I’ll be honest, 2015 was for me a bit of a disappointing year for movies, well at least in terms of the blockbuster films, aside from a few gems (The Force Awakens, Mad Max, Kingsman, etc). Although I liked Spectre, thought Jurassic World was decent and secretly liked Terminator Genysis, they all felt a little disappointing. None of those made the list as for me as those were more disappointing than bad, there are far worse movies that actually deserves some criticism. I didn’t watch a lot of bad movies as I don’t watch every movie that comes into cinema, most of these were from watching them in 2016 to catch up on the lowlights of the previous year. But I watched enough bad movies to make a top 10 worst movies of the year list.

Honourable Mention:

The Assassin

The reason I didn’t do a review for this movie was because there wasn’t enough for me to say about it to fill up an entire review. This movie got a lot of awards, including one at the Cannes Film Festival and before watching it, I had a feeling I knew what sort of film it is. Having seen it, I don’t personally understand all the acclaim it’s been getting. It seemed like a slow burn film with style over substance. And the worst part is that it felt like a lot of scenes of literally nothing happening, with long shots of characters doing nothing (the last shot of the film is a complete joke). This movie wasn’t the worst, it is certainly shot beautifully and looks great, however despite this movie being under 2 hours, it felt like it was over 2 hours and a half. However this movie is only on this list as an honourable mention as it really isn’t my type of movie, so I’ll cut this movie some slack.

10. The Lazarus Effect

The Lazarus Effect is another one of those modern horror movies that just fails at delivering. The jumpscares weren’t effective at all, it got quite boring at times, and all the clichés that you can expect from this premise happens. It’s nowhere near as bad as some of the movies on this list and it still has a good cast and an interesting premise that prevents it from being an even worse movie. But it’s still by no means a good movie and it’s really not worth anyone’s time, unless anyone’s interested in remaking it into a much better movie, which I think could be done.

My review of The Lazarus Effect

9. Jupiter Ascending

This is one of the only movies on this list that I think might be worth checking out which is why it’s lower on my list, however it’s for all the wrong reasons. Jupiter Ascending is another recent failure of the Wachowskis. Although it’s not their worst film (Speed Racer is still their worst in my opinion) it’s still a pretty bad movie. There are admittedly some enjoyable moments, intentional or not, the action is well directed, the soundtrack was really great and Channing Tatum and Sean Bean manage to rise above the bad writing. And there were unintentionally enjoyable moments like some of the ideas like bees being genetically created to sense royalty was hilarious. There was also Eddie Redmayne’s performance which featured a voice which was a mix of Richard Harris’s Dumbledore, Ralph Fiennes’s Voldermort, for his whispering voice and a little bit of Michael Shannon’s Zod as he just snaps and ends up screaming out of nowhere every so often. All of this made him sound hilarious and one of the highlights of the film in the worst possible way. However there were quite a lot of political exposition and at times it could be pretty boring, so the movie was not quite at the level of The Happening or The Room. Jupiter Ascending is overall not a good movie, but I have a feeling in a few years it will be known as one of the most entertaining trainwrecks in cinema history.

My review of Jupiter Ascending

8. The Loft

The Loft in short was pretty much a bad version of Clue, with a horrible script with hateable characters, a plot which gets boring and convoluted and includes lazy twists forced in to make this film seem smarter than it really is. The worst part is, after watching it, you immediately pick up on all these plot holes and inconsistencies which completely destroy the plot. The talented cast barely have any moments to show off their talent as they aren’t given good characters or even any good dialogue to work with. How this director managed to direct both the original and remake of Loft and manage to (apparently) succeed at the original but yet screw up at the remake I have no idea. This is definitely one whodunit to miss.

My review of The Loft

7. The Gunman

The Gunman had a great cast and director but just like with The Loft, the poor script let everyone down. What made it worse that The Loft was while it wasn’t good and a little boring at times, there was a little bit of interest of how it would end, but with The Gunman, it was so dull and lacked any sort of effort in the script that I didn’t care at all what happened in the end. No one is interesting and particularly likable, so there’s no reason to care about what’s going on. Aside from Sean Penn, every other actor, no matter how great they are, get at most 10 minutes of screen time and don’t have anything to work with. Even the action wasn’t that special, and this is from the director of Taken. I have no idea how this movie managed to go wrong but whatever the case, this movie doesn’t have much reason watching.

My review of The Gunman

6. Fantastic Four

A lot of people hated Fant4stic (yes I’m calling it that, that’s how it was marketed) and after seeing this movie I could see why. Even though I don’t hate it like everyone else, I still do think that it was a disaster, and a colossal disappointment from a studio that has made great superhero movies, a great director and a good cast. Fant4stic unlike its 2005 predecessor tried to go in a much darker and grittier direction, which initially sounded like a good idea considering the last two attempts at a Fantastic Four movie. However a big problem is that it tries to set up its own world and forgets to be its own movie. And it’s made all the more worse when nothing is going on and because of how joyless it is, it makes the experience all the more painful. I still think that the cast of Fantastic Four was decent with what they had but they are very restricted. And in my review I stated this many times, Fant4stic has the worst climax of any superhero movie I’ve seen so far. The effects suddenly got worse and more noticeable, Doctor Doom was underdeveloped, comes out of nowhere, has poor character motivations and the fight between him and the Four (which is by the time the only time in the movie the Four use their powers together) is about 5 minutes long. I still can’t say in good conscience that this is the worst Fantastic Four movie, as the only movie out of the four Fantastic Four movies that I actually kind of hate was Rise of the Silver Surfer, but it’s probably worse than the 2005 film, which I thought was as bad as this reboot could get. Unfortunately it wasn’t. This is the fourth failure at making a Fantastic Four movie and seeing as how this movie made about half of its budget back, it’s safe to say that Fox will finally give up the licence for good.

My review of Fantastic Four

5. Mortdecai

Mortdecai was another nail in the coffin of Johnny Depp’s career. Even if Black Mass revived his career, no one is going to forget Mortdecai. There are some opportunities that Mortdecai had, and most of them were wasted. Johnny Depp here was pretty much British Jack Sparrow, only much more annoying and insufferable than in his other roles. The talented cast consisting of Gwyneth Paltrow, Ewan McGregor and many others are serviceable, but don’t get a chance to show off their skills, only Paul Bettany manages to shine in a smaller role. Mortdecai wasn’t good at all, worst of all it was pretty boring and forgettable. I hope that Johnny Depp learns from this movie and Black Mass what projects he should take on and which he should avoid like the plague.

My review of Mortdecai

4. Taken 3

Taken 3 is one of the worst directed action movies I’ve ever seen. I don’t remember Taken 2 so I can’t say for certain if Taken 3 is better or worse than it but on its own, it was a pretty terrible action film. It had a story plot that made no sense, countless plot holes and of course, poorly filmed action scenes with close up shots as well as shots that don’t last two seconds before cutting to the next shot. Because of the performances from Liam Neeson, Forrest Whitaker, Maggie Grace and Famke Jensen, the movie still had a little bit of credibility but honestly, that was it. Taken 3 unlike many of the other picks on this list had no potential, it failed on almost every level. The film was basically The Fugitive starring Liam Neeson, under the title of a Taken movie, even though a kidnapping isn’t a major part of the movie. One of the taglines of the movie was ‘It Ends Here’, I certainly hope that’s the case for this franchise.

My review of Taken 3

3. Unfinished Business

Unfinished Business was supposedly a comedy but it completely failed on every level. The actors weren’t funny, the movie was boring, the comedy was forced and at times cringe worthy (the gloryhole scene, and pretty much every single scene with Dave Franco), everything in this movie is at best mediocre and at worst, annoyingly bad. Unfinished Business wasn’t a good movie and worst of all it was a complete waste of time. There is no reason to watch this movie, there’s not one aspect which even works okay. It’s a shame when you come across a comedy which doesn’t feature one even mildly amusing joke.

My review of Unfinished Business

2. Fifty Shades of Grey

This was a movie that was absolutely dead on arrival. It was a movie based on a book that was Twilight fanfiction, so I knew what I was going to get going into this movie. However it was much worse than I could’ve expected. This movie as I could tell before watching it, was horribly written. However I had no idea how boring this movie would be. The only way I could’ve enjoyed this movie is if it went bonkers and embraced what it was, horribly written fanfiction (adding the narration with the horribly written lines from the book would help), then it could be enjoyed as a guilty pleasure or a so bad it’s good movie. However looking at it now, I got the feeling that this movie was trying so hard to be credible with one of the worst material, so it actually collapses and fails. This movie might be entertaining in very brief 5-10 minute short scenes as a so bad it’s good film but not as one continuous feature film. The only things that didn’t suck was that the scenes were shot well and Dakota Johnson turned out a better performance than most people in her position. As I said in my review, this is one of the only movies that I regretted watching, even for a review. However that wasn’t the worst of the year for me.

My review of Fifty Shades of Grey

1. Hot Pursuit

I’ve never seen a comedy movie so humourless, so obnoxious, so frustratingly generically bad, until I watched this movie. Reese Witherspoon and Sofia Vergara play some of the most annoying characters I’ve seen in a movie but they shouldn’t be blamed for this movie’s failure, Cate Blanchett wouldn’t be able to give a good performance with their material. The script is horrible with obvious and unfunny jokes, the characters are annoying and very contradictory in their personalities and characteristics and there was never a moment or aspect that was done even okay. There is nothing to gain from watching this movie. If you want to spare yourself 85 minutes of your time, don’t spend it on this movie, it’s not worth it. The only thing I can give Hot Pursuit credit is the fact that they made a worse movie than Fifty Shades of Grey, which was quite the accomplishment.

My review of Hot Pursuit

So what do you think of my picks? Agree, disagree? What were your worst movies of the year? Comment below and let me know what you think.