Love it or hate it, there's one thing computer now do extremely well—generating AI nightmare fuel. AI seems to excel at the terrifying and the grotesque, and this AI-generated 1950s-style TV commercial is pretty much peak AI horror. It was posted on the Meme Dream Machine YouTube, which provides this description:
This is an AI-generated 1950s TV commercial for a family theme park called Pooky Park, where customers are chased by giant, somewhat terrifying puppets.
Script: ChatGPT
Photos: Midjourney
Video: PikaLabs, Runway
I recently saw the same commercial posted on the Facebook page, "AI Generated Nonsense." A user named Adicus Ryan Garton provided this perfect description:
I feel like AI video really captures that liquid feel that dreams have. Where the background details only matter if you focus on them; otherwise, it's all slippery and weird and only a toothy grin away from a goddamn nightmare.
I absolutely love this three-minute horror gem. For me, it's reminiscent of the brilliant 2013 film Escape from Tomorrow, which was directed by Randy Moore. That film is a surrealist fantasy that follows Jim White (actor Ray Abramsohn), a newly-laid off, sexually frustrated father on a family trip to Walt Disney World, as he encounters the darker side of "The Happiest Place on Earth" and subsequently suffers a mental, and eventually, physical breakdown. Touted as a feat of guerilla filmmaking techniques, the film was shot almost entirely inside the gates of Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida and Disneyland in Anaheim, California, without the permission of The Walt Disney Company, a fact that has brought the film considerable media attention. (For anyone interested in a cultural studies analysis of the film focusing on institutionalized whiteness and the difficult knowledge of being, I wrote an article about it).
Enjoy "Pooky Park"—and if you like "Pooky Park," go watch Escape from Tomorrow! AI nightmare fuel is here to stay.
