The Shining is good, isn’t it? A classic – arguably perfect – film. And yet ever since its release in 1980, the question on everyone’s lips has always been: but what if Jim Carrey starred in it? Well, thanks to deepfake technology, our collective dream has come true.
Thanks to YouTube user Ctrl Shift Face (clever!), you can now watch Carrey faceswap with Jack Nicholson to become aspiring writer Jack Torrance, as he menacingly tells his wife off for interrupting his workflow.
While the rest of the scene is lifted directly from Stanley Kubrick’s original film – including Nicholson’s body and hair – the face is perfectly switched, so much so that if you had never seen the original, you honestly wouldn’t bat an eyelid.
It’s so eerily accurate that actually I think Nicholson never starred in The Shining, and it was all a ruse to cover up the fact that Carrey is 30 years older than he’s letting on. The Truman Show is probably a documentary!
We already know that deepfake technology has advanced to let you put words in people’s mouths, and edit celebrities into porn films, so this video raises even more questions about the moral implications of such sophisticated software.
It may also spark discussions about the future of the film industry – if clips can be taken from previous work, does that mean famous actors eventually won’t need to act at all?
Seriousness aside – all work and no play makes Jim a dull boy, so it’s good to see him taking a break from his art to star in one of the greatest movies ever made.
Watch the clip below.