Set sometime in the future, Domhnall Gleeson plays coding programmer Caleb Smith, an employee working for 'Blue Book', the world's most popular search engine by a long shot. He has been summoned by virtue of a contest by the company's founder, mega-billionaire Nathan Bateman, to his remote, high-security home/research facility in Alaska (exteriors shot mostly in rural Norway) for a week in order to help provide learned research into artificial intelligence. Caleb is soon introduced to Ava, a sleekly designed and highly advanced robot resembling a human, and he's told to spend his time testing her (a 'Turing Test') to see if she truly is self aware. With Nathan off drinking, or unable to watch due to sporadic power outages, Caleb and Ava converse about sundry topics, and while her body in clearly artificial, the man can't help but be drawn to her. But, is this part of the design, or is something more organic and unpredictable afoot?