Review: Dream On / Dream Off is soulless AI slop, not even worthy of being called a movie

What a difference a day makes...

Yesterday, I was on here singing the praises of Dalibor Barić's truly singular All Operators are Currently Unavailable, one of the year's most strikingly original movies. And a movie where you can feel that there is a human behind it, shaping its strangeness into shapes that mean something, even if that meaning isn't always readily apparent. There are sort of phantom fingerprints on it. You can tell it is something that was made, designed, thought up and brought to life.

Not so with Barić's other offering this year, Dream On / Dream Off, which honestly doesn't even deserve to be reviewed, or to even be thought of as a film. The only reason I'm bothering is because Barić sent it over to me along with All Operators... when I reached out to request a screener of the latter. And, they're both being released in theaters next month. Ostensibly, this movie will be considered animation. But is it, really? Does AI slop deserve to be considered animation?

What is the opposite of something washing over you? Because that's how it feels to sit through this garbage. It feels like a sandstorm made of glass shards, an assault on the eyes, an affront to the soul. I honestly couldn't believe what I saw seeing. How could the filmmaker behind such daring and brilliant works lower himself to this level, to use a bunch of AI programs to make a movie that is the single worst thing I've ever seen? It's depressing, pathetic, disgusting.

Within moments, I realized what I was seeing, and I kept hoping that it would break, stop, shift to something else. I wanted the film to somehow be a commentary on AI, on our careless use of it, on the artistic hollowness of it. But that never came. And that becomes clear pretty quickly.

Once I realized what I was watching, that was it. When you see AI, you just can't stay attached to it. There's nothing to hold onto, no meaning, no texture, no resonance. I completely detached from the film. When the images in a movie -- film is first and foremost a visual art -- are so meaningless, how can a filmmaker expect viewers to even care about any other element? Especially when everything else was also "aided" by AI?

In fact, the only part of Dream On / Dream Off I found at all interesting was the end credits, where all of the various programs that Barić used are listed as though they're his co-creators, and not the limp tools of a loser with nothing to say. You find out what programs he used to craft the music, to assist with the editing, to render the "synthetic" actors (I'm actually throwing up). One of the cards during the end credits reads "This film was created with the assistance of artificial intelligence as integral instruments of visual, sonic, and narrative composition. All creative direction, text, and conceptual frameworks are original works by the filmmaker." Whatever you have to tell yourself to sleep at night.

Listen, I know that it feels like AI is an inevitability, that it's going to worm its way into every aspect of our lives and become the arbiter of the world we live in. But I just don't buy it. At some point, the bubble will burst, people will realize how stupid it is, and it can crawl back into the shadows and finally settle into places where it can be of some use. But there is not, never has been, and never will be a place for this generative AI bullshit in our art. And shame on any filmmaker who plays with it, uses it to "assist" their creative process, or -- I can't believe I have to even say this -- creates an entire hour-fucking-long movie out of it.

Dream On / Dream Off is the worst thing I've ever seen. I hope no one goes to see it in theaters. I hope I'm the only person who ever lays eyes on it. I hope anyone who's unfortunate enough to buy a ticket promptly demands a refund. There's no room for shit like this in our world. And it does not deserve to be called animation.