Psycho Siri is scaring up views on YouTube

By Deborah Netburn

Feb. 7, 2012 12 AM PT

Talking computers are inherently creepy, so it should come as no surprise that a mini-spate of Siri-gone-mental films are making the rounds on YouTube.

The Internet’s favorite (for now) is Psycho Siri, a no-budget, 4-minute, 25-second video in which the actors are amateur in the very best way and the computer graphics are kind of unexpectedly awesome.

So far it has racked up almost 300,000 views thanks mostly to people tweeting and Facebooking it.

The narrative is pretty basic: A young man finds an iPhone 4S outside his school and starts to try it out. Siri plays normal for about 10 seconds before she starts murdering people.

Over the course of the movie Siri blows a hole through a house, sprouts robotic spider legs, rains glowing blue grenades onto a kitchen floor, and manifests an AK47.

“Boop boop. Now that we are alone. I overheard you saying something about selling me?” she says in one of her best lines in the film. “I’m afraid I cannot let that happen. Goodbye Nathan,” she says right before the bullets start flying.

Psycho Siri is just the latest offering from 18-year-old Andrew McMurry, a filmmaker from Little Rock, Ark., who has put off college for now to concentrate on his YouTube channel.

YouTube connoisseurs may remember him from his earlier hit, Real Life Super Mario Bros., a live-action short peppered with lots of computer graphics in which a young man is suddenly presented with the opportunity to play a life-size game of Super Mario Bros.

In an interview with the L.A. Times, McMurry said he shot the film in about 7 hours and completed the special effects in about 5 or 6 days.

McMurry taught himself how to work with Adobe After Effects and said he is working on improving his Cinema 4D skills. He used both programs for the special effects in Psycho Siri, as well as PF Track for the 3D motion tracking.

McMurry’s videos, which can be found on his YouTube channel AndrewFilms, have been viewed 5.8 million times, and he is trying to keep to a self-imposed schedule of uploading one new film every two weeks.

Next, he plans to make a Nazi zombie movie.

“I don’t have many details right now, but I do know that I’m finally not going to film outside my house,” he said. “That will be nice. Every other movie I’ve done has been filmed outside my house.”

Boop boop.