I sat in a dark Las Vegas ballroom as a reel of faces flickered across a giant screen, and for a moment I could not tell which ones had lived and which had been summoned back. The trailer for As Deep as the Grave stopped the room not with spectacle but with a single, quiet line: “Don’t fear the dead and don’t fear me.” You could feel a hush that was equal parts wonder and unease.
At CinemaCon in Las Vegas, the trailer played on a big screen and the room fell quiet.
I’ll be blunt with you: the silence had weight. The footage promises a cinematic rough-hewnness—night scenes, ritual beats, a priestly figure who may or may not be Val Kilmer as we remember him. The line that lands in plain English feels like both blessing and provocation when delivered by something that looks like Kilmer.
Director Coerte Voorhees told the Washington Post that the AI-rendered Kilmer appears for 1 hour and 17 minutes. That number alone shifts this from cameo curiosity to central performance—and raises the stakes for how convincingly the team recreates voice and presence.
On screen, Kilmer-type images appear at different ages and the effect is unsettled.
I noticed faces that slid between elder and young with a jitter that pulled at my trust. Some frames read like a memory made visual; others feel slightly off, like a wax museum in half-light.
You should know what they attempted: the film borrows Val Kilmer’s likeness to play Father Fintan, a priest who is also a Native American spiritualist in a story about Ann Axtell Morris, a real archaeologist whose work revealed hidden chapters of Native American history. The tagline—“Some stories were too hidden to be found”—leans into secrecy, and the casting choice heightens the mythic mood.
Did Val Kilmer approve the use of his likeness?
Short answer: yes, according to reports. Kilmer’s estate and his daughter reportedly signed off; production notes suggest family consent was part of the plan. You should also remember Kilmer had agreed to be in the project before he died—production began in 2020 and was delayed by Covid. That background complicates the moral ledger: there’s lineage and intent, but also fresh questions about what it means to keep a performer “on screen” after they’re gone.
How much of the film features AI Val Kilmer?
Voorhees’ estimate—1 hour and 17 minutes—means the AI Kilmer is not an accent or cameo, he’s a pillar. If you care about performance authenticity, that’s where the film will be tested: sustaining a synthetic likeness for that duration forces you to judge not only technical skill but emotional truth.
Behind the scenes, signatures, delays, and a public illness shaped the film’s arc.
I talked to a colleague who covered Kilmer’s public cancer battle years ago; she said his voice and presence were integral to his star power. That matters here because the team tried to recreate not just a face but a voice—a soft, intimate thrum that once read like an audiobook narrator with an edge.
In the trailer the voice approximates younger Kilmer—breathy, whispered—but it never fully settles into a distinctly Kilmer cadence. You hear the intention, you sense the reference, but the feeling is of a ghost wearing a familiar costume rather than the man himself.
Is it legal to recreate a deceased actor with AI?
Legality rests on contracts, likeness rights, and estate approval. Kilmer’s prior agreement to participate, combined with reported estate consent, gives this production a legal runway most projects lack. Still, the broader industry debate is active: platforms and guilds from SAG-AFTRA to studios are watching how precedent, technology, and public sentiment collide.
For you—the viewer, critic, or industry watcher—this film tests a simple premise: can artificial reconstruction hold dramatic weight over feature length, or does it become a curiosity that distracts from story? The trailer doesn’t answer that; it only makes the question larger and the room quieter.
Ann Axtell Morris’ story anchors the film in real history—see the Smithsonian profile—and that matters because resurrection for spectacle alone feels different than resurrection to serve an important story. You’ll want to watch closely: to see if the AI is helping the narrative or hogging the stage.
Technically this belongs in conversations about OpenAI, deepfake toolchains, and visual effects houses who can composite faces into performance; ethically it sits with families, estates, and audiences who decide whether feeling fooled equals feeling moved.
I’m not here to tell you what to think, only to point at what the film asks of us: will you accept a recreated performer as a living presence, or will you measure it against memory and loss? Which side of that line will you stand on?