Published May 9, 2026, 8:30 a.m. ET

Perhaps one of the most insidious side effects of Hollywood’s 21st-century digital revolution was the proliferation of what may be modern cinema’s greatest menace: talking animals. For much of the ’90s, non-animated movies featuring animals focused on real monkeys , apes , and/or dogs doing some equivalent of silent-movie antics (or just, you know, playing sports that are usually played by humans ). But in the aftermath of a Best Picture nomination for the acclaimed family film Babe , the smash success of Eddie Murphy’s Dr. Dolittle remake, and the rise of more production-accessible computer effects that were no longer reserved for the biggest blockbusters, pseudo-live-action talking animals ran wild in Hollywood.

Sometimes footage of real animals was augmented with creepy computerized mouths. Eventually, the critters were more likely to be created whole-cloth on a computer. Regardless of the technique, the movies that resulted are, by and large, horrifying.…