An movie adaptation of horror manga creator Hideshi Hino’s THE LIVING CORPSE was made entirely with generative AI. If you want, you can watch it on Prime Video in the U.S. now.
The Living Corpsewas originally released in 1986. The manga, written and directed by Hideshi Hino, is about a man whose body is decomposing. He’s essentially a walking, rotting corpse, and he has no memory of who he is or how he came to be this way.
The story was inspired by Hideshi Hino’s own struggles. He had worked himself to the point of needing to be hospitalized, and when he got out of the hospital he had to go right back to work. Thoughts of dying and leaving his wife and kids behind weighed heavily on him, and The Living Corpse was born out of those feelings. (Hino shared this story in a 2020 reprint of the manga.)
Hino has a small history with film himself. He wrote and directed two of the infamous Guinea Pigmovies from the 1980s. He did the two best in my opinion: Flower of Flesh and Blood, andMermaid in a Manhole. Hino is best known for his manga though, with Panorama of Hellprobably being his most well known.
Hino originally had plans to make a live-action version of The Living Corpse. He started working on how he would bring the story to life, and he even created a few storyboards. But the idea of the movie dragged on, the pandemic hit, and Hino, who is 80 years old now and has had health troubles in recent years, realized he couldn’t physically direct the movie himself.
Now, this is all to say that, from my point of view,The Living Corpse feels like a very personal story that Hino clearly put much of himself into. So, seeing a movie made of the story which is reportedly 100% AI is utterly disappointing.
Hino reportedly (according to the “director” of the film, Tsuyoshi Sone) approved the project. That’s fine. It’s disappointing for me as a fan, but I wouldn’t presume to tell him how to feel about it. I can only express how I feel. And I feel like I won’t be watching this movie.
The Living Corpse uses generative AI at every level. On the poster, the credit for the script is “Chat GPT.” Voices are AI recreations of actual voices, with Junji Ito’s voice apparently being one of them (I haven’t personally confirmed that though). Hino and his late wife are both generated visually within the movie. I’ve seen the trailer, and it looks exactly how you’d expect.
The main reason I’m posting this is not to recommend the movie, but to recommend people check out Hideshi Hino’s manga. Also, as a huge fan of Hino, I feel like I have to say something about this, even if nobody else cares about what I have to say.
Also, I’m posting this because I post new movies every week, and I just saw this pop up on Prime Video. If you have a Prime subscription, you can watch it there right now in the U.S. region. I won’t, but you can.
