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...