‘Humans in the Loop’ (2025) Netflix Movie Review - Aranya Sahay's Self-Sabotage

Humans in the Loop is, first and foremost, a movie of images — images that are soft, tender, and breathtaking. The camera captures the characters with such aching intimacy that their moods, their feelings, become tangible and alive. The surroundings, meanwhile, are framed with an eye for grandeur, for beauty — beauty that far from being ostentatious merges the characters' inner and outer lives. There's a scene in the film where Malti (Anushka Bhadar) takes her new friend, Dhaanu (Ridhima Singh), on a tour of the village. When they pass near Malti's home, our eyes are drawn to a long stretch of forest that looms before the girls like a giant cosmic being, commanding our complete attention. I watched Humans in the Loop on my laptop, yet the image of that forest was so vast and powerful that it felt as though I were seeing it on an IMAX screen. I shuddered in awe; I was overwhelmed by the camera's almost otherworldly effect. The same supernatural fervor suffuses the actors' faces, transforming every expression and gesture into a profound force of nature. Sonal Madhushankar and Ridhima Singh's quiet, defiant expressions deserve a shrine in the cinematic pantheon. I was utterly shocked to discover that Singh had never acted in a film or TV show. She and Madhushankar elevate the mother-daughter relationship to the heights of dramatic excellence through a performance that's rare even among experienced, professional actors. There is something about their eyes that draws you in, that deeply affects your senses. If I could put my finger on it or define it with clear, coherent words, I wouldn't call Madhushankar and Singh great actors (Bhadar, too, is fantastic in her part).
 

The point of such high praise is to underline that Humans in the Loop belongs to its cinematographers, Harshit Saini and Monica Tiwari, and its actors. They bring ambiguity, subtlety, and nuance to a film that gets constantly undermined by Aranya Sahay, the writer-director — or more accurately, Sahay the writer. This story about Nehma (Madhushankar), a divorced tribal woman who gets a job as an AI trainer, comes across as relatively transparent in its intent. The underlying message is commendable. Rather than pitting humans against machines, Sahay views the former as the progenitors of the latter. Artificial intelligence's strength—or its incompetence—depends on the data fed to the algorithm. Since that feeding is done by humans, a model's success ultimately rests on its handler. In this respect, every technologist becomes a parent, nourishing a creation shaped by their own design, their own desire. The relationship between humans and machines thus takes on the qualities of parent and child. Such a beautiful, wonderful thought, however, is spoiled by Sahay's literal-mindedness when he puts an actual AI baby on the screen and compares its first steps with those of Nehma's son (Kaif Khan). Even Nehma's realization of her biases is clearly and cleanly connected to the AI model's bias, as if Sahay doubts the audience's intelligence. 

When Alka (Gita Guha), Nehma's supervisor, generates images of "beautiful, Indian tribal women of Jharkhand" or when Dhaanu receives lessons about nature from both Malti and her mother, one can almost hear Sahay screaming his intentions from the corner. He might as well have held a big banner with his film's message for the entire 1 hour and 14 minutes. It's no wonder that what captures your imagination is the porcupine—who may or may not have played with young Nehma (Suniti Mahto)—or Dhaanu's accusation that her mother drugged her. But even these gnomic elements lose their power in a conventional story, complete with an ending that's both too neat and too predictable. Humans in the Loop suffers from obviousness. Its themes and text seem like traps for critics, inviting them to lap up its obviousness and feel clever about themselves. I think Sahay really respects all those women who train AI models and whose pictures appear on the screen at the end. This is why Humans in the Loop merely works as a tribute piece, just like how the director's first short film, Mirgi, simply works as a social message film. A talented filmmaker lies dormant within Sahay, waiting to emerge once he stops holding the audience's hand. At present, the writer-director resembles an untrained AI model — he needs richer data to evolve into a better, accomplished filmmaker.

Final Score- [6/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times