10 CGI Fails That Totally Ruined Recent Movies

Netflix's new sci-fi action film The Adam Project was a mostly fun time courtesy of its Ryan Reynolds-led cast, fun time travel premise, and spectacular production values.

That is, except, for the movie's nightmare fuel digital de-aging of the great Catherine Keener, who plays the film's primary antagonist Maya Sorian.

At the end of the second act, Sorian - a middle-aged woman just like Keener - ends up meeting her younger self from 32 years in the past, achieved through the digital de-aging technology becoming increasingly common in big-budget blockbusters.

Though the Marvel Cinematic Universe has proven the mind-boggling potential of this tech, in this case it falls massively short of the mark, looking more like a cheap deep-fake somebody mocked up on their home computer.

It's painfully clear at all times that we're looking at a body double with Keener's digitally-smoothed younger face awkwardly stapled on top of it. In some shots the CGI face doesn't even track properly with the double's body and appears to horrifyingly slide around.

It's an embarrassingly lousy job for a $116 million movie with otherwise robust VFX, and given that the younger Sorian is present for basically the entire climax, her presence is a continual, film-derailing distraction.

If the production lacked the budget to pull off the effect convincingly, they should've just hired another actress to play the past Sorian instead.