The famous "foodie" Dao Shi Lao Ba once said: "Don't learn from me, squatting there brings no success, and you'll be talked about for a lifetime." So, first of all, I want to clarify that for the sake of my own innocence, I did not choose to actually walk into a cinema and spend dozens of yuan on a ticket to watch Niu Lai.
Of course, you might ask—is watching a movie really comparable to eating "Ao Li Gei" (a slang term for something disgusting)?
It really is.
Here is the simplest and most intuitive example: this is the official poster for Niu Lai—featuring ancient-style landscapes, minimalist ink wash aesthetics, and paired with a meaningful tagline, "Life can be rehearsed, in dreams..." It even gives a faint hint of the vibe found in Dahufa or Little Monsters of Langlang Mountain.
However, ideals are full, but reality is skinny. You might find it hard to imagine that as a domestic theatrical animated film from 2026, the actual visuals of Niu Lai look like this:
Image source: Douban
Moreover, the visuals, which rival the "Three-Year Animation" series, are not even the limit of Niu Lai's flaws. In today's era where AI animation is prevalent, as a purely hand-crafted animated film, Niu Lai's motion fluidity is even worse than AI-generated content, providing it with a new point of criticism—bad on top of bad.
Equally "living up to expectations" is the voice acting in Niu Lai. However, due to the limitations of the WeChat article format, I can only recommend that you look for screen-recorded clips to understand it yourself—yes, with Niu Lai, the rule of "no unauthorized recording" has been completely thrown out the window. Faced with such a low-quality film, anyone would probably think, "I can't be the only one whose eyes are suffering."
Precisely because of this, in the screening halls showing Niu Lai, everyone held up their phones, trying to preserve these images destined to go down in the history of Chinese cinema. Even many cinema staff directly stated, "Screen recording is allowed, just don't go overboard."
Image source: see watermark
To the extent that now, even without spending money on a movie ticket, you can piece together a complete camcorder version of Niu Lai from fragmented screen-recorded clips on various video platforms.
Why did Niu Lai, a low-quality film that should have remained obscure, suddenly become a phenomenal hit? Before the only two creators of Niu Lai—screenwriter Sun Lifang and director Xin Yumeng, who are mother and son—formally respond to the outside world, we cannot get a definitive answer.
However, according to various online reports, a more credible explanation is that Xin Yumeng, the director of Niu Lai, was friends with the film's distributor. At Xin Yumeng's insistence, the distributor "went through the motions" to process this "dream-chasing work" that the two had worked on for five years, resulting in the Niu Lai that everyone sees today.
Of course, regardless of the actual facts, Niu Lai has officially been released and thus inadvertently entered the box office tracking system. Since it is currently the summer season, with fierce box office competition among films like The Eight Immortals, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Odyssey, and Welcome to the Dragon Restaurant, Niu Lai, with its "box office of only 7,169 yuan after 9 days," has entered the public eye by riding the wave of people closely monitoring the box office performance of major blockbusters.
7,169 yuan, without the "ten thousand," with a total of 236 viewers and a daily peak of just over ten people—such an absurdly low box office figure, which seems out of place in typical news reports, quickly attracted public attention. Media and self-media outlets created trending topics around this ridiculous number, while ordinary audiences became intensely curious about "just how bad Niu Lai must be to perform like this."
Moreover, besides the bizarre "thousand-yuan level box office" figures, in terms of mechanism, although Niu Lai is a theatrical film whose quality can hardly be called "high," it is fundamentally different from traditional "bad movies" of the past.
Throughout its entire release, Niu Lai underwent no promotion or distribution. Compared to those films that bragged at press conferences and premieres only to be found lacking by audiences later, Niu Lai never hid its "badness." This kind of "badness," similar to a zero-score essay titled Song of Ceasing War, produced a refreshing and unconventional feeling, making it appear quite sincere in comparison.
As an audience member, you might scoff at typical low-quality films, but for something as rare as Niu Lai... you really have to "give it a taste."
Under the influence of these factors, Niu Lai gained a new batch of viewers nine days after its release. They contributed new discussion content and热度 (heat/popularity), which in turn attracted another wave of people interested in Niu Lai... In this infinite snowballing cycle, Niu Lai's name spread wider and wider, ultimately creating spectacles like "nationwide screen recording" and "skyrocketing box office," turning the childhood fantasy of "every person in the country giving me one yuan" into reality.
Maoyan's predicted box office has reached tens of millions
These bizarre phenomena have transformed Niu Lai from a simple movie into a new hot topic involving participation and discussion across the entire internet.
Inside the cinema, knowing that others coming to watch Niu Lai were fellow abstract humor enthusiasts, a group of viewers started finding "kindred spirits in low mountains and foul waters" during the ticket booking phase. They disregarded serious considerations like "best viewing area" and instead used the seating chart to perform a relay-style piece of performance art.
Meanwhile, on the cinema side, since Niu Lai's box office prospects were very poor, many cinemas did not schedule screenings at all—even if they did, it was often just one unpopular slot per day. However, as Niu Lai became increasingly popular, relevant screenings started selling out. To better serve the audience, cinemas had to independently supplement the promotional materials that the Niu Lai official team failed to provide—using abstract hand-drawn styles.
Outside the cinema, as its popularity surged, Niu Lai quickly became a new topic for abstract memes. Because several upright cow characters in Niu Lai, formed by "stretching and twisting basic human models," were so bizarre, they quickly replaced Nailong and its variants "Big and Small Milk Frogs" to become the new kings of abstract humor.
For example, earlier we said there were no official posters, right? We immediately used AI to churn out a bunch for you.
In the real world, within just a few days of the upright cows going viral, merchandise keychains were already being rapidly produced.
For example, the title Niu Lai (which sounds like "bulls are coming") is particularly auspicious for stock investors who recently experienced a "spiritual rollercoaster." The production team also intentionally or unintentionally included stock market-related elements, such as a character named "Bao La" (resembling "pull back" in trading terms)... As a result, many stock investors joined the queue to buy tickets for Niu Lai and offered their own interpretations of the plot.
Even more abstractly, as more stock investors joined the discussion, Niu Lai actually triggered a wave of "bull market" sentiment, pushing several stocks with "Niu" (bull) in their names to the top of the hot stock list, making it the latest "concept stock."
Furthermore, as more people wanted to see the true face of Niu Lai, some misleading content labeled as "Niu Lai" mixed into the online video resources, causing the classic old meme "wanted to watch a movie but ended up downloading Calabash Brothers all night" to make a comeback years later.
Of course, besides these abstract behaviors, some "complications" typical of internet trends also emerged at almost the same time.
For example, as Niu Lai went viral, a topic titled "Niu Lai Vulgar" quickly trended. Many film marketing accounts claimed that lines in the movie like "this is the exclusive taste of dad" were related to Cow Mom's milk, suggesting they were playing with vulgar jokes.
Fortunately, people who had actually watched Niu Lai in theaters quickly pointed out the error in this accusation, stating that the phrase "exclusive taste of dad" referred to another beverage like tea or wine, not milk as the marketing accounts claimed. The so-called "vulgar action scenes" were also identified as AI-generated fabrications because the movements were too fluid to be from Niu Lai.
The image shows AI-generated video clips, not the original content of the Niu Lai movie
For instance, after the movie went viral, an account claiming to be the official Niu Lai account stated that the film would soon be pulled from theaters and that they would proceed to develop new animated films. However, shortly after, another account emerged to debunk these claims, stating that the previous "official account" was an impersonator and that the movie would not be pulled from theaters so quickly.
However, since Xin Yumeng, the director of Niu Lai, has not yet issued any official response to the series of controversies surrounding the film's sudden popularity, neither these "official accounts" nor the accounts debunking them have absolute credibility.
Whether regarding the specific production process and purpose, or the various negative controversies to date, we can only "let the bullets fly for a while longer" until the director of Niu Lai decides to step forward and accept interviews.
Currently, there are only two things we can confirm about Niu Lai: first, it is very popular; second, it is very abstract. If Niu Lai proves anything, it is probably that life's margin for error is not only large but also full of variables, and obtaining legendary drops is not impossible for ordinary people. One day, you might encounter your own "Niu Lai" moment—who knows?
After realizing this, I suddenly didn't feel like criticizing the planners of Earth Online as much.
