10 Exact Moments Recent Movies Lost Us
8. Deepfake Catherine Keener - The Adam Project
For the first two-thirds of its runtime, Netflix's The Adam Project is a pretty fun time-travel movie, focused on the giddy joy of Ryan Reynolds hanging out with his 12-year-old self (Walker Scobell) and also their late father (Mark Ruffalo).
Things go spectacularly off the rails in act three, though, when villain Maya Sorian (Catherine Keener) makes contact with her much younger self - 32 years younger, in fact.
As stunning as digital de-aging tech has become over the last few years - especially in the Marvel Cinematic Universe - the CGI work to make Catherine Keener look effectively half her age isn't even remotely convincing.
Rather than smooth out the wrinkles and so on, it appears that the VFX team has effectively deepfaked footage from Keener's old movies onto a body double, the result of which tumbles immediately into the uncanny valley.
Given that young Maya is present for a huge chunk of the third act, it becomes extremely difficult to focus on what's actually happening for the rest of the movie. This creepy, offputting, and very distracting CGI abomination was a huge mistake.