I Sat Through District 9’s Director’s Awful AI

In a surprising move that has sent ripples through the film community, Neill Blomkamp—renowned for his visionary works such as District 9, Elysium, and the Gran Turismo series—has unveiled a brand‑new short film entirely crafted with generative AI technology.

Dubbed NIGHTBORNE, this project represents the director’s inaugural full‑scale experiment in AI‑driven storytelling, produced using the cutting‑edge Seedance 2.0 platform.

After years of tinkering with artificial intelligence, Blomkamp is now ready to push the envelope further, launching a 13‑minute proof‑of‑concept that serves as the opening chapter of a potential feature‑length venture.

The short spans just 13 minutes, yet it boasts the involvement of professional concept artists and incorporates the facial likenesses and vocal performances of 32 real individuals, all while remaining entirely detached from the District 9 universe.

Having watched the film in its entirety, I can attest that it offers little incentive for viewers. The narrative feels hollow, and the reliance on robotic generation renders the experience creatively flat and, frankly, tedious.

I’m serious. Skipping this film means you’re missing out on nothing—no sharp humor, no standout performances, no surprising twists, no cultural touchstones. In fact, you’ve already encountered a very similar story elsewhere. The narrative feels as if it was churned out by an AI: a vague, generic sci‑fi/military premise with no spark of originality.

The film adopts a shaky documentary aesthetic for reasons that elude me. It follows a female soldier on a U.S. mission in Syria whose helicopter crashes; she appears to survive until a cadre of medical personnel implants a device that transforms her into a lethal zombie. They then compel her to battle other undead soldiers, ostensibly to evaluate and train them for combat. The narrative aims to tug at our sympathies by hinting at her lingering memories of a husband and child, and by depicting her spouse’s furious pleas to military officials for answers. If the story had continued, it might have explored whether she retained her humanity. Instead, Nightborne offers nothing meaningful about the human condition, and I doubt it would have achieved that even with more time.

I’m lampooning the storyline, which purports to draw from Peter Watts’s novel Echopraxia. I apologize if I inadvertently disparage the book without having read it; perhaps it’s a worthy read. Yet, after skimming the novel’s synopsis, I can’t discern any connection between the short film and the source material.

While the film largely feels flat, a few moments attempt to stir emotion—most notably when the husband confronts the soldiers. That scene escalates from zero to eleven almost instantly, yet it serves no purpose, as the husband never reappears beyond a flashback.

The soundtrack occasionally falls into the realm of absurdity. Ominous organ motifs recur at several points, perhaps because the AI—or whoever programmed it—assumes organs are the default sound for zombies, even when the creatures are army‑designed cyborgs. I doubt this was a deliberate artistic statement; if so, it misses the mark.

Determining whether these flaws stem from the AI nature of the film or simply from a misguided concept is difficult, but one unmistakable sign of AI involvement is the visual inconsistency. At a casual glance, the movie appears conventional, yet a closer inspection of background details reveals a host of oddities: cars moving in erratic patterns, windows with strange shapes, blood stains that shift or vanish. I could spend hours cataloguing every glitch, but here’s a single example of nonsensical props.

If you let your mind drift and consume the piece without scrutiny, it may pass as an ordinary short film. Yet it ultimately feels empty. It does not showcase the potential of generative AI. A director using real actors and sets can produce a mediocre film that still reflects a human vision, but employing a destructive plagiarism machine to create dull content seems pointless. Why bother?

While some futurists predict that artificial intelligence will one day craft films indistinguishable from those directed, written, and shot by humans—perhaps even delivering stories that are compelling, humorous, or artistically valuable—I remain convinced that embracing AI‑generated cinema is a misguided path. It feels lazy, potentially damaging, and fundamentally inhuman. In the limited time I have on this planet, I want to experience the full spectrum of human storytelling, from the brilliant to the mediocre, the thrilling to the dull. I regret spending my attention on the lifeless, zombie‑like narrative of Blomkamp’s Nightborne, and I urge others to avoid it: there’s nothing truly authentic to be found there.