12. The Purge: This hyped-up science fiction/horror-thriller had a pretty laughable premise to begin with, only made worse by it's very thin plot and acting that ranges from too stoic to too over-the-top. Ethan Hawke, Lena Headey, and Edwin Hodge are the stand-outs of the film, but even they can barely work with the material. It's even more disappointing considering the entire "home-invasion" portion, you know, the whole selling point of the film, lasts about 15 minutes. It's not the worst film out there, but it's devoid of scares (except those creepy masks the villains where) and thrills (besides some short fights during the home invasion). The film was turned into a very scary Halloween Horror Nights scare-zone, so that's a plus. A sequel is in the works, hopefully that one is better, hopefully.
11. The Lone Ranger: I wasn't really expecting much from this 2 and a half-hour popcorn movie based off a western TV show and radio character from 50 years ago, but I didn't really hate it. It's got some fun bits, but overall it leaves you feeling like you wasted a good chunk of your time. Some parts leave you with your jaw dropped at their stupidity and complete lack of any realism, and some portions of the film stretch on and on, leaving you bored beyond belief, and the subplot involving the little boy talking to an elderly Tonto makes no sense and has absolutely no payoff whatsoever. Again, not the worst film of the year, but pretty bad.
10. Riddick: After waiting so long for the return of Riddick to the big screen, I can certainly say I was disappointed by this boring, pointless sequel that basically rehashes the best scene of Pitch Black and just shoves The Chronicles of Riddick aside. Seriously, it barely connects back to that movie, you can pretty much watch this movie without seeing the previous one and just fill in the blanks. Vin Diesel does his best, and he still can pull off the character of Riddick really well, but even he can't help these movie. Katee Sackhoff's in it, though, so that helps a little. Just a little, though. Although I didn't completely hate this movie, I can definitely say it wasn't anything special and is yet another disappointing third installment, as if there weren't enough of those: Superman III, Batman Forever, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, etc.
9. G.I. Joe- Retaliation: Even though this isn't nearly as bad as the first Joe film or the two Transformers sequels, it's still a pretty dumb movie. Dwayne Johnson is the best part, mainly because he's a very charismatic action star, and the rest of the cast, even people like Channing Tatum (who has a very small role), Bruce Willis (who shows up in the third act), and Ray Stevenson, fall very short of even decent, and are extremely bland and forgettable. Packed with nauseating CG-packed action scenes and with a plot that barely follows the story set up at the end of the first film, this makes me hope that the studio will never green-light another G.I. Joe film, or at least, never green-light one from this production team.
8. Grown Ups 2: Yet another shitty comedy film from Adam Sandler. Dude, what happened. What happened to stuff like Happy Gilmore and Punch-Drunk Love? Even in recent years you've had some good ones, like Funny People or Hotel Transylvania. Mr. Sandler, one the off-chance you're reading this, stop making these crappy, gross-out comedy films with way too many celebrity cameos, and stop and think: how do you want people to remember your career: the comedian who had a good run on SNL, and made some good movies, or the money-hungry producer/actor who churned out bad movie after bad movie, year after year, just to make a quick buck. Think about it. As for the movie itself, it's one of the worst comedies of the year. The obvious jokes, the stupid characters, the hammy acting, the paper-thin plot, everything about this movie is awful, the one good thing I can say about it is that they tried to do something new with the jokes. But even Rob Schneider didn't want to be in this movie, and if that doesn't tell you that this movie is horseshit, then I don't know what will. But, to be fair, I didn't hate it as much as I hated other films on this list, after all, we still have 7 more slots to go.
7. After Earth: This Will Smith vehicle is just another example of how far M. Night Shyamalan has fallen, as "YourMovieSucks" on YouTube pointed out (paraphrasing) "he went from people lining up around the block because his name was on the movie poster, to people refusing to see it because his name was on the poster". M. Night, what the fuck has happened to you? There's a reason his name didn't appear in any of the promotional material: for one, the movie was actually Smith's idea, he just approached M. Night with the directing job, the major one, though, is that everyone has hated Shyamalan ever since The Village. And Lady in the Water, The Happening, and the god-awful Last Airbender (which pissed off the entire fan-base of the animated series it's based on) haven't helped either. But the main problem with the film isn't M. Night, as I said, the movie wasn't his idea, so he didn't write it, no the main problem is that the acting is almost devoid of emotion, the CG is just okay, the whole plot isn't that plausible, and the explanation for why humans left Earth behind is very bland and doesn't go into any detail at all. The movie manages to make the usually charming and likeable Will Smith unrelatable and robotic, and he's basically crippled for the whole movie, so the movie switches focus to his uninteresting son. Apologies to Jaden Smith, he was good in The Karate Kid and I'm sure he's a really great guy, but he lacks the charisma and acting talent of his father, so I think this whole movie was a bit of a mistake. It was probably a cool father/son project, but overall, I felt it could've been done a lot better. A lot better.
6. Hansel & Gretel- Witch Hunters: Although my original review was positive, upon further inspection, this movie is really just a very dumb popcorn movie with some cool visuals, and that's it. Despite boasting a pretty good cast, the whole film feels like the whole crew, including the writing staff, said "Fuck it, who gives a shit, it's a January movie, people are dumb, they eat this shit up." And they were right, my initial reaction was to eat this shit up, because it has some cool action sequences and a lot of gore, and a lot of my friends that it was awesome, but upon further viewing, I just found the whole thing rather stupid. The only thing I can really say is it has some creepy-looking witches, a decent amount of gore and action, and some cool visuals. Other than that, it's a piece of shit, and I'd say skip it, unless it's in one of those clearance bins you find in video stores or Targets. Then I guess you could buy it for like 5 bucks.
5. R.I.P.D.: This Men in Black/Ghostbusters rip-off doesn't even come close to capturing the fun of those two movies. The CG is shit, the action scenes are just awful and devoid of all thrills, the duo have no chemistry, and the humor is very forced. The best part of the movie is Jeff Bridges, and even he can't make this movie any better. Kevin Bacon is a very boring and very unoriginal villain, and the plot twist (SPOILERS) that he's actually a "deado", or renegade ghost, makes no real sense. Ryan Reynolds may be great in comedies, but he's a terrible action hero. I'm sorry, but there's nothing about him that suggests that he can pull off the action hero role. It's like if Jason Bateman or Charlie Day tried to pull off an action hero part, it's just not what they do, they're just not fit for it. The whole movie feels far too short, and the story doesn't feel grand enough for a summer blockbuster. I'm surprised this wasn't shoved back to January where it belongs.
4. The Last Exorcism- Part II: It's pretty strange that a sequel to a found-footage movie is shot like a regular movie. That alone made me kind of question how this horror film was gonna play out. I saw it with my buddy and we laughed our asses off: the worst possible reaction you can have to a horror movie, or any movie that takes itself seriously. The first movie was just okay, but at least it had some good scares in it, despite the over-the-top ending (which I actually kind of liked), but this movie makes it look like a modern masterpiece. The ending was a let-down, (SPOILERS) because the main character makes an extremely selfish decision that basically destroys all of humanity to save herself. Talk about being unlikeable. Seriously, what a fucking bitch. The plot is laughable, the "scary" parts produces uncontrollable, hysterical laughter rather than uncontrollable, hysterical screaming, and the main character makes several selfish and stupid decisions that make her very unlikeable, she fits the "too dumb to live" trope really well.
3. Scary Movie V: The latest in this god-awful "comedy" series, this time it stars Ashley Tisdale and a slew of other actors who have now lost all credibility. The film is not just unfunny, it doesn't seem to understand that a spoof or parody film has to be subtle, and actually make fun of the thing it's lampooning, and pay some homage to the source material, some good examples are: Airplane!, Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, The Other Guys, How It Should Have Ended (web series), Team America: World Police, The Naked Gun, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, Spaceballs, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, the list goes on. All these films, no matter how absurdist they can be, still act as if they should be taken seriously (part of what makes them funny), which this film (and the rest of the films in this franchise for that matter) seems lost on. All the actors chew the scenery at every opportunity, and they seem to think just referencing different popular movies is the same as actually making fun of them. Although it got two or three small laughs out of me, it's a shitty, shitty movie that doesn't deserve to even be referred to as a comedy, it has no talent behind it, and it's obvious the filmmakers didn't actually care about it, they just knew dumb teens and grade-schoolers would eat it up. And they were right. I certainly hope this is the last of this heinous series.
2. Movie 43: I actually only saw half of this piece of shit, and several clips of the second half, but that really told me all I need to know about this one. The film boasts an impressive cast, which was actually acquired by the producers luring in these actors by showing them how many other famous actors were in it, without actually telling them what the movie was about. These poor actors then had to humiliate themselves by starring in short "comedy" segments, each of which is even more disgustingly offensive and unfunny as the last. Yet another comedy that is confused about humor: it, like many others nowadays, thinks being gross and offensive and being legitimately funny are the same fucking thing. They're not the same, you fucking idiots! It's so bad, it makes you angry just thinking about it. Every skit is just an awkward, weird, gross mess, none of which are funny. There's even one starring Richard Gere that involved the accidental castration of several teens, what's remotely humorous about that?! The only one that even had a chance of being funny stars Terrence Howard as a basketball coach telling his all-black team (who are facing off against a primarily white team) that they don't need a game-plan: "You're black, they're white, this ain't hockey!" Now that part in the trailer was mildly amusing, until the entire sketch is just a continuous repeat of the same fucking joke, same fucking line, over and over and over again. It's like the world's most annoying broken record, they don't just beat a dead horse in this part, they fucking go to town on the dead horse until it's non-existent. They just obliterate it. For more info. on how terrible this atrocity against the medium of film is, check out Chris Stuckmann's YouTube video, linked here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7knF4qBaCDg Now, you may be wondering, how is this not #1? What could possibly be worse than Movie 43? Well, I'll tell you.
1. A Good Day to Die Hard: Even though, from an overall perspective, this isn't as bad as Scary Movie V or Movie 43, it's the worst for me because it really destroyed one of my favorite action movie franchises: Die Hard. People give the PG-13 Live Free or Die Hard a lot of shit, but compared to this piece of absolute fucking garbage, it's one of the best in the series. This film not only has no memorable villain, the plot is very thin, Jai Courtney's portrayal of John McClane's son is just horrendous, and McClane himself isn't present. Oh, they say he's in the movie, but really it's just Bruce Willis not giving a shit for 90 minutes, almost like they're dangling his paycheck just to the side of the camera. The director, John Moore, is known for his bad track record, including directing the abomination called The Omen remake back in 2006, and 2008's Max Payne, which pissed off the entire fan-base of the video game series it was based on, myself included. Moore's latest effort has ruined yet another franchise, there's talks of a sixth film on the way, and I would be excited, except this film squandered any excitement I might have felt regarding the series. The action scenes defy physics and reality in general, the CGI looks like something CorridorDigital on YouTube could accomplish better (but check those guys out, they're really good), the villains are so bland and forgettable you don't even remember their names or their evil goals (even Timothy Olyphant in the fourth film was more memorable than this), and the whole movie is far too short at just 97 minutes long. Just to see how much I despised this movie, see my review from last year, which was basically just a long list of expletives followed by a few complaints, then more swearing. Also, go watch Chris Stuckmann's reaction/analysis on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mJqDiCu6eA. A Good Day to Die Hard doesn't deserve to be called a Die Hard film: John Moore, I'm sure you're a nice guy, but fuck you for ruining this movie franchise for me. Seriously, fuck you.
Runner-ups (these were disappointing, but not bad enough to make the list): Identity Thief, Oblivion, The Lords of Salem, Last Vegas, We're the Millers, The Last Stand.
Runner-ups (these are films that were awful, but not quite awful enough): A Haunted House, Texas Chainsaw 3D.
(Images: Wikipedia)
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