Stream It Or Skip It: ‘TAU’ On Netflix, Where A Woman Tries To Escape A Smart House That Can Kill

What would happen if you managed to program your Alexa device to not only turn your lights on and off or lower your thermostat, but kill any intruders? That’s basically the premise of TAU, where the computer of the same name is voiced by Oscar winner Gary Oldman. Can Oldman’s presence up the creepy quotient of what looks like a pretty creepy movie?

TAU: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Julia (Maika Monroe) stalks around a bleak city in a slinky dress, lifting items from guys she seduces at clubs. She isn’t making enough off her marks, but she doesn’t want to work with anyone. She’s hopes to save to go to music school. She feeds wayward pigeons. Then, she’s suddenly snatched from her apartment and finds herself in the dungeon of a house, being tortured with brain stimulation that runs her through all her most painful memories.

She manages to spring her and the two other prisoners from their cell, but they find out quickly that the house is being protected by a large robot that has sharp hands. Needless to say, soon Julia is the only one left. She finds out that the person who owns the house is Alex (Ed Skrein), the CEO of a technology firm that’s creating the best AI solution ever made. Since she’s the only one left and the lab was destroyed during the escape attempt, Alex keeps her around to study Julia’s brain manually via tasks.

She also learns that the computer running the house is named TAU (voice of Gary Oldman), an early AI project of Alex’s that he purposely leaves disconnected from the outside world. She figures out that her path to escape is to teach TAU that there’s more to being sentient than just running Alex’s house and taking orders from him.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Take any kidnapping movie where the prisoner tries to get in the heads of his/her captors and cross it with the all-knowing computer HAL from 2001, add a soupcon of Bicentennial Man and AI, mix in a lot of wooden acting, and you get TAU.

Performance Worth Watching: Oldman, of course. Even though he’s just the voice of a flashing upside-down triangle with an eye in it, he gives a nuanced performance (at least more nuanced than his other two co-stars) as TAU learns about the world outside Alex’s house and comes to sympathize with her.

Memorable Dialogue: When Julia tells TAU that she does not have to obey her creator, she says “My creators did bad things to me to. Things that hurt me.” TAU replies, “But you still obey them? Because they created you?” Julia replies “No. They gave me life. But I did the rest. I created me. You understand? We grow up, and we become our own creators.” “For what purpose do we create ourselves?” asks TAU. “For each other,” she replies.

Single Best Shot: TAU lets Julia in to see the memories of their time together he’s gathered so far, and says his greeting line, “I am here,” and virtually reaches out to her with a hand he creates.

Sex and Skin: Besides Julia kissing her marks in the first scenes of the movie, and a scene where she clumsily tries to seduce Alex, there isn’t much.

Our Take: TAU is the feature directorial debut of Federico D’Alessandro, who worked in the art department of most of the Marvel films. It’s also the first feature written by Noga Landau of The Magicians. For those reasons, the look of the movie, aside from isolated scenes where things look greenscreened, is spot on. The creepy lighting, the design of TAU, the starkness of Alex’s house all indicate how deeply weird and isolated Alex is. The casting of Oldman as the voice of TAU was inspired.

Otherwise, though, TAU has the hallmarks of first-time filmmakers. Skrein tries to be menacing throughout the film but just comes off as pouting and mad (not angry… mad, the more childish version of angry). Monroe isn’t much better; she’s trying to convey that Julia is tough-minded and resourceful, but she shows it without much subtlety. Only when she starts interacting with TAU does her performance perk up and show some range, though it’s still a range that goes from A to E instead of A to B.

The story itself is disjointed; before Julia escapes her cell we think we’re going to get torture porn, with not a lot of dialogue, then it turns into a movie where a woman gives a computer reverse Stockholm Syndrome so it can help her escape. There’s a bit of introduction to give Julia and Alex backstories, but there isn’t enough to explain how she’s so much smarter than Alex’s other captors and even Alex and TAU.

The interactions between Julia and TAU salvage what starts out as a pretty rough film (they actually used the Black Dude Dies First trope!) but the film is predictable with no real tension to propel it along.

Our Call: SKIP IT. If you’re an Oldman fan, watch Darkest Hour again. This is not the place to get your fix.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company’s Co.Create and elsewhere.

Watch TAU on Netflix