District 9's director just created an amazingly sinister short film using a game engine

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Neill Blomkamp - the man behind dystopian delights like District 9, Elysium, and Chappie - is turning out to be as innovative in his movie-making as he is with his subject matter. His new project, Oats Studios, just created an impressive short film using Unity, the engine behind some of your favorite games.

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The short film Adam: The Mirror is a spiritual successor to a demo that Unity’s Swedish team showed off at a developer conference in 2016. It stars Adam, a human brain and consciousness trapped in a cyborg body, so the themes are certainly something that Blomkamp is comfortable in portraying on-screen.  He's created two new episodes, Adam: The Mirror and Adam: The Prophet. 

“I was interested in directing several pieces on the story setup in the first Adam episode... the thematic backbone of it is a discussion of where your soul is,” says Blomkamp.  

You might not have heard of Unity before, but its logo has probably flashed onto the screen while your favorite game was loading up. It's the development tool behind games like Cuphead, Ori and the Blind Forest, and The Long Dark. 

In addition to Unity, Blomkamp and Oats Studios are experimenting with using Steam to share assets and ideas with the community, with the hope that it encourages new filmmakers to attempt their own projects. "If they want all the raw footage because they feel like they want to cut something together - if there's some film student that's studying editing and they want to cut a scene together - they can just download all of our raw data and a cut a scene," he said back in June. "They can see if they can cut it better or change it. It's about giving people all of the tools that we use."

Adam: The Prophet will be released on Oats Studios' YouTube channel soon. 

Rachel Weber
Rachel Weber
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Rachel Weber is the former US Managing Editor of GamesRadar+ and lives in Brooklyn, New York. She joined GamesRadar+ in 2017, revitalizing the news coverage and building new processes and strategies for the US team.