What would you expect from a film that looks like a children’s rhyming video, was made by a mother-and-son team over five years and had almost no marketing behind it? A spectacular box-office disaster, probably.

Niu Lai, translated as The Cow Is Coming, seemed destined for exactly that fate when it opened in Chinese cinemas on August 5. An 86-minute animated film about a calf and a skylark, it had no glossy trailer, no promotional tour and none of the star power surrounding the summer’s big releases. For its first 10 days, only fewer than 300 people in the entire country bought tickets. The film made just 7,700 yuan, roughly Rs. 1 lakh.

Then the internet got involved. And suddenly, the film everyone thought looked terrible became one of China’s most talked-about movies.

Meet the two-person film crew

Niu Lai was made almost entirely by Xin Yumeng and Sun Lifang, a mother-and-son team who spent five years making it. They wrote it, directed it, produced it and provided the voices.

The result is very far removed from the kind of animation audiences are used to seeing in cinemas. The film’s visuals have been described as crude, stiff, glitchy and rough. Even its plot has left some viewers scratching their heads. It revolves around a calf and a skylark meeting in an abstract dream sequence and learning about love, courage, perseverance and sacrifice.

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It was, in other words, not exactly screaming blockbuster. Chinese media outlets were particularly unkind to it. One review called it a “noticeably crude production”, while another complained that the film was overly childish.

And then viewers started talking about how bad it was. That turned out to be the best marketing campaign the film could have asked for.

‘Let’s go and see how bad it really is’

The internet has always had a strange relationship with bad movies. Sometimes a film gets mocked into irrelevance. Sometimes, however, the mockery becomes a challenge. That seems to be what happened with Niu Lai.

Clips and discussions about its awkward animation and confusing storyline spread online. People who had never heard of the film suddenly wanted to see it for themselves. The joke became the ticket.

According to The Guardian, the film’s box office has since surged past 14.9 million yuan, putting it among China’s better-performing films of the year despite its extraordinarily small production scale.  That is an extraordinary jump from 7,700 yuan in its first 10 days.

It is also sharing the Chinese box-office conversation with films that operate on a completely different scale, including Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

It is almost the opposite of a modern animated blockbuster

The success of Niu Lai is especially amusing because Chinese audiences have recently embraced huge, technically ambitious animated films. The most obvious example is Ne Zha 2, a visually spectacular production that became a major cultural and commercial phenomenon.

Niu Lai is basically its scruffy cousin. The Guardian describes it as the antithesis of the slick animation dominating Chinese cinemas. It was made by two people, took five years and arrived with virtually no promotional machinery behind it. Its roughness may actually be part of the appeal.

One viewer quoted by The Guardian wondered whether the film’s deliberately handcrafted look offered a kind of “returning to one’s true self” at a time when artificial intelligence is increasingly shaping creative work.

Even the distributor was warned against releasing it

The film’s distributor reportedly faced advice not to release Niu Lai because of concerns over its quality. He went ahead anyway, partly because he was a friend of the director.

There was no big pre-release campaign to soften the blow. No carefully edited trailer. No parade of celebrities telling audiences why they needed to watch it. No giant marketing push.

The film arrived, people saw it, people laughed at it, and then they started buying tickets. It is difficult to think of a more chaotic marketing strategy, even though nobody appears to have planned one.

Is Niu Lai actually good?

That depends on whom you ask. The film has received a decidedly mixed response. Some audiences have embraced its awkwardness and handmade quality. Others have been considerably less charitable.

One unnamed film-industry professional quoted by The Guardian called it “bad in every aspect imaginable, including the story, special effects and almost every element that a movie is expected to have”. The bizarre part is that, according to the same source, that may be precisely what attracted audiences.