A hand holds a phone displaying screenshots from the animated Chinese film “Niu Lai” in front of a collection of fan remixes. The low-budget movie became a viral box office phenomenon after its extremely low production quality drew attention from cinemagoers.
“Niu Lai” was pummeled by critics as one of the worst animated films ever made, an amateurish “disaster-level” micro-budget production that sold fewer than 300 tickets in its first 10 days of release.
But then the unexpected happened. The children’s movie, told from the viewpoint of a calf learning to walk and made by a 34-year-old landscape artist and his mother, has suddenly become a box-office sensation in China, pulling in nearly $3 million since Saturday, Aug. 15.
Even a pair of unsanctioned San Francisco screenings have sold out, with dozens of people on a waiting list eagerly seeking access to the movie.
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The phenomenon is being fueled by clips and screenshots of the odd-looking film posted to social media. At first, commenters trashed its “ugly” and “eerie” look. Now it has become a cause célèbre among Gen Z, which is celebrating its awkward, handmade aesthetic as an authentic counterpoint to AI-driven slop.
“It’s become a kind of performance art, where everyone participates,” San Francisco filmmaker Yifan Gu told the Chronicle. “It’s a story about a mother-son relationship, and it’s made by two people who are also a mother and a son. You can feel the connection between this film and the real relationship between the mother and the son. People feel touched, actually.”
That’s why Gu is hosting two screenings of the film at Unbound Books and Coffee in San Francisco’s Chinatown.
He admits the copy he has was pirated and posted to social media, but he vows for every $10 ticket he sells, he will buy a ticket online for the movie at a Chinese theater, thus putting money in the filmmakers’ pockets.
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“Niu Lai,” which translates as “The Bull Is Coming,” is directed by Xin Yumeng. His mother, Sun Lifang, produced the movie and wrote the score. Together, they performed the voices of all the characters.
A hand-drawn poster promoting the Chinese animated film “Niu Lai” is on display next to other movie posters at a cinema in Beijing.
They worked on the project for five years using home computers.
“I think a lot of people are supporting this movie because of the sentiment that AI generated (content) is overwhelming,” said Unbound manager Lala Huo. “People are voting with their money on this extremely human-made piece.”
“Niu Lai” seems destined to belong to the same tradition as Ed Wood’s “Plan 9 From Outer Space” (1957) and Tommy Wiseau’s “The Room” (2003), both of which have been called one of the worst movies ever made but have been embraced by passionate cult fan bases.
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“You may regret for 80 minutes if you watch it, but if you don’t, you’ll regret it for life,” one popular social media post about the film said, according to the BBC.
“Niu Lai” is so low budget — some reports say it cost $1,000 to make — it didn’t even have an official poster, so fans and theater employees have been creating their own to display on marquees.
Theaters in China are even adding extra screenings to meet demand.
Zhong Jiaming, a vocational schoolteacher in Guangzhou, told the Associated Press that it is a rare find in an era when movies are often “visually exquisite and polished, but their stories can fail to engage.”
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“This is a movie for the young at heart,” Zhong said. “It is simple and honest, like a bedtime story for children.”
