Kyle Connor and Paul 'Budgie' Griffiths are travelling around the world looking for sun, fun and adventure. They make their way to the Cook Islands and Kyle has designed and had inked on him a Maori-style tattoo. After making their way to the beautiful South Pacific island of Manutaki his marking soon causes some unexpected reactions from the locals.
Tatau follows Kyle and Budgie, two twenty-something friends from London that set off to travel the world. Ahead of the journey, Kyle gets a Maori-style tattoo to celebrate their eventual destination: the Cook Islands.
When snorkeling in a lagoon, Kyle finds the dead body of a local girl, Aumea, tied up underwater. Returning to the lagoon with the police, Kyle finds her inactive person has disappeared. But Kyle knows what he saw. Desperate to uncover what happened, Kyle and Budgie find themselves sucked deeper and deeper into a world of Maori myths, symbols, and hallucinatory visions... until finally the full meaning of Kyle's tattoo is revealed.