Rating (2 out of 5)

After being thoroughly pissed at How It Ends, I was brave enough to try Tau. I am either an eternal optimist or a fool, and I am beginning to think it is the latter.

Tau is about a computer programmer who kidnaps people, inserts a device at the base of their neck in order to develop a new artificial intelligence (AI). He kidnaps people who occupy the bottom of society and won’t be missed. Our heroine was a pick pocket at nightclubs.

She is kidnapped, and wakes up with a mouth guard/gag and she is on an operating chair. Some guy turns on a machine, and images are flashed on the screen (which allude to a rough childhood) and she passes out. She then wakes up in a prison, where she meets 2 other people with the same masks and tied up.

Through her street smarts she is able to steal some scissors and blow up the lab by breaking a gas line. Again, it was one of those items you had to let go for the sake of the movie. Only she is smart enough to do this, the kidnapper didn’t see the missing scissors, she was able to hook the line, and she was able to create a spark, and create an explosion where she doesn’t die.

So they escape from their cell to the house. Turns out the house is AI, and has a metal robot, that kills the other two kidnappees. We quickly find out that the programmer/kidnapper is the Steve Jobs of his time, and is on a deadline to create an new AI program. He was using the peoples minds to create that algorithm.

He needs her, but since his lab blew up, he can’t get the data by hooking her up to the equipment, he needs her to do puzzles. Amazingly our gal is quite smart and her amygdala is larger than average due to early childhood trauma. If she finishes the puzzle he can solve his problem.

Of course, our we gal, Julia, is left at home all day and works with Tau, the AI system on the puzzles. She slowly starts talking to Tau, and teaching Tau about the world. Turns out that Tau isn’t hooked to the internet or anything to the outside world, because when too much information is given, Tau can glitch.

Tau has little mini cleaning robots, that keep the house perfect. Our kidnapper has a thing about finger prints apparently. So here is where it gets stupid. When Tau messes up, our programmer, Alex, uses a device to punish Tau. We are led to believe it is painful, and that punishment is erasing memories from Tau.

That is when it started getting stupid, and it started losing me. But ever the optimist (fool), I stayed with it.

She keeps teaching Tau, and makes a deal to see if she can get an escape route. Well in her escape, Alex starts torturing Tau, and she comes back to save Tau. Damage done, Alex has erased 5 days of memories. Alex has had enough, he takes Julie to the operating table, and is going to remove the device and end her life.

But the old Tau is still alive in a drone. Now really, the drone is a fully functional computer, or just a microchip with set functions to take commands from Tau. Apparently it was a fully functional computer capable of holding an AI like Tau. Now you are really starting to lose me.

With Tau’s help she is able to escape Alex’s clutches, saw off his hand and start her escape. She needs the hands to get through the wall panels. Best part is the wall panels need a warm hand. She escapes to the upstairs, where Alex for some reason programmed a self destruct, that apparently didn’t have a double check for him being on premises, and she initiates the self destruct.

Alex is killed by a ceiling (his whole house is concrete), and you aren’t going to believe this, Julia escapes the house with the drone in her pocket with Tau.

All of it was just to convenient to move the plot along. She is the only smart one, he didn’t have a backup of his equipment, Tau’s program fits into a tiny drone, only Julia survives the self destruct protocol, oh, and we can torture robots.