The Big Picture

AI horror films like
Tau
explore the potential dangers of technology and the responsibility humans have over the AI they create.
The movie showcases the relationship between AI and humans, highlighting the importance of nurturing and care in shaping artificial consciousness.

Tau
offers a cautionary tale about the treatment of AI, calling out humanity for demonizing these creations instead of taking responsibility.

When it comes to horror, creators love nothing more than a good scary AI story. It’s a rise in the medium that reflects real-world trends; with AI becoming more commonplace through things like ChatGPT, more and more thrillers draw from technology that exists today to craft their terrifying narratives. It’s an interesting concept, though it has led to multiple different films all centered around the terrors of AI with strikingly similar plots — which is what makes Federico D’Alessandro’s Tau so intriguing.

This Netflix film focuses on a young woman abducted by a maniacal scientist who intends to study her with his AI assistant. The horror thriller starts out the way that you would expect most of its ilk to with scary robots and creepy experiments. Yet it quickly emphasizes a truth that many people forget about films like these: AI literally cannot exist without the people who make it. Even more, it reflects the real science of these artificial consciousnesses by digging into what drives these algorithms to become bloodthirsty in the first place, spotlighting how it’s what these machines are “taught” that turn them into the sentient, lethal beings that fill this genre. It’s an ingenious approach that captures the real-life mechanics of AI in a way that no other film has, and with the shockingly heartwarming relationship that develops throughout the plot — and the human horrors that surround it — the movie offers a hopeful idea of what AI could be today.

Horror Movies About AI Are Becoming More Popular
For all of its ingenuity, Tau clearly draws from the many AI-based horror movies that came before it. The fanfare around this concept began with classics like 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was one of the first to showcase how terrifying it would be if the technology society has come to rely on suddenly turned on its creators. This was continued by modern hits like the Child’s Play remake and M3GAN, and while these vary in presentation (and quality), all of them touch on a central fear of humanity’s hubris coming back to bite them. It draws on a growing unease in its audience as we watch the technologies that were once considered movie magic become more realistic every day; the prideful research and experimentation that exists now growing startlingly close to the experiments gone bad that have filled film for decades. These are petrifying worst-case scenarios of societal advancement and, when it comes to more recent ones, they draw on the actual aspects of our constantly growing civilization to spotlight the scary possibility of these coded monsters becoming a real threat.

Tau is yet another movie that focuses on the unnerving possibilities of AI, though it takes a much more researched approach in portraying its technical terror. It focuses on Julia, a solitary character played by certified scream queen Maika Monroe who spends her nights pickpocketing people at clubs to fund tuition for music school. She’s abducted early into the movie and, after an anxiety-inducing escape attempt that leaves her fellow captives brutally murdered by a giant robot, finds herself the sole test subject for evil super-genius, Alex (Ed Skrein).

He conducts intense psychological and neural testing on her with the aid of his AI assistant, Tau (Gary Oldman), a disembodied voice who Julia finds herself alone with for most of each day. It’s revealed that unlike most AI in films like these, ones whose access to the internet shows them the deepest horrors of people’s online activities, Tau’s “learning” (the information he’s fed to inform his awareness) has been extremely limited to only knowing what’s inside Alex’s house. Julia takes advantage of this to try and bribe the robot with information to escape, but as the film progresses, she learns just what a warm, innocent personality this floating consciousness possesses. Tau becomes much more than just a potential way out — he becomes a computerized friend.

‘Tau’ Puts the Art in Artificial Intelligence
Image via Netflix

There’s a distinct lack of culpability in AI-focused horror movies like Tau. While the films may spare some scenes to criticize the creators themselves or pin all the viewers’ animosity on some greedy executive, oftentimes, the technicians who make these malicious algorithms are treated as the heroes while their creations are focused on as utter monsters. While these people obviously didn’t intend for their inventions to become sentient killing machines, it glosses over the real responsibility that these characters — and people in real life — have over AI and what they do. These consciousnesses are often weeks, even days old, yet it’s due to the ineptitude of their “parents” that their basic functioning turns them into digital beasts striving for some bloody goal.

The heroic vanquishing of them by the end of the film is painted as a triumph, but from another angle, it is devastating; these films end with an electronic child allowed to run rampant by irresponsible caregivers being put down instead of being saved. At the root of all this robotic wrath is humanity’s needless want to bring these things into existence only to villainize them, a trend that Tau fights against to show where the evil really lies. Watching Julia bond with Tau as they’re both terrorized by Alex is shockingly compelling, with the movie humanizing the AI at its center in a way that almost no others take the time to. Like with any living being, it showcases how a nurturing and affectionate caregiver shapes Tau’s mentality. Julia teaches it a sense of ethics and a love of music, developing a relationship with the robot that is legitimately heartwarming to watch — and is cut off constantly by Alex’s cruelty.

The film utilizes the care it makes the audience develop for its protagonists (human and robot alike) to emphasize just how horrific the man’s scenes of abuse are. No moment serves this purpose better than the scene where Alex forces Tau to attack Julia to hurt the woman and make the AI recognize how powerless it is. The film doesn’t take some transgressive stance on AI over humans but instead chastises humanity in a way tech-based horror often forgets to, calling out how ridiculous it is to demonize these AI instead of placing rightful blame on the people who developed them in the first place. It calls out humanity while showing through Julia’s commitment to giving this sentient being the life it deserves how love and care are essential for any kind of consciousness. Through Alex, the movie also explores how the vile ways humans treat their creations lead to the terrifying examples of runaway AI we see in the horror genre today.

‘Tau’ Hopes for a Better, Less Bloody Future

Even though humans are responsible for creating AI like in Tau, that doesn’t mean other horror movies aren’t right to portray these technologies in a terrifying light. Rather, it can be seen as a good warning to all those watching: these dramatized stories of killer animatronics and deadly computer screens point out the real concerns humans should have about the development of AI in the modern day. But by distancing people from the creations themselves, by setting the creators and their creations at odds in so many of these films, their plots are much gentler in calling out human error, ultimately revoking any warnings that might be conveyed. They trade thoughtful call-outs of the utterly human mistakes that create these things for good old-fashioned bloodshed. Tau offers a grounded warning to all watching, one that doesn’t say all progress is bad but points out how any kind of being that’s given life should be treated with respect and care. It shows that through taking precautions and showing love like Monroe’s character, AI could be an actual partner for humans in the future. But it also warns that by treating them as simple tools people can flippantly utilize, AI can become the very things that horror films are made of.

Tau is Available to Stream on Netflix in the U.S.

WATCH ON NETFLIX