung Harry Chung Professor Jeff Heinzl Eng Scifilm Sept. 21 2016 In Sigmund Freud’s essay “The Uncanny”, he defined the term uncanny as the “class of the terrifying which leads us back to something long known to us, once very familiar ” (Freud). What this means is that you will find yourself returning to the exact same spot you’ve experience before, but doesn’t have an exact certainty as to when you’ve experienced it before. This unreal feeling makes you feel like you are being manipulated by outside force, in which creates the uncanny feeling mentioned by Freud. However, the connection of uncanniness being conveyed through words wasn’t as realistic as presented in pictures. Therefore, I’ve decided to watch The film Ex Machina, which perfectly depicted the uncanny effect mentioned by Freud, in which the film toys with the audiences’ capability of distinguishing reality from imagination; in other words, toys with the audiences’ capability of distinguishing automaton from human beings. The movie, Ex Machina, portrayed an ingenious creator, who successfully invented human droid, Ava, which possessed artificial intelligence and gender (female). However, to prove the human droid to have consciousness he specifically picked one of his employees under his company, who possessed moral compass and was in a single status: Caleb Smith (male). As audiences, we were not given this information in the beginning, this information was revealed in the final scenes. Therefore, we as audiences experienced the same experiences Caleb Smith have been through. In other words, the “Turing test” was not only proctored by Caleb, but also by the audiences. During the Turing tests, Caleb encountered another character Kyko, she was one of the factors that caused the uncanny effect. Unlike Ava, we were not provided any background information about character, Kyko, except for the fact that she served as an assistant for Nathan and can only function several domestic needs: cooking, serving, cleaning, etc… Her existence within the facility not only made us feel uncomfortable due to the fact that she had no personal right and was treated inhumanely, but also due to the fact that she wasn’t able to understand language. Throughout the film, she seemed quite familiar to us as to the fact that she had a human appearance, but up to the point where a medium close up shot was taken when she peeled of her skin: revealing the robotic components under her. This revelation provides us with a classical Freud’s example of something uncanny: when something familiar (human being) turns out to become something unfamiliar (automaton) (Frued). Although I had an expectation that Kyoko might have been an automaton, witnessing her peeling her skin off still surprised me. The flashback shots of Kyoko looking straight into the camera was the most uncanny part of her revelation. It was close-up shot of Kyoko’s face with a section of her skin, the skin around the nose and eyes, being peeled off. Th ...