Uncanny Valley/Film

Return to the main page here.

"Loomis: I met him fifteen years ago. I was told there was nothing left. No reason, no, uh, conscience, no understanding and even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, of good or evil, right or wrong. I met this six year old child with this blank, pale, emotionless face, and the blackest eyes, the devil's eyes. I spent eight years trying to reach him and then another seven trying to keep him locked up because I realized that what was living behind that boy's eyes was purely and simply... evil."
 * Drive, starring Ryan Gosling as a character whom is never given a name other than Driver and is more or less human most of the time, but seems able to just turn off all emotions at will for the purposes of kicking ass. Your mileage may vary about how well that qualifies him for this trope, but when he dons his human-like rubber stunt driving mask and practically stares someone into drowning himself in the ocean, this trope is in full swing.
 * The Uncanny Valley has been around since the early 20th century. Ladislas Starevich had made some very early stop-motion animated films, originally for educational purposes but then he realized, "hey, I got a lot of potential stuff to do!" so he decided to make his puppets star in dark comedies. What were these puppets of? Actual embalmed insects. He originally intended to recreate a stag-beetle fight because he couldn't get them to do it under stage lights.
 * Speaking of stop-motion: Jan Svankmajer's way of animating otherwise lifeless objects is chillingly uncanny!
 * When living humans are animated via stop-motion, the result is often creepy and unnatural. Doubly so if they are filmed moving deliberately slowly but with the camera running at high speed, so that they move at normal speed on playback but look all twitchy and deranged.
 * See the remake of House on Haunted Hill for this in action.
 * This effect was used deliberately in 1999's Stir Of Echoes to emphasize the murdered girl's status as a ghost.
 * Which is also used to rather spooky effect in both The Ring and The Grudge.
 * This kind of twitchy movement in ghost-themed films is probably common enough to be considered a trope in itself; it can be traced back at least as far as Jacob's Ladder.
 * The poster for the movie Orphan looks... wrong. Just vaguely creepy in the facial area, and you can't really tell how or why it's wrong. It's actually because the face is TOO symmetrical, because it's actually half the face mirrored to make a whole face. Human faces aren't perfectly symmetrical, so a perfectly symmetrical face goes into Uncanny Valley.
 * You know the clone pilots in the Star Wars prequels? Take a closer look at their faces. Yep, George Lucas just can't get enough CGI.
 * This is deliberately invoked in The Thrawn Trilogy - at the end of the second book, Luke and Han remove the masks from some of Thrawn's dead Mooks and are deeply creeped out to find that every corpse has the same face.
 * Similarly, the Oompa Loompas in Charlie and The Chocolate Factory (the 2005 version at least), they are all inhumanly small and all played by Deep Roy. Perhaps averted with the same characters in the 1971 film since orange skin and green eyelashes are far enough away from human to not fall into this category.
 * Although for some people, it's the other way around - the orange skin and green hair can make them look REALLY creepy, while the newer ones are human enough that, if you were to pass one in the street, you'd just think he was a strangely dressed little person.
 * In the film adaptation of Bicentennial Man, when the protagonist gets a new, completely realistic android face, every blink is regular and accompanied by a little whirr. Creepiest thing ever.
 * However, this trope is deconstructed as Rupert starts making Andrew's new face, he mentions how minor flaws in human appearance, such as an asymmetrically shaped nose, make people more realistic looking.
 * Also used for effect in the draft examination sequence of Across the Universe. The strange, plastic, square-jawed and Ken-doll-haired beings that looked like the unholy offspring of the Burger King for the creepiness involved. That's Julie Taymor for you.
 * In Schwarzenegger's movie The 6th Day, Arnie buys his daughter an animatronic doll thing. The movie gave the impression that the doll was very popular in the future, but it looks creepy. It comes to its demise when it's destroyed and slowly says "I have a boo-boo." This video was probably inspired by that doll. The doll itself here.
 * Another inadvertent in a Schwarzenegger movie: Total Recall, with JohnnyCab. He's even creepier when he's melting.
 * "TWO WEEKS!"
 * Disney's Enchanted features, of all things, the dragon version of the Uncanny Valley, with a villainess whose face is just a little strangely... well, animated.
 * Darla Dimple from Cats Don't Dance looks normal (if disgustingly cute) as animated, but as a physical maquette, not so much.
 * The Spielberg movie AI Artificial Intelligence turned the Uncanny Valley on its head by having actual actors play the human-looking androids. However, it was used for effect in some scenes with CGI-animated partially damaged androids being hunted down and put on a bonfire and a sequence with many identical boy and girl androids hanging in the factory. The part where David "breaks" after ingesting human food (he shudders to a stop and the left side of his face sags alarmingly) was particularly effective. Alas, a scene after that, where David is lying down on a operating table, still looking human, but with the "skin" on his chest peeled away, especially with them "testing" him; they flick something in him and his hand rises up slowly in a dead manner.
 * Not to mention the fact that most robots looked a tad too perfect, with smooth skin, perfect hairline and so on. They were sliding deeper into the valley the more you looked at them.
 * The Dark Seekers of I Am Legend were impressively done in terms of integrating film footage with their movements, but whenever you got a clean look at them, they were just enough Conspicuous CG to throw off the belief.
 * The 2003 Hulk had special effects with a great level of detail for the title character, had a problem with the unlayered look on the Hulk's skin. Human skin has levels of translucency (one of the reasons it's so hard to emulate) giving it diverse textures and colors. The Hulk did not have this, making him look like he was molded from clay. This was fixed in the 2008 Continuity Reboot where the Hulk's skin has a much more realistic sheen and depth.
 * Many of the human characters except for Penny in Bolt have a a pinched, waxen look to their faces ranging from slightly weird to just plain creepy.
 * The puppets in Team America: World Police were capable of incredibly subtle and detailed movements (in their faces, of course). The producers decided they were too realistic, and thus too creepy, and decided to purposely scale them back a bit. Most notably when they make fun of the fact that the puppets can't really walk. They also used a program to precisely match the puppets' mouth movements to the dialogue, but the effect was too terrifyingly realistic, so they toned it down to make the puppets seem more puppet-like.
 * Both Terminator and Terminator 2 (deliberately?) enter the Uncanny Valley: the former when, and the latter when . Some people have said that they found Terminator in the first movie creepy. Look closely and he doesn't look normal, and there's something funny about his eyes before he damages one. The reason his eyes look funny is that he's lost his eyebrows. James Cameron had Arnie's face sprayed with Vaseline to deliberately invoke this trope and make it appear that something wasn't quite right about his skin, but that you wouldn't consciously know what. Done again in T3 with CGI used to erase any trace of the Terminators blinking when they get hit in the face or fire their weapons.
 * This was also used to great effect with the cameo in Terminator Salvation. The way the inherently imperfect CGI drove  right into the Uncanny Valley made the  again.
 * The scene where T-1000 chases the police car is probably the pinnacle of the trope, right beside the aforementioned phone scene.
 * The T-1000 fits this trope for most of his screentime in T2. On the commentary, co-writer Bill Wisher points out that throughout the film, Robert Patrick, who plays the T-1000, moves like a human being but just a tad smoother(because he's a liquid creature). In the scene where he talks to John's foster parents and again when he arrives at the mental hospital to ask the night nurse to see Sarah Connor, he behaves like a normal person(even smiling in a natural way in the former scene), but still puts out a subtly menacing vibe. Being a more advanced terminator and remaining more true to James Cameron's original idea of the terminator as an under-the-radar infiltrator(he disguises himself as a cop for crying out loud), it's expected that he could more accurately mimic a human posture, mannerisms and demeanor, but still do so in such a way that there was still something "off" and spooky about him.
 * If you watch the T-1000 carefully, you'll notice that except for when he's speaking, he doesn't breathe. This is particularly noticeable in the scene where he's chasing after the heroes on foot.
 * In the 'making of' documentary, James Cameron mentions he cast Robert Patrick because "he moves like a cat". The T-800 visually scans everything, but the T-1000 is much more tactile, because it can morph into anything it physically touches.
 * In the first film Reese mentions a never-shown T-600 model that had rubber skin. He also states they were easily spotted, assumingly because of this trope.
 * When we do get to see the actual T-600s in Salvation, they are in fact creepy simply because their rubber masks are so crude and lifelike, yet they are humanoid in appearance and mannerisms.
 * Intentionally used in Mirror Mask, from The Jim Henson Company but with a screenplay by Neil Gaiman and directed by visual artist Dave McKean. It featured a scene of intentionally Uncanny Valley-tacular robots singing "Close To You" while hypnotizing the protagonist.
 * Mr. Universe's "wife" in Serenity.
 * The remake of Alice in Wonderland by (who else?) seems to be a haven for this. The mix of live action and CGI makes for some freaky Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dums and an uncannily disproportional Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen.
 * And now joining them is the Cheshire Cat.
 * The Knave of Hearts is particularly creepy because unlike the Queen, Cat, and Tweedles, at first glance, he seems normal. It's only when he moves that you notice he's wrong: an effect achieved by lengthening his limbs and torso just a wee little bit too much to be properly human. Creepy. As. ****.
 * The White Queen just feels slightly weird due to the exaggerated dark make-up and flaunting mannerisms. You might say she's adorably wrong in this sense.
 * The Caterpillar. Alan Rickman's face? Very nice to look at. Alan Rickman's face on a caterpillar?! No. Sorry, but an insect's face should not emote like a human's.
 * While we're on the subject of Alice in Wonderland, BKN Animation's 2008 film "What's The Matter With The Hatter?" Seems like you average cheap mid-to-late 2000s direct to video childrens CGI movie. Then you realize that ALMOST. EVERYTHING. IS CEL SHADED. Alice stares at you with wide, soulless eyes, her mouth movements are erratic, and the Chesire Cat...!!
 * The Brady Bunch Movie and most its sequels somewhat fairly live in the Valley. The Movie family lives (or has lived) seemingly forever in the stylized 70's world of the original TV series which means that none of them have never gotten any older, none of the children never have graduated from any form of education (High School, Junior High, Elementary..) (and still have seemed to attend the same schools FOR NEARLY 40 YEARS!!), None of them have seem to bought new clothes (although this is averted by Marsha needing to get a job for new stuff) (they must only buy Vintage or second hand.), and in the end absolutely NONE of their neighbors seem to notice this.
 * Also to add to the obviousness of this trope is that all of the main characters act Not..Quite..Right. Almost as if the Brady Family were in the interim of 30+ years after the original show were abducted then replaced with Aliens that don't quite know how to react with normal Humanity. However this is something that even their obnoxious next door neighbors do notice then then rest of the neighborhood (this is something that the Bradys greedy Realtor next door neighbor exploits in order to have them evicted from their home.). To boot most of the principal actors (as is common with most TV to theatrical film Remakes) bear very little resemblance of their original counterparts. Although for most of the film it really isn't creepy just annoying, You'd think that after over 30 years their personalities would have evolved a little.
 * And for a final amount of Squick in the sequel, Marsha and Greg (even though have lived together in the same house for what in Real Life equates to their entire adolescences and most of their adulthoods) seriously consider to start dating...Each Other only shortly after learning that their parents possibly weren't legally married.
 * However in fairness most feature films either based on or inspired by classic television sitcoms made before the mid to late 1980's (Pleasantville, Fat Albert, a short lived sitcom called Hi Honey I'm Home was built around this trope) are intentionally made as parodies of this trope as due to the belief that most of these shows were far "Too Happy" and or unrealistic compared to many dysfunctional family sitcoms of the 90s to present day.
 * The Garbage Pail Kids Movie had incredibly creepy rubber masks worn by midgets that were supposed to be the titular characters. As their mouths weren't even capable of closing all the way, let alone natural movement, the effect is far more unsettling than any of the grotesque imagery the trading cards that the movie was based on could produce.
 * The title character of Son of the Mask is a baby with extraordinary cartoon-like powers. Every time he uses them, you can spot the exact moment he stops being a real baby onscreen and becomes his CGI replacement, and the effect is creepy as hell. Especially when he whispers "I must be losing my mind" over and over again into his dad's ear. Ugh.
 * The human characters from Dreamworks' Monsters vs. Aliens, due to the extreme detail rendered into their skin. * shudder*
 * In Let the Right One In the eyes of the vampire character reflect in the dark for just a second. Then the light comes on, and for half of another second you see cat-like slit pupils before they return to normal.
 * Mostly averted in Beowulf since everything is motion-captured in real-time, and the character design and graphics are similar to those from a modern video game. Most of the extras however (whom they didn't bother to do Mo-Cap with their faces) tend to fit squarely in the middle of the Valley.
 * Even with the motion cap. The faces just...don't look right.
 * This trope is played straight with the posters for the Disney adaptation of A Christmas Carol, featuring Jim Carrey as the voice of Scrooge and the three ghosts.
 * While Amélie looks pretty normal in her eponymous film, the cover/poster rendition of her is a bit unsettling. Those eyes....
 * Something about the faces of Santa Claus and Merlin in the infamous Santa Claus (as seen on Mystery Science Theater 3000) isn't quite right. Yet the animatronic Santa in the toy shop window of that movie was both less realistic and clearly much creepier. And then there were the reindeer. Oh, the reindeer...
 * The unnaturally toothy smile of one of the titular characters in The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl (guess which one) is surprisingly disturbing.
 * X-Men Origins: Wolverine features a cameo of, which uses CGI to de-age him. The problem is, it was less-than-spectacular CGI and it just succeeds in making him look really creepy.
 * For those of you who haven't seen this film - he looks like Humpty Dumpty.
 * The same effect was used in X3 to de-age, but was much better-looking and a lot more convincing.
 * Jacob's Ladder. Director Adrian Lyne uses a Body Horror technique in which an actor is recorded waving his head around at a low frame rate, resulting in horrific fast motion when played back.
 * Deliberately invoked by the victims of the Serial Killer in The Cell: He drowns, then bleaches his female victims to resemble dolls, and when the therapist journeys into his mind they're captive but "alive." Naturally, one of them has a kigurumi mask.
 * In The Love Guru, there is a scene with a young Guru Pitka, which is just Mike Myers's head CGI-ed onto some kid's body. In addition to being conspicuous, it made his head look enormous.
 * The scene on the Extended Edition of Return of the King with the Mouth of Sauron: that unnaturally large mouth and grin.... It came about because Peter Jackson walked in on the editing, decided he wasn't scary enough, and had them double the dimensions of the mouth in both directions. It succeeded admirably.
 * He originally wanted also to turn his mouth sideways, but they couldn't make this look remotely natural with his real chin moving normally, so this idea was thankfully scrapped.
 * A more subtle example would be Grima Wormtongue, whose corpse-like makeup was meant to make him look fairly creepy. The part that really did it was that actor Brad Dourif shaved his eyebrows. Off-set and without makeup, people kept telling him there was something just not right about him.
 * Chucky of Childs Play in the first movie. As the movie progresses, Chucky starts gaining more and more human traits such as a receding hairline and skin imperfections.
 * The big-eyed doctor in the new Star Trek movie can be quite unsettling.
 * "Why did I hire Dr. Satan for my OB/GYN?"
 * In the film adaptation of Frank Miller's Sin City, CGI is used to erase the actress's blink when Miho is sprayed with blood. Because it's practically impossible for any human to not blink when something hits him in the face, it serves to make her exceedingly creepy.
 * The facial prosthetics used by many of the characters in the movie to make them more closely resemble their characters from the comics tend to fall into the Valley as well. Benicio Del Toro in particular looks about half a step shy of being human. Reportedly, Robert Rodriguez wasn't going to give Del Toro prosthetics, because he already looked a lot like the character in the comics, but Del Toro insisted on it, possibly in recognition of this trope.
 * The Bruce Willis movie Surrogates plays this trope straight, as almost every surrogate is intentionally "too perfect." This is especially evident on Bruce Willis' character's surrogate, who has the worst toupee in the world, and a scary-smooth face, which makes him look super-creepy. The main character's wife is likewise scary, particularly something about her Michael Jackson-esque nose. To add a dash of creepy, she works in a "beauty salon" where she peels off customers' faces and cleans them.
 * The fact that there is a whole planet of sad shut-ins living through these weird robots just digs that Valley deeper and adds another layer to a movie that's already morbid and creepifyin'.
 * Oh geez, that hideous baby with Arnold Schwarzenegger's face in Junior.
 * The Incubi from Ink purposely invoke this trope. Their overly large glasses, and screens in front of their faces exaggerate their features rather [[media:InkIncubi.jpg|creepily]].
 * An interesting silent era example: In Metropolis, Brigette Helm effectively conveys the False Maria's "wrongness" with generally off behavior, particularly insect-like head twitching.
 * Evil Dead 2: Ash's dancing stop-motion, skeleton girlfriend and Henrietta...the Deadite!!!
 * In The Dark Crystal, the two Gelflings are the most human-looking characters and the least convincing. Since they qualify as Petting Zoo People, however, they aren't quite as creepy as some of the other examples.
 * The costume designers of of Killers from Space were probably aware of the Valley when designing the titular villains, but that film's instance of this trope has aliens looking stupid and hilarious rather than creepy. As Mike Nelson of The Film Crew commented, "He looks a little like Buzz Lightyear!"
 * The odd French-Italian film Immortel has many eerie Conspicuous CGI side-characters who interact with the live actors. They're supposed to be mutants, gods, and people with strange body augmentations (mainly skin grafts), and seeing them next to live actors (even ones with ice-like blue hair and bluish-white skin) is jarring.
 * This was sad to have been done to show that most of people on Earth (except few main characters) have been dehumanized.
 * The Na'vi in Avatar had an odd, shiny skin tone (although this is actually Reality Is Unrealistic and closer to real life than most films). The movement physics can be seen as differing from human, being more flowing, although this is to be expected considering the difference is size, strength and a completely different environment for movement. The actors specifically had to move in a different way to humans - it's likely that if they walked in a human manner, people would complain more.
 * The facial proportions are very different. It's relatively subtle at first, but the eyes are 2 to 2.5 times larger than normal and more widely spaced...because the nose is about twice as wide and flattened considerably. The mouth is normal-sized, which serves to emphasize the other changes. The ears are not just hollowed and pointed, they're a full inch and a half higher on the head.
 * The less Na'vi-like avatars (such as Grace's) did this with the human nose, making it look disproportionate compared to the Na'vi faces, which look disproportionate compared to humans.
 * Avatar is often invoked as the "exception to the rule" of the CGI Uncanny Valley effect alienating (or disturbing) viewers (to the tune of $2 billion-plus box office and single-handedly causing the rebirth of 3D).
 * One thing that really helped here was a techonological breakthrough: a small camera worn by the actors could capture and record the subtler facial movements—in particular, the movements human eyes make. The lack of such movements tend to hamper other mo-cap films; The Polar Express in particular gave some people the heebie-jeebies with the dead-eyed look of the characters.
 * Invoked deliberately in Silent Hill. The nurses, especially, start out looking like ordinary mannequins. Then they start moving in that odd, jerky manner that instantly communicates that they are dangerous.
 * Somehow done in live action with real actors by David Lynch in Mulholland Drive. See Mr. Roque, Mafia kingpin. This, incidentally, is Michael J. Anderson's only role as a regular-sized person! And The Cowboy, who is this despite being a seemingly normal person. He's able to get a dyed-in-the-wool Hollywood insider to stop snarking. Not to mention whatever it is behind Winkies.
 * The too-chipper-to-be-real Betty Elms has this effect on some. The effect is magnified by dressing her in clothes that look as though they might be what she wore as a teenager: they clash with contemporary style, and don't fit her well.
 * In Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, the Uncanny Valley is invoked in Judge Doom as Foreshadowing.
 * He is at least half a head taller than any other character.
 * His eyes are often hollow and he never blinks.
 * Christopher Lloyd only blinked between takes or when his face was out of frame.
 * Every smile is a Slasher Smile.
 * He has a lot more strength than an average man.
 * He is shown ripping the industrial dip barrel open with one hand.
 * His skin is pale and lifeless.
 * His vocal cadence is either too clipped or too drawn out to be normal.
 * He talks, just, Like, THIIIIIIIIIIISSSSSSSS!
 * The "androids" in Westworld actually have normal facial expressions (since they're played by real people), but it's mentioned that their designers never quite managed to give them realistic hands. When they really fall into this trope, though, it's when they're partly disassembled.
 * Deliberately invoked by James Cameron in The Abyss, some of the scenes of Coffey's descent into madness are shown with the film running backwards, so actor Michael Biehn looks odd in a way the audience can't quite put their finger on.
 * A film called Clifford (completely unrelated to the Clifford the Big Red Dog) featured comedian Martin Short playing the titular 10 year old boy, Clifford. The producers didn't actually try to make Short look like a kid. They dressed him up in a suit and tie with shorts, and kept his adult face and voice. The end result put Clifford well into the uncanny valley and caused the movie to tank.
 * Invasion of the Body Snatchers. That film was basically about this trope.
 * The Mystery Man at Andy's party in David Lynch's Lost Highway. It takes you a while to work out what's so off about his face, gradually you realise that (well, among other things) it's his fairly subtle eyeshadow and lipstick in combination with the fact that he never blinks. He also has no eyebrows, which has the handy effect of making a face look slightly odd, usually without people knowing quite why unless they are looking for it.
 * Also, his eyes have no irises, just huge pupils.
 * At the climactic scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark before the three main bad guys are destroyed by the Ark, their screaming faces are contorted and exaggerated in horrific ways before either melting away, vacuumed from within or exploding.
 * Little Miss Sunshine: Most of the contestants in the beauty pageant, except for Olive.
 * Just like the Son of the Mask example above, there's a brief moment in Moonwalker where, right at the end, Micheal...turns into a robot, then a spaceship, to fight the bad guys (somehow). If you look closely (or are unlucky enough to pause it on the shot) you can tell Micheal's been swapped out for the model and it's really frigging creepy, like the Other Mother swooped in and replaced him with a doll.
 * There's also the 2010 movie The Town. Its poster features the bank robber characters dressed up in their disguises. However, they're not wearing ski masks...they're wearing nun outfits complete with leathery masks of old, wrinkled faces.
 * The effects used to make Mr. Fantastic (as played by Ioan Gruffud) stretch in both Fantastic Four films are almost cartoonish, but can appear quite unsettling, even though they are sometimes played for laughs. It's just nowhere as effective as in the comics. It's also hard to accept The Thing as an actual being, and the uncanny valley creeps in when everyone treats him as a horribly mutated Ben Grimm, when it feels more like Michael Chiklis trapped in an uncomfortable costume. A more creepy example of Uncanny Valley in the films would be Doctor Doom in the early stages of his transformation, particularly the scar that has been "stitched" with metal staples, showing metallic tissue underneath.
 * Technically, however, neither the Thing or Dr. Doom qualify for "Uncanny Valley" status as both are indeed played by real-life humans simply wearing costumes, as opposed to being partially or completely rendered in CG.
 * The film adaptation of The Da Vinci Code features Jean-Pierre Marielle as Jacques Sauniere, but for most of the time the character is onscreen he is a corpse splayed out on the floor of the Louvre, and it is really a realistic model of the actor. While the effect is terrific, Jean-Pierre Marielle himself and his wife were severely creeped out by the sight of "his" dead body, as he revealed in an interview that can be seen on the Special Edition DVD.
 * In Die Another Day, Zao and his pale hairless diamond-encrusted face.
 * The entire film The Polar Express is widely considered to be creepy beyond belief.
 * From the same company there's Mars Needs Moms and holy Jesus are the humans terrifying.
 * Spike Jonze's short film I'm Here is a very sweet and heartwarming film. However, the robots look a little...off. This is because they have very human-like facial expressions despite their artificial appearance, especially since the male robots have what look like computer cabinets for heads.
 * Deliberately invoked in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1: In the scene where the Horcrux is destroyed visions of Harry and Hermione appear to Ron; both of them appear with white, almost featureless, sort of glowing skin.
 * During the scene where they're using polyjuice potion to create duplicate Harrys, some of the intermediate states are quite disturbing. Fortunately, they're not on screen for long.
 * The people who produced Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire say, in the DVD extras, that the reason they changed Voldemort's eyes from red (as they were in the book), to looking quite like your everyday eyes, is that "if you don't leave in a huge part of the human in him, he's not going to scare you."
 * Oddly enough, the more human looking Midians in Nightbreed are creepier than the ones who look just plain demonic. A perfect example is the guy with the crescent shaped head.
 * Jeff Bridges' CGIed face in Tron: Legacy fell into this category for a lot of viewers.
 * The biggest problem with this is at the beginning of the movie, we see a flashback of Flynn while he was young which used CLU's CG facial model and it's exactly the same. The problem is in the eyes and eyebrows. Clu (And flashback Flynn) have a solid immovable brow and their eyes almost never widen the way Jeff Bridges' do and did in the original film. The lack of emoting is the biggest problem with the CG model. That's fine for CLU, but makes no sense for the younger version of Flynn!
 * Many of the live-action characters in this film can seem a little off, especially the sirens.
 * The baby on the ceiling in Trainspotting during Ewan MacGregor's withdrawal scene.
 * Mars Attacks! had two martians disguised as a woman. It was deeply in the uncanny valley, but it didn't bother the guy who was hitting on her..
 * Shawn and Marlon's "disguises" in White Chicks. Holy jumping shitballs!
 * In Jack Frost 1998 (no, not the film about the killer snowman), Michael Keaton is reincarnated as this horrifying thing. The way it looked and moved was scary to many viewers; Roger Ebert called it "the most repulsive single creature in the history of special effects."
 * The pre-serumed Steve Rogers in the Captain America trailer is distinctly...off. Given that the CGI's done' by the same people that did The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, it's not much of a surprise.
 * The battle room drones in Flash Gordon. Tear the glasses off, and they have no eyes, just wires sticking out of empty holes!
 * E.B. in the film Hop. His fur and facial features is realistic enough to pass for that of a real rabbit. Yet the proportion of his head and body size just doesn't look right, and healthy rabbits aren't supposed to be that skinny. It just doesn't add up.
 * Porn stars can have this effect on someone who is either not attracted to porn stars, or not into the particular gender that porn focuses on.
 * Any time a human character is revealed to actually be a robot, they cross into Uncanny Valley. When my nephew was around five years old, he freaked out watching the beginning of Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me when it was revealed that Miss Kensington was actually a fembot. He refused to watch any more Austin Powers after that, which turned out to be a good choice. There is a certain betrayal when a character you thought was human is actually robot. Kind of like catching a cheating spouse in the act.
 * Resident Evil: Degeneration. The character animations were stiff, and the lip synching was not of the best quality. Though the lip syncing may or may not have simply been due to the fact it's Japanese.
 * The Smurfs in their 3d movie are particularly creepy. It makes you sympathetic with Gargamel, kill them all!
 * In Daft Punk's Electroma, the main character robots have latex poured over their helmets in order to look more human. They end up just looking terrifying, with their still faces and staring eyes. Gah! Fortunately this is invoked, because the other robots in the town they're in are also horrified and drive them out. And then the movie gets sad.
 * I might be alone in this, but something about Amanda Seyfried in the trailer for In Time looks...off. Maybe it's the hairstyle with her eyes, but something looks wrong.
 * Michael Myers' mask from Halloween creates this effect. If you're not paying attention, or viewing it in the dark, it looks human enough. At a passing glance, you might not even notice that it isn't his actual face. But when you get a good look at it, you notice something wrong. Very, very wrong. It looks like it was based on a human face, but one rendered soulless and inhuman by some unspeakable evil. It gives the impression that Myers used to be human, but is now some horrific parody of humanity. The effect is unsettling at first, but the longer you look at it, the more it stares back, like some terrible staring contest. And the mask is never going to blink.
 * Dr. Loomis' description of Michael's actual face fits this trope like a glove.


 * In the second Hellboy movie, the baby that Hellboy rescues has a CG-rendered face that falls deep into the Uncanny Valley. Justified in that there was no way for a real baby to be used in a scene with stunts like that!
 * The Adventures of Tintin movie got slammed in several reviews for this, particularly in the design of Tintin himself as opposed to the more cartoony side-characters.
 * Tim Curry as Pennywise The Dancing Clown in IT.
 * from Breaking Dawn Part I. She's like a moving Creepy Doll.
 * In the live action film of The Grinch, the Whos look like normal humans but with large ears and weirdly shaped noses...and it's rather unsettling.
 * Rango: Beans in general. Rather than resembling a real desert iguana, she looks like a cross between a little girl's doll, an alien, and something almost equine. It's the lizard variant of Uncanny Valley.
 * Ten Thousand BC: Whose bright idea was it to give the half-Brazilian chick Blue Eyes?
 * Judging from his performance in this promotional video for Prometheus, Michael Fassbender will be pulling this off rather nicely. It's the cheerful monotone, neutral expression, and the fact that he can apparently cry on demand that does it.
 * A lot in Tideland, from Jeliza Rose's borderline sociopathic behavior, to some of the effects, like when Jeliza's face appears on one of her doll-heads, which actually makes Oancitizen jump.
 * In Bride of Frankenstein, the Bride looks mostly normal, unlike the original Monster, but her hair and wardrobe are famously peculiar, and Elsa Lanchester's performance as her is wonderfully off-putting. Her eyes are perpetually wide, yet her expression is almost completely blank. Her arms seem oddly stiff, her balance is just a little off, and the way she turns her head seems more birdlike than human. Then there's her unexplained, inhuman sounding hiss at the end. This is probably why, despite saying nothing and doing virtually nothing in her few minutes of screentime, the Bride became a One-Scene Wonder that's famous even today.