I know plenty of folks online feel that writing a "Worst of the Year" list is cruel and unnecessary, but I can safely say that I'm not one of those people. Over the course of any given year, I watch a ton of movies and see plenty of terrible ones. Some of the best criticism ever written comes in the form of negative reviews, so I see nothing wrong with recapping the worst of the worst. 2017 was a genuinely incredible year for cinema, but I was equally surprised by the number of purely awful movies I saw. These 15 films are, in my opinion, the worst that Hollywood had to offer over the course of the last year. From animated flicks to R-rated raunchy comedies to indie films, this list takes shots at everything. Check out my picks below!
15. THE HOUSE
Image courtesy of Warner Bros.
There has been a critical reappraisal for Andrew Jay Cohen's The House in recent weeks, and for the life of me, I cannot understand why. This dull and absurdly unfunny comedy is a mess from start to finish, and it's one of the more pointless movies I saw in 2017. The kind of R-rated comedy that relies way too much on sex jokes, F-bombs, and over-the-top bloodshed, The House does little to justify its own existence, despite the typically reliable presence of Will Ferrell, Amy Poehler, and supporting star Jason Mantzoukas. It's a relatively inoffensive movie, but it's nothing more than an 88 minute series of bad jokes.
14. THE MUMMY
Image: Universal/IMDb
The first of 2017's terrible wannabe franchise starters, The Mummy was originally meant to be the start of Universal's Dark Universe (well, that relied on audiences ignoring Dracula Untold). With Tom Cruise in the starring role, a major press release that announced future plans for more monster movies, and a massive marketing campaign, Universal put all of their chips on this film. But all of the financial and PR might in the world couldn't get anybody to the theater to see this fiasco, which turned out to be an ugly and uninspired action movie. Lacking the adventurous fun of the Brendan Fraser installments, while simultaneously failing to ever commit to the horror genre, The Mummy felt like blockbuster filmmaking 101- a by-the-numbers, tedious failure.
13. THE BAD BATCH
Image courtesy of NEON
This is the only film on the list that I feel bad about. Ana Lily Amirpour's The Bad Batch is a strange little indie film from a director with a clear and ambitious vision. But even though I try to give stuff like this the benefit of the doubt, The Bad Batch was an excruciating watch. Once you get past its unique concept, Amirpour's post-apocalyptic trip alternates between being surreal, grisly, and utterly vapid, as empty as the desert that serves as the setting. A sluggish mess that's all style and no substance, Amirpour takes a big swing and misses the mark entirely.
12. THE DARK TOWER
Image courtesy of Sony
The other atrocious franchise starter on the list, The Dark Tower committed the unforgivable crime of wasting Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, while also teaching the viewer absolutely nothing about its bizarre western/sci-fi universe. Running a pathetic 94 minutes in length, the worst of 2017's Stephen King adaptations did little with a clever premise, delivering dull action and bland exposition without ever generating anything resembling intrigue or excitement. Hardcore fans hated it, and I doubt that Nikolaj Arcel's film brought any new fans to the franchise. A major missed opportunity.
11. THE CIRCLE
Image courtesy of STX Entertainment
Oof. After The Spectacular Now and The End of the Tour, two great indie features from writer/director James Ponsoldt, the filmmaker moved up to the big leagues with his adaptation of The Circle. Unfortunately for him (and the audience), it was one of the most disastrous films of the year. A paranoid technological story that seemingly has little to say about the ideas that drive its own narrative, The Circle is a jumbled mess that never decides what it wants to be. And that ending. Not only is this a film filled with half-baked characters and ridiculous twists, but it also decides to just self-detonate in its final moments. After such a promising start to his career, I can only hope that James Ponsoldt finds a way to bounce back from this.
10. BRIGHT
Image courtesy of Netflix
Met with a massive amount of online vitriol upon its recent release on Netflix, there's no denying that Bright is an ugly, poorly-executed genre mashup that feels either awkward and excessive at every moment. Did it deserve to be called the worst movie of 2017? Not exactly. But by throwing the audience into the deep end of this weird and wild universe, Bright's narrative ends up going from downright ridiculous to insanely simplistic, at times both convoluted and maddeningly straight-forward. With non-existent characters, a terrible script, and an interesting premise that is totally wasted, Bright is a major misfire for Netflix. Maybe they can turn it around in the inevitable sequels, but the combined talents of David Ayer, Max Landis, and Will Smith can't deliver anything worth watching in this streaming blockbuster.
9. SUBURBICON
Image: Paramount/IMDb
On paper, Suburbicon seemed like a great idea. George Clooney behind the camera, an old Coen Brothers script as the foundation, a cast led by Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, and Oscar Isaac- what could go wrong? Lots of things. Almost everything, if we're being completely honest. Clooney couldn't resist putting some good, old-fashioned social commentary into this brutally dark crime story, and it just falls so flat. Not only does the race relations narrative serve as a borderline offensive red herring, but it sticks with the movie all the way to its final moments, even as the plot has morphed into something else entirely. Moments of greatness pop up from time to time, especially whenever Oscar Isaac's shady insurance agent is involved. But this is another sluggish, pointless, and horribly misguided film from Clooney, who should probably stick to acting and the tequila business at this point.
8. JUSTICE LEAGUE
Image courtesy of Warner Bros.
2017 was the best of times and the worst of times for Warner Bros.' DC Films division. They had their biggest success yet with Wonder Woman, which ended up being a smash success and the highest-grossing film of the summer. But then, there's Justice League, a film so bad that it may have caused the current iteration of the DC Extended Universe to fall to pieces. I know some people will hate me for putting Justice League on this list, but I'm sorry (not really, though), this film is as truly awful as any major blockbuster I saw in 2017. From directorial changes to post-production mustache woes, Justice League seemed to be doomed from the start. And doomed it was, as this hideous, poorly-edited special effects reel masquerading as a movie failed to succeed at even the most basic of tasks. Awful villain, simplistic narrative, wasted talent- yup, it's all here in the worst superhero movie of the year.
7. GEOSTORM
Image courtesy of Warner Bros.
Geostorm may be the first film in cinematic history designed to win Razzies. Who knew that Razzie bait could even be a thing? After years on the shelf, Dean Devlin's moronic disaster flick arrived in theaters and left without a peep at the box office. But that didn't stop critics from trekking to theaters to witness this epic nightmare for themselves, and the film didn't disappoint. As staggeringly tedious as it is laughably stupid, Geostorm is a totally cataclysmic journey from the first moment that someone in the cast utters the word "geostorm." Don't get me wrong, it's fun to watch eggs fry on the streets of Hong Kong, but Geostorm is devoid of anything resembling actual spectacle or drama (the special effects are all kinds of awful). It's the kind of movie that gives Hollywood blockbusters a bad name.
6. TABLE 19
Image courtesy of Fox Searchlight
Table 19 was dumped by Fox Searchlight in early March, right around that time after the Oscars when everyone has fled the arthouse theaters in favor of the multiplexes. They were probably hoping that nobody would even see this small little indie comedy, but I managed to catch an afternoon screening. And despite the fact that I really like Anna Kendrick and pretty much everybody else in the cast, Table 19 was a brutal sit. I was shocked by the aggressive awfulness of the wedding comedy, each plot twist and attempt at humor landing with a powerful thud. The concept is basically an excuse for a bunch of funny people to sit around and trade jokes, but when there's just no material to work with, you get something that looks a little like Table 19. A painful 87 minutes at the theater.
5. TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT
Image: Paramount/IMDb
I defended the Transformers franchise for far too long, but in 2017, Michael Bay finally made a movie that was downright indefensible with The Last Knight. The fifth and hopefully final installment in the blockbuster series is the worst of the franchise by a wide margin, so bloated and incomprehensible that it makes Revenge of the Fallen look like a masterpiece of storytelling by comparison. Mark Wahlberg is back as intrepid inventor Cade Yeager, and in a post-apocalyptic America, the Transformers are back because........reasons. After over a decade with the series, Michael Bay gives up any pretension of narrative coherence, opting for all-out visual insanity for 2.5 hours. And yet the Bayhem has grown stale, simultaneously excessive and boring to a point where I was totally and completely numb. I'll make excuses for some of Bay's movies. The Last Knight is not one of them.
4. GHOST IN THE SHELL
Image: Paramount/IMDb
In late 2016, I found myself very intrigued by the trailer for Ghost in the Shell, which teased a slick and effortlessly cool sci-fi flick in the vein of Blade Runner and other cyberpunk favorites. Despite the whitewashing controversy and the fact that Snow White and the Huntsman director Rupert Sanders was behind the camera, I was pretty excited. Instead, I got a film that felt like it was made by a robot. Not only does Ghost in the Shell lack thematic nuance and an engaging plot, it may just be the dullest major action movie I've seen in years. Almost unimaginably flat to the point that I felt physical pain, Sanders' anime adaptation is a waste of good visual effects.
3. THE SNOWMAN
Image: Universal/IMDb
If we go by what director Tomas Alfredson told the media, The Snowman is an incomplete film. In the weeks leading up to its release, Alfredson grabbed headlines for mentioning that they didn't shoot 10-15% of the movie. And it shows. The Snowman is constantly choppy, jumping from scene to scene in a way that is fiercely jarring and totally bewildering. With this in mind, it almost feels unfair to judge it as a finished movie. But what's on screen isn't even good in its own right, cutting like a dull knife and carrying all the suspense and intrigue of an average episode of Sesame Street. The plot legitimately makes no sense, the actors seem tired and miserable, and the film is ultimately so jumbled beyond repair that even master editor Thelma Schoonmaker couldn't do anything with the material. Already memed and parodied extensively on Film Twitter, there's not much left to say about The Snowman. But for the sake of everyone involved, I hope it's never mentioned again in any context.
2. BAYWATCH
Image: Paramount/IMDb
I did not expect to put Baywatch on this list when it was first announced. On paper, the Dwayne Johnson/Zac Efron vehicle looked like a great buddy comedy in the vein of 21 Jump Street, another film that revived an old TV show in the form of an R-rated raunch fest. Instead, we got what is undeniably one of the worst comedies of the decade, a mind-numbing, overlong, and terribly unfunny film that is exhausting and mundane in a way I never expected. Baywatch has a fundamental misunderstanding of what comedy even is, let alone what makes people laugh. It's the kind of movie that thinks a man getting his penis stuck in a beach chair is amusing. But beyond that, Seth Gordon's film is just generally incompetent, accompanied by a one-note villain, a ghastly lack of narrative intrigue, and some genuinely awful visual effects. The fact that Paramount was so bullish on this film at one point just shows how little the major studios think of mainstream audiences.
1. THE EMOJI MOVIE
Images courtesy of Sony
This list features quite a few bad movies. There are 14 films here that range from bad to painfully awful, all cinematic atrocities and misfires of one kind or another. But there's one film that cannot merely be referred to as "bad" or "terrible" or any other simple label that one would use to convey a distaste for something. No, this film deserves a fate far worse than that. It's everything wrong with modern Hollywood filmmaking. It's an idea so bad that the person who came up with it should have been forced to write it down on a piece of paper and promptly throw that paper in a volcano. It is a cash grab of the highest order. It's so cynical and misguided and painful from start to finish.
It's The Emoji Movie. And it might just be the worst film I've ever seen in a movie theater.
I'm not gonna lie, I had a blast watching this. It's so incredibly shameless, almost to the point that it's laughing in the face of anyone who dared to buy a ticket. The Emoji Movie's minimal attempts at humor come in the form of running jokes, jokes that are so profoundly unfunny that it's amazing anyone who wrote them felt they were worthy of a first draft, let alone a finished film. It's rare to find a movie without a single redeeming quality, but The Emoji Movie passes that test with flying colors- it's a soulless and insulting vacuum of consumerism. It's the worst movie of 2017 by a landslide. I can only pray that I'm never forced to sit through The Emoji Movie 2.
Well, I'm glad that's out of the way. Now I can permanently erase these movies from my brain and never think about them again.
With that said, my Top 25 list is coming, and I'm very excited to share it with you. I have a few more reviews to write in the next few days, but the list is being constructed as we speak. Stay tuned....
15. THE HOUSE
Image courtesy of Warner Bros.
There has been a critical reappraisal for Andrew Jay Cohen's The House in recent weeks, and for the life of me, I cannot understand why. This dull and absurdly unfunny comedy is a mess from start to finish, and it's one of the more pointless movies I saw in 2017. The kind of R-rated comedy that relies way too much on sex jokes, F-bombs, and over-the-top bloodshed, The House does little to justify its own existence, despite the typically reliable presence of Will Ferrell, Amy Poehler, and supporting star Jason Mantzoukas. It's a relatively inoffensive movie, but it's nothing more than an 88 minute series of bad jokes.
14. THE MUMMY
Image: Universal/IMDb
The first of 2017's terrible wannabe franchise starters, The Mummy was originally meant to be the start of Universal's Dark Universe (well, that relied on audiences ignoring Dracula Untold). With Tom Cruise in the starring role, a major press release that announced future plans for more monster movies, and a massive marketing campaign, Universal put all of their chips on this film. But all of the financial and PR might in the world couldn't get anybody to the theater to see this fiasco, which turned out to be an ugly and uninspired action movie. Lacking the adventurous fun of the Brendan Fraser installments, while simultaneously failing to ever commit to the horror genre, The Mummy felt like blockbuster filmmaking 101- a by-the-numbers, tedious failure.
13. THE BAD BATCH
Image courtesy of NEON
This is the only film on the list that I feel bad about. Ana Lily Amirpour's The Bad Batch is a strange little indie film from a director with a clear and ambitious vision. But even though I try to give stuff like this the benefit of the doubt, The Bad Batch was an excruciating watch. Once you get past its unique concept, Amirpour's post-apocalyptic trip alternates between being surreal, grisly, and utterly vapid, as empty as the desert that serves as the setting. A sluggish mess that's all style and no substance, Amirpour takes a big swing and misses the mark entirely.
12. THE DARK TOWER
Image courtesy of Sony
The other atrocious franchise starter on the list, The Dark Tower committed the unforgivable crime of wasting Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, while also teaching the viewer absolutely nothing about its bizarre western/sci-fi universe. Running a pathetic 94 minutes in length, the worst of 2017's Stephen King adaptations did little with a clever premise, delivering dull action and bland exposition without ever generating anything resembling intrigue or excitement. Hardcore fans hated it, and I doubt that Nikolaj Arcel's film brought any new fans to the franchise. A major missed opportunity.
11. THE CIRCLE
Image courtesy of STX Entertainment
Oof. After The Spectacular Now and The End of the Tour, two great indie features from writer/director James Ponsoldt, the filmmaker moved up to the big leagues with his adaptation of The Circle. Unfortunately for him (and the audience), it was one of the most disastrous films of the year. A paranoid technological story that seemingly has little to say about the ideas that drive its own narrative, The Circle is a jumbled mess that never decides what it wants to be. And that ending. Not only is this a film filled with half-baked characters and ridiculous twists, but it also decides to just self-detonate in its final moments. After such a promising start to his career, I can only hope that James Ponsoldt finds a way to bounce back from this.
10. BRIGHT
Image courtesy of Netflix
Met with a massive amount of online vitriol upon its recent release on Netflix, there's no denying that Bright is an ugly, poorly-executed genre mashup that feels either awkward and excessive at every moment. Did it deserve to be called the worst movie of 2017? Not exactly. But by throwing the audience into the deep end of this weird and wild universe, Bright's narrative ends up going from downright ridiculous to insanely simplistic, at times both convoluted and maddeningly straight-forward. With non-existent characters, a terrible script, and an interesting premise that is totally wasted, Bright is a major misfire for Netflix. Maybe they can turn it around in the inevitable sequels, but the combined talents of David Ayer, Max Landis, and Will Smith can't deliver anything worth watching in this streaming blockbuster.
9. SUBURBICON
Image: Paramount/IMDb
On paper, Suburbicon seemed like a great idea. George Clooney behind the camera, an old Coen Brothers script as the foundation, a cast led by Matt Damon, Julianne Moore, and Oscar Isaac- what could go wrong? Lots of things. Almost everything, if we're being completely honest. Clooney couldn't resist putting some good, old-fashioned social commentary into this brutally dark crime story, and it just falls so flat. Not only does the race relations narrative serve as a borderline offensive red herring, but it sticks with the movie all the way to its final moments, even as the plot has morphed into something else entirely. Moments of greatness pop up from time to time, especially whenever Oscar Isaac's shady insurance agent is involved. But this is another sluggish, pointless, and horribly misguided film from Clooney, who should probably stick to acting and the tequila business at this point.
8. JUSTICE LEAGUE
Image courtesy of Warner Bros.
2017 was the best of times and the worst of times for Warner Bros.' DC Films division. They had their biggest success yet with Wonder Woman, which ended up being a smash success and the highest-grossing film of the summer. But then, there's Justice League, a film so bad that it may have caused the current iteration of the DC Extended Universe to fall to pieces. I know some people will hate me for putting Justice League on this list, but I'm sorry (not really, though), this film is as truly awful as any major blockbuster I saw in 2017. From directorial changes to post-production mustache woes, Justice League seemed to be doomed from the start. And doomed it was, as this hideous, poorly-edited special effects reel masquerading as a movie failed to succeed at even the most basic of tasks. Awful villain, simplistic narrative, wasted talent- yup, it's all here in the worst superhero movie of the year.
7. GEOSTORM
Image courtesy of Warner Bros.
Geostorm may be the first film in cinematic history designed to win Razzies. Who knew that Razzie bait could even be a thing? After years on the shelf, Dean Devlin's moronic disaster flick arrived in theaters and left without a peep at the box office. But that didn't stop critics from trekking to theaters to witness this epic nightmare for themselves, and the film didn't disappoint. As staggeringly tedious as it is laughably stupid, Geostorm is a totally cataclysmic journey from the first moment that someone in the cast utters the word "geostorm." Don't get me wrong, it's fun to watch eggs fry on the streets of Hong Kong, but Geostorm is devoid of anything resembling actual spectacle or drama (the special effects are all kinds of awful). It's the kind of movie that gives Hollywood blockbusters a bad name.
6. TABLE 19
Image courtesy of Fox Searchlight
Table 19 was dumped by Fox Searchlight in early March, right around that time after the Oscars when everyone has fled the arthouse theaters in favor of the multiplexes. They were probably hoping that nobody would even see this small little indie comedy, but I managed to catch an afternoon screening. And despite the fact that I really like Anna Kendrick and pretty much everybody else in the cast, Table 19 was a brutal sit. I was shocked by the aggressive awfulness of the wedding comedy, each plot twist and attempt at humor landing with a powerful thud. The concept is basically an excuse for a bunch of funny people to sit around and trade jokes, but when there's just no material to work with, you get something that looks a little like Table 19. A painful 87 minutes at the theater.
5. TRANSFORMERS: THE LAST KNIGHT
Image: Paramount/IMDb
I defended the Transformers franchise for far too long, but in 2017, Michael Bay finally made a movie that was downright indefensible with The Last Knight. The fifth and hopefully final installment in the blockbuster series is the worst of the franchise by a wide margin, so bloated and incomprehensible that it makes Revenge of the Fallen look like a masterpiece of storytelling by comparison. Mark Wahlberg is back as intrepid inventor Cade Yeager, and in a post-apocalyptic America, the Transformers are back because........reasons. After over a decade with the series, Michael Bay gives up any pretension of narrative coherence, opting for all-out visual insanity for 2.5 hours. And yet the Bayhem has grown stale, simultaneously excessive and boring to a point where I was totally and completely numb. I'll make excuses for some of Bay's movies. The Last Knight is not one of them.
4. GHOST IN THE SHELL
Image: Paramount/IMDb
In late 2016, I found myself very intrigued by the trailer for Ghost in the Shell, which teased a slick and effortlessly cool sci-fi flick in the vein of Blade Runner and other cyberpunk favorites. Despite the whitewashing controversy and the fact that Snow White and the Huntsman director Rupert Sanders was behind the camera, I was pretty excited. Instead, I got a film that felt like it was made by a robot. Not only does Ghost in the Shell lack thematic nuance and an engaging plot, it may just be the dullest major action movie I've seen in years. Almost unimaginably flat to the point that I felt physical pain, Sanders' anime adaptation is a waste of good visual effects.
3. THE SNOWMAN
Image: Universal/IMDb
If we go by what director Tomas Alfredson told the media, The Snowman is an incomplete film. In the weeks leading up to its release, Alfredson grabbed headlines for mentioning that they didn't shoot 10-15% of the movie. And it shows. The Snowman is constantly choppy, jumping from scene to scene in a way that is fiercely jarring and totally bewildering. With this in mind, it almost feels unfair to judge it as a finished movie. But what's on screen isn't even good in its own right, cutting like a dull knife and carrying all the suspense and intrigue of an average episode of Sesame Street. The plot legitimately makes no sense, the actors seem tired and miserable, and the film is ultimately so jumbled beyond repair that even master editor Thelma Schoonmaker couldn't do anything with the material. Already memed and parodied extensively on Film Twitter, there's not much left to say about The Snowman. But for the sake of everyone involved, I hope it's never mentioned again in any context.
2. BAYWATCH
Image: Paramount/IMDb
I did not expect to put Baywatch on this list when it was first announced. On paper, the Dwayne Johnson/Zac Efron vehicle looked like a great buddy comedy in the vein of 21 Jump Street, another film that revived an old TV show in the form of an R-rated raunch fest. Instead, we got what is undeniably one of the worst comedies of the decade, a mind-numbing, overlong, and terribly unfunny film that is exhausting and mundane in a way I never expected. Baywatch has a fundamental misunderstanding of what comedy even is, let alone what makes people laugh. It's the kind of movie that thinks a man getting his penis stuck in a beach chair is amusing. But beyond that, Seth Gordon's film is just generally incompetent, accompanied by a one-note villain, a ghastly lack of narrative intrigue, and some genuinely awful visual effects. The fact that Paramount was so bullish on this film at one point just shows how little the major studios think of mainstream audiences.
1. THE EMOJI MOVIE
Images courtesy of Sony
This list features quite a few bad movies. There are 14 films here that range from bad to painfully awful, all cinematic atrocities and misfires of one kind or another. But there's one film that cannot merely be referred to as "bad" or "terrible" or any other simple label that one would use to convey a distaste for something. No, this film deserves a fate far worse than that. It's everything wrong with modern Hollywood filmmaking. It's an idea so bad that the person who came up with it should have been forced to write it down on a piece of paper and promptly throw that paper in a volcano. It is a cash grab of the highest order. It's so cynical and misguided and painful from start to finish.
It's The Emoji Movie. And it might just be the worst film I've ever seen in a movie theater.
I'm not gonna lie, I had a blast watching this. It's so incredibly shameless, almost to the point that it's laughing in the face of anyone who dared to buy a ticket. The Emoji Movie's minimal attempts at humor come in the form of running jokes, jokes that are so profoundly unfunny that it's amazing anyone who wrote them felt they were worthy of a first draft, let alone a finished film. It's rare to find a movie without a single redeeming quality, but The Emoji Movie passes that test with flying colors- it's a soulless and insulting vacuum of consumerism. It's the worst movie of 2017 by a landslide. I can only pray that I'm never forced to sit through The Emoji Movie 2.
Well, I'm glad that's out of the way. Now I can permanently erase these movies from my brain and never think about them again.
With that said, my Top 25 list is coming, and I'm very excited to share it with you. I have a few more reviews to write in the next few days, but the list is being constructed as we speak. Stay tuned....
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