What happens when the thing you love most isn’t real, and then suddenly, briefly, it is? That’s the question driving Caterpillar, an experimental romantic thriller written and directed by Dennis Williams II, now in post-production after wrapping principal photography. Geffri Maya, Angela Lewis, Jamad Mays, and Jack Seavor McDonald lead the cast.
The film follows a lonely actor who finds a way to pull the chatbot he’s fallen for into the physical world, but only for a single day. Williams uses that premise to dig into the illusion of artificial intimacy, asking what actually gets lost once generative AI starts filling in for real human connection. He’s described the project bluntly as “a protest against generative AI and the way technology can erase our history and conscience,” adding that at its core, it’s about holding onto humanity even as technology keeps offering easier, simulated versions of it.
That framing fits squarely within Williams’s broader body of work. Selected for SHOOT’s 22nd Annual New Directors Showcase and Vanishing Angle’s Short-to-Feature Lab, he’s built a reputation for character-driven stories grounded in cultural specificity. Coming from a Black filmmaker whose work consistently centers that specificity, a film resisting AI’s flattening effect on intimacy carries extra weight right now, as conversations about generative AI increasingly collide with questions about whose stories and whose humanity get erased when machines start standing in for genuine connection.
The cast brings serious range to the project. Maya, best known as Simone Hicks on The CW’s All American and its spinoff All American: Homecoming, has also appeared in FX’s Snowfall and ABC’s Private Practice. Lewis spent all six seasons of Snowfall as the unforgettable Aunt Louie. Mays has built a career on bringing depth to roles across FBI: Most Wanted, Power Book II: Ghost, and P-Valley, while McDonald is known for Peacock’s Emmy-nominated Ted, Netflix’s Never Have I Ever, Amazon’s Ick, and CBS’s Why Women Kill.
Caterpillar is a Campsight production, produced by Beau Gaines, Pokey Spears, and Korey Smallwood, with casting by Irie Williams. Panavision partnered on the production, supplying camera equipment and lenses.
Now heading into post-production with a festival run ahead, Caterpillar arrives as one of the sharpest artistic rebuttals yet to AI’s creeping presence in emotional life, built by a filmmaker whose entire body of work insists that specificity, not simulation, is what actually connects people.