O Horizon Review: Lows and Highs of AI

O Horizon will likely raise more eyebrows over its director than its polite and unambitious takedown of emotional dependence on tech. 

That’s how Abby (Maria Bakalova, of The Apprentice) is able to call her dad, who died a few months before. She’s a grieving neuroscientist studying the brain activity of Dory, a monkey. Dory is given food, cuddly toys, and played sounds of the rainforest in order to see how she reacts. Since Abby’s dad Warren (David Strathairn, of The Luckiest Man in America) died, she’s cut things off with her partner Evan (Maggie Grace, of Breaking Dawn: Part 1) and turns down invitations from her colleagues asking her to dinner. Lifelessly, she flits between her chic New York apartment and the lab. 

So when she’s given a chance to talk to her dad again via Seeking A Friend, she’s hesitant but willing. Before long, she’s falling asleep on the couch to the sound of his voice as he rambles on, dad-like, about how he met her mom (Paulina Porizkova). Strathairn’s voice has the quality of a comfort blanket, and it’s put to good use as you tussle with the human warmth of his tone coming from artificial intelligence software. Like Dory reacting to a soothing stimulus, Abby soaks in the familiar facsimile of her father. 

The film is directed by Madeline Rotzler, who’s better known by her birthname, Madeleine Sackler. Artnet reports that a meeting was held on set ahead of filming to address the director’s background. The Sackler family name has become synonymous with the opioid crisis in America, for which they claim no responsibility. Their company, Purdue Pharma, pled guilty in 2020 to criminal charges over its marketing of Oxycontin. 

The director denies O Horizon is autobiographical. But it is fair to say Warren is seen through the rose-tinted glasses of an adoring daughter and the effects of Seeking A Friend provide a numbing high. Abby’s joie de vivre returns as she reconnects with her ‘dad’, whose recognisable quirks – like calling Abby’s new boyfriend (Avi Nash) out of the blue to size him up – simulate the living, breathing thing. Meanwhile, at the lab, when Dory is tricked into thinking she’s received a stimulus, her brain is shown to buzz with activity. Moments later, realising she’s been duped, the visual imaging map turns depressingly dark. The dopamine hit is fleeting.

Had Sackler made O Horizon about her father, it would have explained the film’s blinkers. It’s no fault of Bakalova, whose body language brilliantly reverts her 30-year-old character to a little girl missing her dad, but Abby is nothing but a daughter. She has no hobbies, motivations, interiority other than her grief. Chasing an easy fix to a devastating loss is, frankly, crass from someone with the director’s surname.

Yet somewhere in here is a point, albeit a familiar one that’s uninterestingly told, about the hollow artificialness of artificial intelligence, technology one might think of as the answer to their problems. But, as depicted, it only isolates its dependents further from the world around them. A lot like Oxycontin. 

O Horizon will be released in theatres in New York on June 12, 2026 and in Los Angeles on June 19.