Viral horror short Mora receives the feature-length treatment

As reported by Variety, indie film production and distribution company Neon is set to adapt Sam Evenson’s horror short Mora into a full-length feature film. Currently sitting at well over four million views on YouTube, this viral horror hit was independently produced by Evenson via his Grimoire Horror channel. The channel currently boasts nearly 200,000 subscribers.

Kicking off with a set of hands typing the prompt “women made of rotten meat” into an “AI” generator, the story follows Cody (Tim Torre), a young artist who has lost confidence in his own art. Claiming that he is doing all this for himself and his partner Hanna (Jamie Taylor Ballesta), he quickly becomes obsessed with clicking into ever more horrifying depictions of this artificial woman being tortured via dozens of increasingly disturbing prompts. Naturally, this does not end well for him as the lines between reality and fiction begin to disappear.

Image: Grimoire Horror

The short is shot almost entirely in a shadowy apartment, dimly lit by blue light from multiple computer screens. Much of the subject matter serves as a stark cautionary tale for those who retreat from human society into a dark corner of the internet. In the case of the protagonist Cody and his partner Hannah, they’re unlikely to ever emerge again. In the process, Cody has unleashed a terrifying monster on the world.

Though Evenson has worked as a VFX artist on big-scale productions such as Dune: Part Two, The Last Of Us, and Thor: Love and Thunder, this will be his feature directorial debut. Image Nation’s Ben Ross and Iron Ocean Productions’s Addison Sharp are set to executive-produce the film. Details are otherwise sparse, but there’s no denying that the short taps into legitimate concerns around the overuse of AI. After Neon smashed box office expectations with Longlegs in 2024, this could be the company’s next big hit.