The latest Netflix film adventure dives deep into a fictional cult. The streamer has released the official trailer for Rebirth, and the psychological thriller looks very twisted indeed.
Written and directed by Karl Mueller (Mr. Jones), the film centers on Kyle (played by Fran Kranz), a working suburban dad whose life has seemingly grown routine. Running into his old friend Zack (Adam Goldberg), however, shakes everything up. Kyle is persuaded to attend a Rebirth seminar, only to find that the new beginning has its drawbacks.
The trailer highlights the rut that Kyle has fallen into. He spends hours staring at a computer screen and commuting, and the most fun he appears to have is running on a treadmill. It is no wonder he is tempted by the Rebirth promotional video — the testimonials promise a break from the routine, sensuality, and fun.
What Kyle walks into looks like a frat party at first, but there are warning signs as well. The group of men he is with is cautioned, “Some of you will find this highly disturbing.” On top of that, they all begin chanting the words “Not a cult!” We suspect that if you have to deny it, it is probably true.
Where the trailer gets really interesting is when Kyle begins exploring the different Rebirth rooms. It quickly becomes clear that the seminar isn’t all fun, hookups, and meditative exercise. Kyle comes upon a particularly strange situation in one room, where a man has managed to take his cell phone and put a picture of his family on a TV screen.
From then on, it’s a montage of creepiness, as Kyle can’t seem to leave and the people surrounding him look increasingly violent and unpredictable. Unpleasant as it looks for participants, the film should be a fun ride for psychodrama enthusiasts.
Rebirth hits Netflix on July 15.
China just gave Hollywood a cautionary tale about AI filmmaking. Sanxingdui: Future Past, billed as the country's first fully AI-generated movie, hit theaters on October 23 and bombed at the box office.
According to Futurism, the film's reported $1.5 million production budget landed on more than 10,000 screens. Yet it pulled in only about $181,000, averaging roughly $20 per screen, making the budget difficult to recover.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?