Movies

Harry Potter AI-Reimagined as Horror Anime is the Creepiest Thing You'll See Today

Harry Potter AI-Reimagined as Horror Anime is the Creepiest Thing You'll See Today
Image credit: Legion-Media

Make sure not to see these before bedtime!

US actors and screenwriters are still rallying in the streets, protesting against payment inequality and the use of artificial intelligence in filmmaking. The latter is indeed a powerful tool, which can be used to offer a new perspective on things, and has to be reckoned with.

Just like that, AI has recently been used to imagine what a horror anime version of Harry Potter would look like. As the beloved franchise first hit the screens 22 years ago, there's a great sense of nostalgia for it — so much so that HBO is producing a series based on the fan-favorite story. In the meantime, Instagram creators the_ai_dreams decided to entertain the fandom and share their anime versions of the beloved characters, generated using AI.

Anime normally looks somewhat bleak, but it can also be incredibly gory when it comes to violent scenes and villains. The genre is full of impressive monster characters — take, for instance, Tokyo Ghoul with its eponymous human-eating creatures. And while the Harry Potter horror anime in question isn't as diabolic, it still looks pretty sinister, especially in comparison to the life-action characters we're used to.

Harry Potter AI-Reimagined as Horror Anime is the Creepiest Thing You'll See Today - image 1

The eerie-looking eyes and ear-to-ear mouths are one big reason why these pictures make you feel uneasy. More significantly, the characters look nothing like their classic versions, as the AI portraits seem to depict completely different people (if you dare call them human) who probably don't behave anything like the book or screen characters. See Ginny Weasley, for example — she's a living demon who might as well eat human flesh with these shark-sharp teeth.

/ Slider intersection plug /

While Voldemort looks less menacing somehow — perhaps because we're already used to his pale and disfigured face in the movies — Harry himself appears to be a colder and more violent version of the character than Daniel Radcliffe's. Oh, and Hagrid… AI turned the sweetest and most lovable character from the book and film series into a sinister giant, capable of killing Death Eaters with his bare hands.

As much as these images are fascinating, they leave you with mixed feelings. Would fans like to see a Harry Potter-inspired anime like that? Probably, but it does take the story far away from the canon, and you'd have to watch it as a crazy fan fiction piece that has nothing to do with source material.

Source: Instagram.