In 2018, these are the films that got our butts in the seats - and then sent us home
with our wallets empty, and our hearts unfulfilled.
These films were the worst of 2018.
There may not be a major Hollywood film with worse timing than Death Wish, a remake of
the classic 1974 Charles Bronson film.
The 2018 version features Bruce Willis as an everyday Joe who takes up arms to clean
up the streets of Chicago after his daughter is assaulted and his wife is murdered by thugs.
The notorious Eli Roth delivered a picture that landed squarely in the middle of the
real-life debate over guns in America - and suffered immensely for it.
Critics took note of the film's poor timing, having already been pushed back from a fall
2017 release after the Las Vegas mass shooting that claimed 58 lives.
But all that aside, the potentially nasty fun of a revenge flick simply failed to materialize
nearly as well as the Bronson original.
"I never thought about it that way.
It could be true.”
Part of the most ridiculously popular multimedia property to ever come from the world of Twilight
fan fiction, the third installment in the Fifty Shades series finalizes a franchise
that never found critical acclaim, despite posting insane box office numbers.
Freed's critics didn't hold back even a little.
The famously colorful Rex Reed said it was
"[...] grotesquely mindless and inescapably boring, [while it] continues to ignore motivation,
character development, logic, and narrative cohesion."
Reed gave the movie one star, but it was apparently earned by the movie's furniture.
The few positive reviews tended to highlight its merits as unintentional satire, rather
than any redeeming qualities it might otherwise have had.
But there is one great thing about Fifty Shades Freed: it marks the end of the series.
"You know that, don't you?"
Expectations were sky high for director Ava DuVernay's adaptation of the classic 1962
young adult novel A Wrinkle in Time.
With an amazing cast attached, the film looked to be another winner for Disney - but unfortunately,
it fell surprisingly flat with critics, and posted flat box office receipts to match.
Negative reviews focused on the disappointment sure to be felt by fans of the novel, as the
adaptation didn't match the source material's tone.
Splice Today's Stephen Silver argued,
"It's based on one of those novels that's long been described as un-adaptable, only
to result in a movie that proved such naysayers right."
Cinefiloz called it,
"[...] a film that does not stop feeling generic."
“You're kidding.”
“Do I look like I’m kidding?”
“A little.”
“I'm not.”
It seems that it wasn't just one thing that went wrong, but if DuVernay's stellar past
work is any indication, she should bounce back quickly.
It's hard to deny that Amy Schumer has had a hard time hitting her stride with her film
projects, aside from her promising 2015 debut in the Judd Apatow-directed Trainwreck.
This year's I Feel Pretty - in which Schumer is an average-sized woman who awakens from
an accident believing she's a supermodel - seemed to sport the perfect premise for Schumer's
brand of comedy.
But it largely turned out to be a swing and a miss.
The New Yorker proclaimed that the film essentially wasted its entire cast from Schumer to Naomi
Campbell, Michelle Williams and veteran actress Lauren Hutton, and went on to call it,
"[...] a painful, unaware condescension masquerading as encouragement."
"I wanna punch you right in your dumb face right now."
Most other critics were no kinder, agreeing that the movie felt pandering and insincere,
and that the comedic moments were just plain tone-deaf.
Perhaps Apatow, the only director who's proven himself capable of successfully harnessing
Schumer's vibe on the big screen, should give her a call, because the response to I Feel
Pretty has been nothing short of ugly.
Based on the dangerously irresponsible real-life Action Park and featuring Johnny Knoxville
and his usual roundup of friends, the movie Action Point seemed like sure-fire comedy
gold.
Tailor-made for Jackass-like stunts, the movie was the perfect framing device for humiliating
pratfalls and bodily injury - but it arrived in theaters only to fall right on its face.
Many critics found Action Point to be way too soft and safe, complaining that the whole
thing was unworthy of its death-defying inspiration.
Reno News and Review critic Bob Grimm, who survived the actual Action Park as a child,
called it
"[...] basically an insult to the legend of Action Park - or Death Park, as we liked to
call it."
It's a rare case of the Jackass crew not going far enough.
They've all been in the business of abusing themselves for the better part of two decades,
so here's hoping they can give us at least one more stellar outing without killing themselves.
“Dammit!
Ow!”
Fans could be forgiven for approaching Slender Man with a healthy amount of trepidation.
Plot details had been kept tightly under wraps during the film's production, and when the
film hit theaters, it became clear why we hadn't heard much.
What little plot there was in Slender Man, just seemed way too thin.
Critics flogged the picture for its non-existent story and lack of any genuine scares.
Cinema Crazed nailed down all the film's problems with one sentence:
"Deep down beats the heart of a great horror movie, but it's lost in cheap jump scares,
bad CGI, and heavy cribbing from Nightmare on Elm Street and The Ring."
More than one reviewer noted the film's proximity to the real-life, recent Slender Man stabbing,
with some even making the case that the film exploits the tragedy - but at the end of the
day, Slender Man's worst crime was just being boring.
The Happytime Murders seemed like it had an inspired comedic premise.
As a sort of mashup between Sesame Street-gone-wrong and Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the film stars
Melissa McCarthy as a human police detective in a world where people co-exist with living
puppets.
She and her puppet partner are tasked with getting to the bottom of a series of murders.
It's a premise with the potential to be a raunchy, edgy comedy.
Unfortunately, the film failed to deliver the laughs.
The always-blunt Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called it,
"A toxic botch job [which] deserves an early death by box office."
Sarah Marrs of Lainey Gossip called it,
"Too boring and mediocre to be the worst movie ever made."
"Well, f--k me!"
"Maybe!
Hahahaha!”
Puppet-based raunchy humor isn't impossible, but this film just couldn't crack the code
- and also managed to deliver yet another starring vehicle unworthy of McCarthy's talents.
The films of the Conjuring universe have never done anything less than gangbusters at the
box office, even when nabbing mixed critical reviews.
Since the first appearance of the demonic nun Valak in The Conjuring 2, fans have been
clamoring for a film centered on the terrifying figure - but her starring turn has unfortunately
put the filmmakers in need of paying penance.
While critics generally considered the film to be technically well-acted and well-made,
nothing could save it from giant gaps in logic and a meandering narrative structure.
Many observers also took the film to task for it heavy reliance on cliche.
Said the Seattle Times' Soren Andersen,
"Entombed the audience is [...] in horror-movie cliches.
[...] The moments don't build to any sort of sustained narrative momentum.
[...] It's so choppy and predictable that it becomes laughable."
Despite all that, another hugely profitable sequel is probably in the works right now,
maybe with a scarier story to tell.
Fans of sci-fi '80s monster action were psyched about the announcement of Shane Black's suburbia-set
The Predator.
Black's action bonafides have never been in question, the trailers looked fresh and funny,
and it seemed highly unlikely that anyone would drop the ball.
Sure, Black is incapable of making a bad looking film, and he didn't disappoint here.
But even his gifts couldn't overcome a surprisingly bland script and undisciplined plotting.
Brandon Katz of The Observer called it,
"[...] a thorough grab bag of averageness, made worse by its distinct lack of distinction."
"Come and get us, mother f---ker."
His peers, on the other hand, focused on the film's over-reliance on zippy one-liners and
emulating '80s B-movies in the worst possible ways.
It added up to a shocking miss from a filmmaker who seemed to have it all together.
Clint Eastwood has a pretty good track record as a director, and an even better one as a
director of historical dramas, so expectations were high for The 15:17 to Paris: the true
story of a trio of American soldiers who thwarted a terrorist attack on a train while traveling
in Europe.
The actual soldiers involved in the incident were even recruited to play themselves in
the movie.
Unfortunately, real-life heroes don't necessarily make good actors, according to critics.
The New Republic wrote about all three stars:
"[They're] all handsome but just appalling actors.
This disjuncture is impossible to forget while watching the film, and it's very uncomfortable."
Padding out a relatively brief incident to the length of a whole film resulted in two-thirds
of the film's run time devoted to tedious exposition.
While the centerpiece action sequence earned praise, everything surrounding it disappointed.
The 15:17 to Paris arrived at the station greeted by wildly indifferent audiences.
Forever My Girl is the story of a country music star who returns home for a funeral,
only to face the lost love he left behind.
If that description strikes as you overly familiar and formulaic, you're not alone.
Critics couldn't help but note that Forever failed even to clear the bar set by the wildly
popular weepers based on Nicholas Sparks novels.
"Not really my cup of tea.
No offense.”
“None taken."
The film seemed to bring out the snark in practically every critic who viewed it.
The San Francisco Chronicle got very specific:
"It's a poorly made film, with rough edits, distracting staging and plot contrivances
that can be predicted to the moment.
[...] There's an almost startling lack of chemistry between the leads [and it's] as
if every third scene was cut out randomly."
The picture only managed a $16 million haul during its theatrical run.
Winchester sounded like the kind of horror slam-dunk that comes along rarely: a supernatural
fright-fest based on the insanely spooky true story of Sarah Winchester, who built the mother
of all haunted houses.
Starring Helen Mirren in the title role, the stars were all aligned.
So how did it go so terribly wrong?
Critics agreed that it represented a forgettable whale of a missed opportunity.
Peter Travers of Rolling Stone heaped scorn all over the film, saying,
"It shouldn't happen to anyone, much less a Dame - not a movie of such barreling awfulness
as Winchester, which strands the great Helen Mirren in a gothic house of cards that collapses
on actors and audiences alike."
The film's writer/director duo, the Spierig brothers, were taken to task for choosing
jump scares over atmosphere, and one review went so far as to call Mirren's presence in
the film "inexplicable."
With Winchester, the Spierigs delivered arguably the most disappointing misfire of the year.
If this is your first time hearing of action/comedy Gringo, you're not alone.
The film flopped spectacularly, grossing only about $11 million worldwide despite an insanely
accomplished cast.
The story of a mild-mannered American who goes Breaking Bad on a trip south of the border
- the sophomore feature from veteran stunt coordinator Nash Edgerton - failed to score
with critics while general audiences were simply unaware of its existence.
Not that this was necessarily a bad thing: Rolling Stone's David Fear said
"It can't decide whether it wants to be magnificently toxic or merely mediocre.
[…] This is a 'romp' that's keen on going nowhere… and sloooowly."
"What a f---king crybaby!"
Most of the critical venom was reserved for its unfunny, contrived mess of a screenplay,
on which the film's amazing cast was apparently completely wasted.
Director Robert Zemeckis has given us such beloved films as the Back to the Future series,
Forrest Gump, and Cast Away...
"hahahaha FIRE"
...and his year-end release Welcome to Marwen had "prestige picture" written all over it.
It's a fictionalized account of the life and work of Mark Hogancamp, who builds a scale
model of a World War II-era Belgian town in his backyard.
Featuring Steve Carell in the lead, Zemeckis' film took a huge aesthetic gamble by being
set partially inside the fictional town.
Carell's performance drew fire for its lack of nuance, and Zemeckis took his share of
hits for offering one-dimensional female characters and failing to inject the story with genuine
emotion.
The CGI dolls left some viewers stranded in the uncanny valley, and though most critics
agreed the film was well-intentioned, it all added up to a titanic misfire.
The post-apocalyptic thriller Mortal Engines, based on the first of a series of young adult
novels, had been highly anticipated due to the involvement of producer Peter Jackson
and director Christian Rivers, a longtime Jackson associate.
In the movie's world, gigantic cities on wheels roam the landscape in search of resources.
While some critics praised the film's world-building, even the positive notices lamented its stitched-together,
derivative story and the critics that panned the film panned it extra hard.
The New York Post's Sarah Stewart called it, quote, "a wearying blast of CGI and genre-cribbing,"
which "[pillages] better movies for spare parts."
She also pointed out that even the soundtrack by Junkie XL is highly reminiscent of the
composer's work on Mad Max: Fury Road.
She wasn't the only observer to point out that Mortal Engines seemed to invite comparison
to that unassailable classic, although some were slightly more succinct.
Said Splice Today's Steven Silver:
"It's been a long time since Peter Jackson last made a good movie, and the dry spell
continues with Mortal Engines, which answers a burning question: What if Mad Max: Fury
Road had sucked?"
John C. Reilly and Will Ferrell can be a formidable comedic duo, as we've seen in multiple films.
Unfortunately, Holmes and Watson brought that streak to a screeching halt.
One of the worst-reviewed films of the year, Holmes and Watson literally saw audiences
walking out of the theater.
The vast majority of critics were none too pleased that they were professionally obligated
to sit through the whole thing.
"What have you done with Sherlock?”
“Why Watson.
I never left.”
“Ah!
Amazing!"
The problems permeated the production, from its terribly unfunny screenplay to its direction
and editing, which one reviewer called the worst of any film released in 2018.
The flick was lambasted for its lazy humor and for wasting the talents of Reilly, Ferrell,
and its entire supporting cast.
Here's hoping that Reilly and Ferrell can bounce back with a movie that audiences actually
want to spend their money on.
Better luck next year, Hollywood.