Promise AI Is Making 'Touch Grass', a Hybrid Horror Feature Built on the Dead Internet Theory

Promise AI announced its first feature film on August 10, 2026. Touch Grass is a psychological horror film directed by Dave Clark, the company's chief creative officer. The film pairs live action actor performances and practical effects with generative AI, making it a hybrid production rather than a fully AI generated work. Brad Miska, founder of Bloody Disgusting, and Chris White, executive producer of The Backrooms YouTube film, are producing.

What Touch Grass Is About

Touch Grass centers on a young woman who designs AI personalities for a technology company. She discovers The Feed, a hidden layer beneath the internet, and learns that copies of real people are being assembled there from their deepest desires.

The premise draws directly from the dead internet theory. The theory holds that the open internet is now populated mainly by bots, AI generated content, and synthetic personalities rather than by real human beings. The theory exists primarily in internet culture and conspiracy communities, but its core observation, that more and more of what people encounter online is not human, has a factual basis in the growth of automated content generation. Touch Grass takes that premise and builds a horror film around what it would mean if the synthetic population were not just content but actual copies.

The Hybrid Production Model

Touch Grass does not fit the model of a fully AI generated film. It uses live action actor performances. It uses practical effects. It uses traditional VFX. Generative AI is one component in a production stack that includes the established tools of low budget genre filmmaking.

This matters for understanding what Promise AI is building. The company's earlier projects paired Hollywood writers like Jamie Magnus Stone and Micho Rutare with AI filmmakers. The writing side of those projects was conventional story craft. The production side integrated AI tools into existing creative practice. Touch Grass follows the same logic. Clark is directing it with a filmmaker's full toolkit, not a prompt-only workflow.

The hybrid model is also a practical choice for theatrical ambition. A film that wants Focus Features or a comparable distributor to pick it up cannot arrive with AI visual artifacts in the performance capture. Human actors give Touch Grass a baseline of performance quality that AI video generation cannot yet match. The AI elements handle what AI does well, environment generation, synthetic detail, visual atmosphere, while actors handle what actors do well.

Brad Miska and the Bloody Disgusting Connection

Brad Miska is the founder of Bloody Disgusting, the horror news and production outlet that has been a primary platform for the genre since 2001. Miska's involvement as producer is a signal about where Touch Grass is positioned in the horror market.

Bloody Disgusting has produced films including The Black Phone, Becky, and Haunt. These are not experimental works. They are genre films made for audiences that watch horror because they enjoy horror, not because they are interested in the form. Miska attaching himself to a hybrid AI production is a statement that the horror audience is the primary target, not the tech press or the AI filmmaking community.

Chris White's involvement connects the project to The Backrooms, the YouTube found footage franchise that became a significant cultural moment in low budget horror. White knows what micro budget horror built around internet culture can grow into. The dead internet theory is the kind of idea that generated The Backrooms. It is an internet anxiety that spreads through exactly the communities most likely to watch it become a film.

Why Dave Clark Is Directing

Clark is Promise AI's chief creative officer, one of the founders who came from the YouTube AI filmmaking community. Directing Touch Grass himself rather than pairing the project with a recruited Hollywood director is a different move from the company's strategy with its other projects.

It puts Clark's own filmmaking on the line. The company's credibility in the hybrid model is tested by whether a film Clark directs can reach theatrical distribution and hold an audience that came for horror, not for AI. That is a harder test than developing films for Hollywood writers who are already proven.

It also means the first Promise AI feature is made by someone who understands the tools from the inside. Clark has built workflows and has directed AI generated content. A hybrid film benefits from a director who knows what to trust to the AI and what to put in front of a camera.

The Broader Trend

The appetite for AI films in theaters has already been tested. Gossip Goblin's Gods Don't Give Gifts is opening in several hundred U.S. theaters on October 30, produced with Fable Studio. That release establishes that AI-made films can reach theatrical distribution.

Touch Grass takes a different approach to the same destination. Where Gods Don't Give Gifts is fully AI generated, Touch Grass is hybrid, using AI as one production tool among several. The two films represent two different answers to the same question about how AI reaches mainstream genre audiences.

AI studios are racing toward feature length. The race is now producing films with genuine theatrical ambitions rather than with YouTube as the ceiling. Touch Grass, with Miska producing and a distributor to be announced, is built for that tier.

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Sources

Deadline | Forbes | CBR | No Film School | Promise AI