The topic of artificial intelligence is as timely as ever, and if you’re looking for some movies that reflect our current AI and tech-related anxieties, you’re in luck: this topic has been fascinating filmmakers for years, and you have quite a selection to choose from. If you’re like us, you’re probably interested in movies that tackle the darker side of AI and technology, as those are the most thematically interesting watches. These are films that use this timely theme to tell us engaging, unpredictable stories; they will keep you hooked, but they will also make you think.
If you don’t know where to start, we have some recommendations for you! All the movies in our list can be streamed right now, so make sure you’re all set up with the best internet for streaming, and you’ll be in for a hell of a ride. Even if you can’t watch them on the big screen, these fascinating films find inventive ways to tackle such interesting and culturally relevant themes – from the purpose and consequences of technology to the loss of control and even the meaning of life – that your eyes will be glued to your TV the whole time.
Without further ado, here are our picks for 5 films about artificial intelligence gone wrong, listed below in order of release date. Happy watching!
1. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Stanley Kubrick
Directors started exploring artificial intelligence and its dangers as early as the 1960s, even if, back then, it wasn’t called AI; to Stanley Kubrick, it was called HAL 9000. 2001: A Space Odyssey, one of the best movies of all time according to the AFI, was highly influential for the sci-fi genre as a whole, acting as a blueprint for many similarly disquieting modern movies. Though its structure and even the meaning of the film itself have been up for debate for many years, the questions Kubrick’s 1968 epic raises are eerily on-point.
The main portion of the film, takes place during a mysterious voyage to Jupiter, where astronauts Dr. Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Dr. Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) are taking orders from an advanced, sentient supercomputer that’s controlling every aspect of the mission, and even the spacecraft itself. One day, HAL 9000 (Douglas Rain) makes a data tracking mistake, and even though it’s a very rare occurrence for an otherwise efficient robot, what happens still makes our protagonists want to take control. But being the advanced supercomputer that it is, HAL begs to disagree.
What makes 2001: A Space Odyssey so accurate in its analysis of artificial intelligence gone wrong is that HAL 9000 doesn’t become an antagonist because it’s driven by hatred or anger. What drives it is entirely logical, and based on that logic, what matters is the mission’s success; the way HAL sees it, he has no other option but eliminating the crew, as they’ve become a threat to the mission itself. Years before chatbot and even computers existed, Kubrick explores one of the most disquieting matters of our tech-addicted world: what happens when the machine we trust to improve our lives decides to prioritize cold logic over human survival?
2. The Matrix (1999)
Lilly & Lana Wachowski
“You take the blue pill – the story ends; you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill; you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.” Except that Wonderland is our own reality in Lilly & Lana Wachowski’s iconic classic, a film that imagines a world where the machines have already taken over, and we are living in a very realistic virtual simulation.
If you’ve never seen The Matrix, you might want to stop reading and watch the film now, as the most fun comes from finding out its twists a little at a time: we guarantee you’ll be blown away by a 1999 movie that feels like it could have been made today. But if you’re already familiar with the Wachowskis’ films – from the 1999-2003 trilogy to the recently released fourth installment – then you already know it all has to do with a man named Neo (Keanu Reeves) who is one day awoken to find out not only he had been living a lie, but he’s the one who’s meant to save humanity.
The Matrix‘s universe is one where humanity has already been taken prisoner by a sentient entity, and what’s groundbreaking here is that there are no robots; the enemy is all around us, hidden within the familiar and accessed through coding and cables. The threat here is completely virtual, which makes The Matrix‘s possibilities limitless. What if, one day, we stopped controlling AI and it started controlling us? And what if it did it so subtly that most of us wouldn’t even notice? When you stream the film at home, listen to the audio commentaries for more fascinating insight from the filmmakers.
3. Ex Machina (2014)
Alex Garland
When A24 was just an interesting boutique distributor that specialized in indie films, the studio released Ex Machina, and everything changed. The premise is simple: a talented programmer named Caleb (Domhnall Gleeson) who works for an established tech giant is invited to spend a week at an isolated estate in the mountains owned by the company’s CEO, Nathan (Oscar Isaac). There, he finds that he’s been chosen for a reason, and he’s actually there to analyze an advanced, artificially intelligent humanoid of Nathan’s creation, Ava (Alicia Vikander).
But where Ex Machina deviates from other similar movies about AI is that Ava has a plan of her own, and it’s very different from what you imagine it to be. To complicate things further, Caleb starts falling for her, and Nathan has an agenda of his own. This is a film about both human and machine manipulation, and though there are both human and artificial antagonists here, its darkest, most disquieting element is Ava’s level of sophistication in decoding human emotions – especially given how easy it is for Caleb to trust her. Ex Machina highlights just how vulnerable we’ve become to AI, in a way that’s still very much relevant to today. For similar themes, check out Spike Jonze’s Her next!
4. Companion (2025)
Drew Hancock
Not unlike 2001: A Space Odyssey, this recent release looks at a sentient AI that starts making choices that might put the people around her in dangerous situations. In Companion, though, the AI is a humanoid android named Iris (Sophie Thatcher) that was created to be just what the film’s title implies: an entity that can accompany us through life as a romantic partner and make us feel less alone. Right from the start, this introduces another timely theme: that of isolation, which, nowadays, is often the reason why we turn to artificial intelligence. On top of that, Iris can be hacked, which demonstrates how AI can easily be manipulated and used against us, especially when it knows so many intimate details about us.
Companion was received with mixed reviews, but while it does lose itself a little bit at the end, it’s still a highly thought-provoking, compelling watch, and a cautionary tale that you’ll be thinking about long after the credits roll.
5. Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die (2026)
Gore Verbinski
“This isn’t a robbery! I am from the future!,” says a man wearing odd, flashy clothes while entering a Norm’s Diner, in LA, in the opening scene of Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die. According to him, the future “goes horribly wrong,” and AI is to blame. The most recent release on our list comes from the director of Pirates of the Caribbean, who teams up with screenwriter Matthew Robinson and brings us a fun, completely bonkers adventure that also acts as a wake-up call against the kind of reality we’re headed towards. It all has to do with an AI apocalypse, and our nameless Man from the Future (Sam Rockwell) claims the only way to prevent it is to go on a quest that will start that same night, at Norm’s – except he’s been on that exact quest 116 times before (or so he claims), which doesn’t really give the best odds to the team he eventually assembles.
Without spoiling anything, this fast-paced, unhinged dystopian satire looks at several ways in which technology and AI are destroying our world, from how numb we’ve become to the world around us, completely addicted to what’s on our phone, to how seeing artificiality all around has become the norm, depriving us of humanity without us even noticing. We might not be living in a simulation like in The Matrix, but is it so different, after all, when everything we see is digital? Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die is a very interesting project, and more importantly, it’s also a fun one. Which makes it the perfect movie to end our list!
From the cold calculations of HAL 9000 to the more subtle and chaotic digital threats of modern satires, there are many movies out there that take aim at technology and show us the ways in which artificial intelligence has gone wrong. Our real world doesn’t have to be quite as grim as it’s depicted here, and that’s what makes these films fun to watch: as disquietingly accurate as they may be, they are exaggerations of our own reality. So grab your popcorn and enjoy streaming the 5 films above!