A trailer – created by AI – for a non-existent “Heidi” movie creeped the hell out of me. Call it “nightmare fuel,” or whatever else it’s been described as, but what did I just watch?
Heidi is a children’s story about a five-year-old girl and her grandfather who live in the Alps. This AI-generated trailer is not that. It’s now some kind of manic Lynchian nightmare born out of a deep dark abyss. It also feels absolutely soulless: coldly detached from any kind of humanity.
The film was posted on YouTube channel Karpi, alongside the word #cursed, and this explanation: “I’ve asked an AI to generate a trailer for a HEIDI movie and now I can never sleep again.” Truth be told, Karpi does admit that he color graded the the AI-generated footage, edited it and added music. The images speak for themselves: