The short film Xenotaph is the first sci-fi horror movie generated by AI. The surreal computer-animated creation directed by Starhand is now available to watch for free on the indie-horror streaming platform MoviVue.
The official description for Xenotaph reads: “A postapocalyptic fever dream about AI, created with AI, Xenotaph plumbs the depths of an inhuman future where synthetic flesh melts, ancient gods arise, and machines battle on a dead planet not so different from our own.”
Originally from the New York City area, Starhand is a Gen X filmmaker with a background in traditional filmmaking: documentaries, animation, live television, and screenwriting. With Xenotaph, Starhand used text-to-video AI software to generate short clips that he then stitched together to create a dreamlike experience open to interpretation by the viewer.
Using AI To Create a Visual Narrative
Ridley Scott adapted the seminal 1968 sci-fi novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? into Blade Runner. While there are no electric sheep in Xenotaph, the AI-generated movie does offer a peek behind the curtain at what AI might dream about if fed seeds of information.
“The AI is operating on a dream level and I’m a documentarian of that dream state,” says Starhand. “I would hope to get a certain outcome, but very often I would not. I tried to describe the scenes and the characters as best I could to achieve some consistency, which was not particularly easy. I sort of rely on the viewer to create their own consistency as they watch Xenotaph and to go along for the ride. They should understand that they’re not seeing a typical film. They will have to do a little bit of work to decipher the story, read the images, and find the through line.”
Xenotaph starts out in black and white with images of an ocean, strange creatures, and melting humanoid faces before transitioning to color and showing images of what look like cellular mutations as well as a flash of the classic video game Pong. Starhand realizes that a viewer can interpret the narrative in many different ways, but he is more concerned with creating a certain vibe that elicits an emotional and intellectual response.
“My text prompts read nothing like the images that you see in Xenotaph,” says Starhand. “I write my prompts more like abstract poetry or stream of consciousness.”
Starhand adds that since he made Xenotaph, the AI software has changed and the results from the exact same text prompts create video that is completely different.
“Xenotaph is impossible to make ever again, which I love about it but also makes me kind of sad,” says Starhand.
AI Can Approximate a Human Dream State
“AI is extremely close to our own dream state,” says Starhand. “Whether or not AI will ever ‘wake up’ is another question, right? But right now it can certainly dream and it can dream pretty close to the way that we dream.”
Starhand continues, “AI starts with noise — absolute chaos — and then finds order in that chaos based off the words that you give it. So if you look at the stages of a generation of an AI image or video, it just looks like a field of noise and then slowly finds order within that chaos based on the spell that you cast.”
Unlike alarmists, Starhand sees AI as a tool to help filmmakers and not something that poses an existential threat.
“There is nothing wrong with questioning AI and being really wary, judicious, and cautious about how we deploy this stuff,” says Starhand. “I just don’t get the [negative] reaction to the piece of art itself.”
Starhand continues, “The very last thing that happens in Xenotaph is a moment of high optimism for me, so I’m not pessimistic about AI. I don’t think it’s going to kill us all, but I’d like to explore horror imagery and go into the darker places that a story will take you.”
Why the Indie Horror Revolution Is Growing
Xenotaph is available to watch on MoviVue, a highly curated streaming platform founded by actor Jim Thalman that invites indie filmmakers and viewers to “join the horror revolution.”
“What I love about good horror films is that they get away with talking about things like good and evil in a way other genres really can’t,” says Starhand. “We have the films of Dario Argento and Mario Bava that are high style and all feel like a critique of modernism.”
Starhand continues, “I have an operating theory that almost every film that has been made in the last 20 years has been a horror movie. If you read it right, I think that’s just the psychological condition of the 21st century.”
Starhand says that his next movie will be a feature-length sci-fi horror film that will use live footage as a base level for AI augmentation.
“I haven’t seen any [full-length, AI-generated] features yet, but somebody’s gonna release a feature in the next couple of minutes and it’s going to be compelling,” says Starhand. “It’s going to be shocking, riveting, exciting, new, and original, and it’s going to be good. Having a platform such as MoviVue that’s open to it is bold and a real credit to them.”
