This Forgotten A.I. Thriller Starring Maria Monroe Is Now Streaming on Netflix
So, you say you’re a Maika Monroe fan. You’ve seen It Follows and The Guest and Longlegs and Significant Other, and Watcher. Nice work. But have you seen (or even heard of) the AI thriller Tau that she toplined in 2018? I’ll level with you. If you haven’t seen it, you’re not alone. I hadn’t heard of the film until I stumbled across it while endlessly scrolling the Netflix catalog. Now, I’m mighty curious about it because I am a big fan of Monroe. However, taking a look at the flick’s Rotten Tomatoes page has tempered my expectations quite a bit. The critical response to the film has not been particularly positive.
The film’s Rotten Tomatoes critical approval score sits at just 30% with only 10 reviews. The PopcornMeter (previously the audience score) is only slightly more favorable at 50%. Some of the critics lambast Gary Oldman for phoning in his performance as the titular character, and others lament a lack of originality.
The setup for this Maika Monroe-led chiller goes like this:
A woman trapped inside a sadistic genius’s smart house must somehow get past the advanced artificial intelligence guarding her.
If you’re a die-hard Maika Monroe fan and you’re not put off by the less-than-favorable critical response to the flick, you can make your way over to Netflix and check it out now. The picture is a Netflix original, so it’s likely to hang around for a while. However, Mike Flanagan’s Hush also bore that same distinction at one point. And we all know how that ended.
Federico D’Alessandro helmed Tau from a screenplay by Noga Landau. The film marks D’Alessandro’s feature film directorial debut, and he hasn’t directed another project since. Tau debuted on the Netflix platform in 2018. Landau is best known for creating the Nancy Drew series reboot for The CW network.
The picture features a small core cast, which makes sense as it’s billed as a self-contained thriller. In addition to Monroe and Oldman, the film stars Ed Skrein, Fiston Barek, Ivana Zivković, and Sharon D. Clarke.
That is just about everything that we have for you, for the time being, dear reader. Be sure to keep an eye out for more updates on which films starring your favorite genre cinema regulars are available to stream and where to find them. You can find me on Threads @FunWithHorror.
Categorized:News
