I Saw ‘Hell Grind,’ the AI Film From Cannes. The Plot Is Nonsensical, but the Visuals Were Shockingly Realistic
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- Hell Grind premiered at the Marché du Film, Cannes Film Festival’s marketplace, while the main festival bans wholesale AI‑generated films.
- Higgsfield AI produced the 95‑minute action‑adventure for $500,000, completing it in two weeks using ByteDance’s Seedance model and its own tools.
- Alex Mashrabov said the film’s purpose is to showcase Higgsfield’s technology, not to deliver Hollywood‑quality storytelling, and he aims to expand to other genres within six to nine months.
- Hell Grind featured AI‑generated visuals that were “shockingly realistic,” especially lifelike children, but suffered from limited character emotions and a demon that only expressed smugness and spoke Japanese.
- The soundtrack was almost entirely AI‑generated, with only one song identified as human‑made, according to a Higgsfield spokesperson.
- Higgsfield AI has a valuation of $1.3 billion and an annual revenue run rate of $400 million, and it is developing an educational course to help creators use its AI video platform for post‑production and advertising.
- Cannes marketplace hosted the private screening amid other AI‑focused events at Tech Week and Tribeca, where creatives have criticized such AI products.
Why it matters: Higgsfield’s $500k, two‑week AI film proves that feature‑length visual content can be produced at a fraction of traditional costs, opening new revenue streams for advertisers and post‑production teams, while its narrative and voice‑acting flaws highlight why many creators remain skeptical of AI‑driven cinema.
