"The Last Commercial"

22 September 2026

5 mins 50s

On the fence.

This short film is clearly intended to be a savage indictment of the direction of travel for the advertising industry, but as it doubles as a pitch for the very work it derides, it feels like its creators are balancing precariously atop a fence.

Supers at the end reassure the viewer several times that what we've seen is a combination of human performances and AI-generated imagery, but this serves only to raise the question: why does a film that seems to be taking a pot shot at the way our industry is willing to abandon human craft make use of the technology that poses the biggest threat? If ever there was a film that should have been made without generative AI, it's this one.

To be fair to director Lenski, if the aim was to create a discomforting film then the mission was accomplished. This is such uncomfortable viewing that you may find yourself shifting in your seat, but it's hard to know how much of that is because of the film itself, and how much is due to its disconcerting context. For DAVID, it was definitely the latter, and also because of the blurriness of its objective and the blurriness between what is human and what is artificial in the film itself.

USA

Short Film