Director Madeleine Sackler Rotzler uses artificial intelligence as a creative backdrop for her latest film, O Horizon, from Variance Films. The film poses an interesting question: If you could speak to a departed loved one again, would you? I know, for me, there are three men I would love to speak with again, just to see one more time, just to share where I am in life now. That alone gives the film an emotional doorway worth walking through.
Grief does not come with one set of instructions. Every culture has customs, traditions, and rituals, but loss still finds a way to become deeply personal. In the digital age, that process has grown even more complicated. Social media pages remain frozen in time, phone numbers stay saved long after the calls stop, and a random notification can pull a memory back to the surface without warning.
Maria Bakalova stars as Abby, a neuroscientist still mourning the death of her father, Warren, played by David Strathairn. Several months after his passing, Abby discovers a business that creates digital avatars of lost loved ones. She decides to create one of her father, and at first, the experience brings comfort. She can hear his voice, speak to his likeness, and briefly quiet the ache of absence. But the longer Abby relies on this version of Warren, the more the line between memory, reality, and emotional dependence blurs.
Bakalova is the film’s strongest asset. She plays Abby as both accomplished and emotionally fragile, a woman who can command a room professionally but still unravel when confronted with the emptiness her father left behind. Strathairn brings warmth and melancholy to Warren, giving the film a believable emotional pull even when the screenplay begins to wobble.
The issue with “O Horizon” is not its ambition. The film raises timely questions about grief, technology, memory, and the growing role of artificial intelligence in deeply human spaces. The problem is that it does not always dig as deeply as those questions require. By making Abby a neuroscientist and prominently featuring technology in the story, the film invites concerns about privacy, ethics, data, and emotional exploitation. Yet too often, those issues are brushed aside in favor of broader philosophical reflection.
That would be easier to accept if the emotional journey always landed with force. Instead, “O Horizon” sometimes feels caught between the story it wants to tell and the one it keeps avoiding. The performances, especially Bakalova’s, give the film real feeling, but the script never fully matches their depth.
“O Horizon” is thoughtful, well-intentioned, and often moving, but its most fascinating ideas remain just out of reach. It understands that grief cannot be hacked, downloaded, or programmed away. It just needed to trust that truth a little more.
Grade: B-
“O Horizon” opens in NEW YORK JUNE 12, 2026 | LOS ANGELES JUNE 19 , 2026
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