There is no one way to grieve. There are certainly customs and traditions within communities and cultures, but there’s no single way in which each person is meant to process loss. With the digital age, though, the manner in which people experience and translate that grief is very different than before as once active social media accounts lie dormant, phone numbers sit on contact lists unused, and memories are jumpstarted anew with each notification ping. The conflict between analog processes in a digital world are at the heart of filmmaker Madeleine Sackler Rotzler’s (It’s a Hard Truth Ain’t It) latest project, O Horizon, having its world premiere during Santa Barbara International Film Festival 2025. Uninterested in exploring the various ethical quandaries related to artificial intelligence (A.I.), Rotzler opts, instead, to ask philosophical questions about the natural lifecycle butting against humanity’s existence within the digital realm, often times failing to satisfy its own curiosity by ignoring what matters in the quest.
It’s been several months since the death of her father and neuroscientist Abby (Maria Bakalova) continues to struggle to reconcile the lack of his presence in her life. One day, during her commute home, she’s inspired to stop into a shop that offers clients an A.I.-driven avatar of anyone they want and she takes them up on it, creating one of her late father, Warren David (David Strathairn). At first, being able to chat with this facsimile of her father is a salve, but, with time, the lines between reality and truth blur until Abby must decide what matters: the past or the future.
Right off the bat, O Horizon does not articulate any position on A.I.; rather, A.I. just exists within the world of Rotzler’s creation. Given how science fiction has a lofty and long history with technology being more advanced, one can understand the implication of using it in a narrative intended to explore what grieving looks like when death is only the conclusion of the corporeal existence as the likeness is transferred into a digital space. Unlike stories like Blade Runner 2049 (2017) with the Joi A.I. (portrayed by Ana de Armas) which remain solidly in fiction (for now), there are real companies like the one Abby makes use of in existence at this very moment. Some are text-based, like Project December; others utilize virtual reality (VR), like Vive Studios; though the one most like the one featured in O Horizon is HereAfter.ai, which uses a virtual biographer to construct an interactive A.I. of anyone you want. (There’s a fascinating documentary about this growing business titled Eternal You from Film Movement that’s worth seeking out to get a sense of just where A.I. is going.) Rotzler finds herself, intentionally or otherwise, presenting a story that’s far more active science than fiction, generating poignancy in the process. Within the framework of the film, the natural cycle is birth, death, and decomposition (which then provides nutrients for new life), resulting in the inclusion of A.I. as a disruption to that cycle. A question forms asking what it means when the social bond is broken and support systems fail because, rather than utilizing existing people, someone refuses to let go because they can create a perception of a continued bond through a digital avatar? This is where O Horizon is powerful, where Bakalova (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm; Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3) shines, giving a performance that has the actor presenting Abby as a 30-year-old accomplished woman in one moment and a devastated, vulnerable daddy’s girl in another as Abby tries to marry what is against what could be. Having Abby be a neuroscientist in the final stages of a grand project establishes her skill, her intelligence, and her drive, while setting up her instinct to go to the digital realm for solace instead of the physical one. Thus, Rotzler’s script requires Abby to, as the kids say, “touch grass” to get a different perspective. This journey results in fascinating questions regarding what we as a members of society need vs. want, the shortcomings of an all-digital existence, and the denying of the natural parts of ourselves and nature as a whole. The trick is that while these things are interesting, the road the get there is paved on a digital pathway that Rotzler doesn’t seem as well-equipped to construct, let alone navigate.
L-R: Maria Bakalova as Abby and David Strathairn as Warren in O HORIZON. Photo courtesy of Santa Barbara Film Festival.
It’s one thing to use A.I. as just one piece of a narrative, a MacGuffin if you will, that’s a small portion of a larger concept. If that had been the case here, there’d be no reason to give it much mind. However, Rotzler purposefully choose to make Abby a neuroscientist and opted to use A.I. as the means for artificial communication with her father. Doing so puts the use of A.I. front and center, requiring some element of litigation. Instead, though the integration of A.I. into literally everything is a complex issue occurring in the real world, the script doesn’t address any of the problems — not the environmental concerns, not privacy issues, not the ethical breaches — that surround the use of A.I.. The film is not specifically *about* A.I., yet it bounces right over what this world thinks of A.I. and presumes that any John, Dick, and Harry is going to be immediately ethical with your private information. So, while Adam Pally’s Seeking A Friend Store owner Sam is charming and approachable, there’s no particular reason to actual trust him with the information Abby possesses regarding her father, especially when the dataset he uses is primarily stolen (his backstory involves Catherine Zeta-Zones and Entrapment (1999) as the inspiration for his company). This is something that a technologist or an ethicist might immediately flag as problematic, but not an author seeking to juxtapose analog and digital existence.
There’s also the fact that, while Bakalova is, again, excellent in the film, she and Strathairn (Nomadland; Sneakers) carrying the film almost entirely on their backs, Rotzler can’t decide if Abby is the expert she’s meant to be. The audience is introduced to her at work, gathering data with their test specimen, a monkey named Dorey (a name which feels like a reference to a certain blue tang dealing with short-term memory issues). Bakalova presents Abby as totally in control in this element, a strong contrast against her private life which has been in disarray now for several months. So, when Abby meets Sam, the need for exposition upstages the presumption that she would already know much of what he says. As a neuroscientist working on developing A.I./augmented reality technology to give users a sensation (described in-narrative as “experience”) of being somewhere, doing something that they are not (for medical and psychology needs), she would likely be familiar with the kind of work app creator Sam is doing. Different technology fields, but the overlap should be similar enough that we, the audience, shouldn’t see Abby as being mansplained to during an exposition dump. One can go with the flow as it relates to Abby’s Siri-like A.I. assistant dropping her an intrusive ad, the worst kind of digital pollution, which serves as the catalyst for going to Seeking A Friend Store and even the very casual way that people use augmented reality glasses like Ray-Ban Meta or Google Glass in designated zones. This is very much a digital-centric society that has come to terms, somewhat, with the integration of digital into analog spaces; yet, the film, in its totality, struggles to maintain any sense that Abby should be as lost with the tech as she is beyond the emotional tether created by her grief.
Right now, at this very moment, someone is using artificial intelligence (A.I.) to complete a task a human can do; this could be writing an email, doing research, or crafting a video — all through the combination of a few keystrokes and keywords. But where did the dataset come from which serves as the foundation for the A.I. software? Which natural resources are permanently gone because someone wanted “inspiration” instead of either doing the work to obtain said inspiration or hiring someone to do it for them? Using A.I. comes at a steep cost, not just environmentally or monetarily (though this are massive elements that make the use of A.I. currently unethical), but personally. What are the parts of ourselves that we give up when we rely on digital systems to do very human things like artistic creation, emotional support, or, in the case of O Horizon, processing grief. Despite what the tech industry would have humanity believe, there’s no shortcut to mental health as it relates to grief, there’s only existing in the world and doing the work to make it and yourself better. Sometimes that means that grief stays with you for a while, but it also means that you should become more accustomed with it in time — something which the always-on, always-connected nature of digital living does not offer time for through its innate feedback loop. It’s because of this that, while seemingly well-intention, Rotzler’s film presents ideas supported by pathos-filled performances and perfectly-timed musical tracks that give all the appearance of definition without the depth that gives any of it meaning.
Screening during Santa Barbara Film Festival 2025.
For more information, head to the official Madeleine Rotzler website.
Final Score: 2 out of 5.
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Categories: In Theaters, Reviews
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