By Xu Tianran

An art film that received rave reviews and over 200 posts by those claiming to have 'watched it' online never existed, revealed a blogger who claimed to have invented the hoax "just for the fun of it" Wednesday.

After the synopsis was uploaded onto douban.com, an arts-focused networking site, the film drew the interest of thousands of members.

"Franz Kafka was on his way to a brothel when he met Albert Camus. The two then decided to go visit prostitutes together and hit up Marcel Duchamp, who was struck by lightning two weeks earlier, for money…" read the introduction of the movie, entitled "Kafka, Or Even Get Into The Castle Into A Beetle (sic)." 

"Last year I was bored while working the night shift, so I posted this movie," Web user Xue Mang wrote on his microblog, claiming to be the mastermind behind the hoax.

"The International Movie Data Base (IMDB) number is my birthday, the cast list are all colleagues of mine," Xue explained. "I was surprised to see that 207 people claimed to have actually watched the movie, and there are even some movie critiques," Xue added.

Douban has since deleted the entry and all related pages.

Xue, who claimed to be a journalist, refused to be interviewed, adding that buzz surrounding his post "has grown beyond his expectations."

Gong Zhuo, a college student in Shanghai and author of a 867-word critique of the 'film', compares its black, post-modernist humor with the Tarantino film Inglorious Bastards, saying he wrote the review for fun.

"I read about this little joke on the microblog and found there was no critiques yet," Gong told the Global Times.

Douban.com did not respond to interview requests by the Global Times Wednesday.

Some Douban users commented the hoax exposes the pretentiousness and lack of culture among young Chinese.

"If you never heard of it or seen it, even if its fabricated, it's 'supposed' to be artistic and cool," said Chen Kai, a 26-year-old movie buff and Douban user, who believes the joke perfectly made fun of "pretentious artistic youth".

"Douban.com really lacks a sense of humor. I spent time and energy in the critique!" Gong argued, expressing dissatisfaction after seeing his review disappear.

"But you can't blame [Douban] for deleting all the pages, after all the movie is fake," he added.