'Humans in the Loop' Review: A Poetic Study of Work, Identity, and AI in a Rapidly Changing World
- Elliot Lines
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
By Elliot Lines - November 14, 2025
Humans in the Loop is one of those quietly absorbing films that sneaks up on you. It opens in stillness—fields, forest, routine—and then slowly draws you into a world where tradition, technology, and personal upheaval begin to overlap in oddly hypnotic ways. It’s a film that never raises its voice, yet somehow says plenty.
What is 'Humans in the Loop' about?
At its centre is Nehma, an Adivasi woman who returns to her village after leaving her marriage, bringing her children into a landscape that feels both familiar and newly foreign. To support them, she takes a job as a data labeller—one of the many unseen workers who train the AI systems shaping the modern world. The film follows her as she navigates old wounds, shifting family dynamics, and the strange intimacy of a job where you spend your days interpreting other people’s realities frame by frame.
What stands out instantly is the film’s tone. It’s minimalist, quiet, and poetic, but never drifts into abstraction. The contrast between Nehma’s natural surroundings and the sterile glow of her workstation provides a compelling visual tension; the forest feels alive, while the machines feel hungry. The film uses that contrast sparingly but effectively, letting atmosphere do the heavy lifting rather than exposition. Its pacing, brisk but thoughtful, mirrors Nehma’s own internal recalibration.
Where Culture and Code Collide
Thematically, the film is at its strongest when exploring the gap between the worlds Nehma inhabits—the cultural identity she’s inherited and the digital ecosystem she’s now feeding. The AI she helps shape doesn’t understand her language, her community, or her environment; in fact, the more she works, the more she questions what parts of the world get to be “teachable” to machines. While the film doesn't push these ideas into heavy-handed messaging, it lets them simmer beneath the daily grind of her work, forming an undercurrent of unease that grows scene by scene.
The performances are grounded and intimate, especially from the lead. Nehma is played with an understated strength—quiet resolve mixed with the vulnerable uncertainty of someone rebuilding their life from the ground up. Her interactions with her children provide some of the film’s warmest and most affecting moments, grounding the more conceptual elements in lived-in humanity. Even the smallest gestures—hesitation before logging into the system, a protective glance at her daughter, a pause in the woods—carry weight.
If there’s one minor drawback, it’s that the film intentionally keeps conflict soft, almost peripheral. Some viewers may wish for a more forceful escalation or sharper dramatic turns. But its restraint feels deliberate: this is a film more interested in reflection than confrontation, in the quiet frictions of modern life rather than its explosions.
A Subtle and Resonant Character Study
In conclusion, Humans in the Loop is a thoughtful, beautifully restrained character study that uses the language of technology to explore something far more personal. It’s a film about work, identity, and the invisible threads connecting people to systems far bigger than themselves. Subtle, intimate, and thematically rich, it lingers long after the credits roll.
'Humans in the Loop' is streaming now on Netflix in the US.
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