MONSTERS, the AI short film where home is scarier than the dark

MONSTERS, an AI short film that turns the Halloween monster story into an awareness film about domestic violence, has drawn a burst of emotional reaction and two figures for its reach that do not agree. It went up on the channel of its director, Simon Meyer, on October 29, 2026, and IBTimes UK covered the response to it on November 2.

The film is made by the AI film studio PROMPTR and produced in association with NO MORE, the anti-violence group whose NO MORE Global Directory lists support services worldwide. Meyer's own thread on X and the film's own YouTube page both name Kling 4.0 as the model, and the thread thanks Kling AI for sponsoring the film. The credits name Meyer as AI director, Lubbertus Mueller-Frick and Ciro Kavouras as AI artists and Benjamin L. Schiller as producer.

What is MONSTERS?

MONSTERS is built as a spoof documentary. Three monsters who haunt a girl's bedroom sit for interviews about their scare techniques, and IBTimes UK names them Pip, Morris and Gus. In the film they have long terrified a girl named Mila, and they slowly work out that she is no longer afraid of them.

The film turns when the monsters leave the room to find out what changed. What they meet, IBTimes UK reports, is a fear that has moved closer to home, and the film ends with the monsters around Mila rather than over her. The characters are the film's own, and the film presents their story rather than a real household. It closes on a line its own page credits to UNICEF's Data Brief on Violence against Children at Home, 2025: one in four children worldwide, about 610 million, lives with a mother who has experienced intimate partner violence in the past year, the IBTimes UK puts the number.

The reaction is strong and split. IBTimes UK quotes one viewer writing, "Man, that made me cry, bro!!," and another, "The monsters should've gotten the dad." Some commenters, the outlet reports, objected to the whole film being made with AI, while others defended the approach.

The reach is the one number nobody can settle. The film's own YouTube page showed 74,000 views when it was read on November 5, 2026, a rounded floor for a counter that keeps climbing. On November 4, news.com.au reported that MONSTERS had been watched more than 15 million times, a figure the maker's own page does not show. The two counts differ sharply, and news.com.au does not say where its number comes from.

For creators, MONSTERS is a case study in the shape an AI short can take: a small studio, a model sponsor and an awareness partner rather than a paying client.

MONSTERS is on Simon Meyer's YouTube channel, and the film's own page points anyone who needs it to the NO MORE Global Directory at nomoredirectory.org.