Tribe, by Director Dan Asama, tells the story of a university lecturer who travels into the mountains to investigate a strange religious sect that may be connected to the abusive past of an old friend who killed himself. However, what starts as a simple investigation begins to shift and twist into a strange narrative involving Mormon offshoots, interdimensional underground humans, body horror, and AI galore.
As soon as I saw the first trailer for Tribe I felt alarm bells going off. There were parts of the effects work that felt somewhat strange, and I wasn't sure if this was going to be a film worth my time. Whilst the first twenty minutes or so of the movie were pretty decent, and set up for an interesting story with some competent acting, I wish that I'd listened more to those early suspicions as everything that is good about the early segments gets lost in ever increasing amounts of AI, and a plot that seems to lose its way.
There comes a point in watching Tribe where any doubts over whether you're looking at AI produced effects get put to bed as you get a five minute scene in which it basically becomes a slideshow of 'creepy' AI images that someone likely churned out five minutes before slipping them into the edit. The scene in question is one where the lead is being told about the contents of a creepy old book that reveals the history of this religious sect. Rather than simply having the actor convey this information, Tribe instead gives us awful looking images of mutated people, strange landscapes, and fake drawings. The problem is that none of it looks real, it all has the AI fake, rubbery quality to it, and none of it looks even believably real or plausible.
Almost any interest I had in Tribe died in that scene, with only the barest of desire to keep watching hanging on by a thread because I'd agreed to give the film a fair review, and because I thought that things couldn't possibly get any worse. However, the film not only continues to throw AI in throughout, but even abandons it own conceit just to create some kind of weird twist ending. Up until the final part of the movie the film is entirely found footage, trying to attempt a somewhat realistic approach to the story with the cameras sometimes capturing the paranormal (AI) as its lead character investigates strange caves and desolate mountains.
This all falls away in the final act as we leave behind found footage and simply enter the dreams of the lead character. Or possibly a liminal space between time and space where super evolved underground humans from the distant past outline all of the plot to the audience. With lashings more AI. It felt like the movie wanted to be one thing to begin with, but part way through making it the choice to become some Lynchian surrealist piece took over. There's no reason why you couldn't marry a found footage film with that kind of style, but Tribe never really attempts to combine them that way, instead simply switching format in a way that's incredibly jarring when watching it.
I feel a little bad about this review, as it's easily one of my most scathing ones, and it probably just comes across as somewhat meanspirited. But if the film's creators can't care enough to put in actual effort into making the film, into crafting real art why should I give it any real appreciation? AI 'art' is theft. It's created off the back of real artists whose work is often taken as 'inspiration' without their permission to create awful looking knock-offs. We've seen thousands of artists across the world speak out against AI art, pointing out how their work is being taken as 'inspiration' without their permission, and how people are losing work and money because no one thinks they need real artists and craftspeople anymore when they can do it for free on their phone. And then there's also the environmental impact of producing AI images and videos. I can't help but wonder how much water was wasted in creating Tribe, how much toxic emissions were churned out, how much electricity was poured into it.
There's a decent seed of an idea at the centre of Tribe, and the film starts with promise because of that, but in the end the film, just like the water and electricity used to create the AI throughout, becomes a waste. Some of the best regarded films of all time ran up against limitations because of their resources and had to find work arounds. This often ended up with someone coming up with a better idea to service the story, new filmmaking techniques, or even pioneering new effects work because they couldn't just type a prompt into a computer and take the first thing it churned out. Art is about passion, of the desire to create something, but where was that with Tribe?
As someone who loves art, who has fallen in love with so many works of fiction, who has had my life changed for the better by them, who's been helped through trauma and loss, who's found shared love in art, who's been inspired to create myself, seeing a film filled with AI isn't just disappointing, it feels insulting.
Tribe is available on digital in the UK on25th May 2026 from GrimmVision.
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