Tau is a reminder that Netflix’s movie game still has some bugs to fix. The streaming giant has figured out the romcom and high school movie, that’s for sure. They now should spend some time finding better sci-fi scripts, because Tau’s is pasted together from better films.
See if you recognize anything from Tau’s description. A megalomaniac billionaire (Ed Skrein) is developing new exciting genetic research (Jurassic Park). In order to conduct testing, he uses a forgotten member of society, Julia (Maika Monroe), by inserting a chip into her brain to finish the last round of testing (Upgrade). Helping keep Julia in the house and conduct the testing is Tau, a machine with a red eye (2001: A Space Odyssey, WALL-E) that’s artificially intelligent (voice of Gary Oldman). You’ll be shocked to hear that Alex, the billionaire, is cruel to his AI, which Julia sees, and which she starts to develop a relationship with (Her). And if Julia plays her cards right, she might convince Tau to set her free…
As you can see, Tau is taking pieces from some great to legendary science fiction and trying to repurpose them into something new. This is not a bad thing: Jurassic Park is a combination of Westworld and Jaws. What Tau doesn’t do that those other better films do is either explore their themes deeply, or spin the story to make something different. Tau just rotates between the stuff above, and adds a trapped in the house element, but just stays surface level. What? Tau and Julia started to connect over music? Cool. Let’s switch gears to figure out how maniacal Alex really is. What? He uses unloved people unmercifully? Shocker! And what do we learn? Tau has the capability for empathy, Alex is evil, and Julia is more resourceful despite her loner status. There’s nothing new to be gleaned from artificial intelligence, genetic research, or human machine relationships.
This half-assed story also applies to the peripheral elements of the story. Clearly there wasn’t much of a budget, as the movie takes place 90% in Alex’s house. Normally I can forgive a shot or two of effects that aren’t great, but the robots in this movie reminded me of stop motion animation used well before CGI was used for effects. Maybe the director’s intention was to make it look artificial, but it’s not clear from the story if this cheesiness is intentional…not a good sign. Ed Skrein and Gary Oldman must have gotten killer Netflix money to do this movie, because they were clearly dreaming about it when they should have been acting. Oldman just does the monotone robot voice, giving no real performance other than robotic repetition. Ed Skrein’s direction was clearly to be effusive, sinister, and cold. At no point do we think he’s anything other than nefarious. Maika Monroe is fine I guess, she’s at least trying and committing.
2 Steps Forward, 1 Step Back. That’s Netflix’s movie releases currently. The minute they make some progress, they release something forgettable like Tau. At least Tau is more forgivable since the creators are first time writers and directors. Their previous efforts were clearly studio knockoffs or passion projects for sketchy directors. At least this feels like a Netflix release, so the studio has more of an identity for me know. Hopefully that identity grows into something more credible as they search for more credible scripts.