The worst CGI in the history of horror movies

Imagine: you are at the cinema to see a horror movie. Things are gearing up for a big scare. You’re almost scared to death. The sudden crash of the musical cue plays, but instead of something terrifying, all you see is a strange, messy digital effect where the movie’s villain should be. It’s the worst thing that can happen to a horror movie (besides being bad), and before the hyper-realistic era of digital effects we’re seeing now, things were pretty complicated.

Computer-generated imagery has been used in movies for decades: Saul Bass used computer graphics for Alfred Hitchcock’s opening credits. Vertigo in 1958, and has since become more ubiquitous. More obvious digital images were used in science fiction films such as tron, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khanand The abyss, some of which seem a little cheesy now, but were innovative for the time. Horror, which has always been the realm of meticulously designed practical effect, began to rely heavily on CGI, perhaps a little before the technology reached its peak, which meant that so many films have been marred by graphical poorly rendered.

For this list, we’ve picked ten of the worst, from deformed rubbery cat faces to gooey aliens and a hilariously stoned caterpillar, showing just how bad CGI can look in an era where movies rely on it more than ever. Some of these movies are great anyway, but many of them are bad, products of an era that put technology before quality. Read on to celebrate the worst and don’t stop your car in the middle of a herd of killer deer.

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