The Absolute Worst Movies of 2018

Why is it so hard to make a film? Because nobody wants to make a bad movie. But so many of them turn out that way: terrible, even unwatchable. And somewhere along the way, all these movies from 2018 alone, they took a turn into Turkey Town. Hammy acting, bad writing, and ego-driven directing make these the worst movies of 2018 .

Venom

It's making a venomous amount of money worldwide, but Eddie Brock's big-screen outing is broken at its core. It careens between tones, fighting between its dark, R-rated impulses and world-building, PG-13-rated obligations. It is borderline incomprehensible.

Winchester

[dx_custom_adunit desktop_id="RTK_K67O" mobile_id="RTK_5yk0"] Dame Helen Mirren, we would normally never dare question you. But, like, what are you doing in Winchester? In a banner year for horror, this ghost story limps through its running time, uninspired and cheesy. It's not even fun enough to be a campy good time.

The Predator

Time to cancel Shane Black. Beyond his casting of an underage sex offender without telling anyone (the scenes were eventually cut), his soft reboot of the Predator franchise is capital P problematic. It's also, straight up, a poorly written and directed film, one you can feel the actors rebelling against as they try and stay afloat.

The Outsider

Read the room, Netflix! Nobody wants to see a film set in the world of the Japanese Yakuza underworld starring Jared Leto, aka White Guy Magoo. Stepping aside from the whitewashing debacle, it's a totally bland, forgettable affair. Watch an actual Yakuza film from actual Japanese people instead.

Slender Man

[dx_custom_adunit desktop_id="RTK_K67O" mobile_id="RTK_5yk0"] Based on the Internet creepypasta, Slender Man went to theatres neutered. Two young girls stabbed a friend in "service of" the character in 2014. Four years later, Sony elected to make a fictional horror movie, and elected to remove any footage that might cause more controversay. The result is a horror movie that is neither scary nor coherent.

Skyscraper

Dwayne Johnson saves his family from the biggest building in the world, which is both on fire and under attack. How is this not a slam friggin' dunk? How is the final product so muted and bored? Why isn't Johnson having any fun?

Show Dogs

This hyperactive family film isn't just bad. It's toxic. The first cut released to theatres included a scene that glorified child grooming, the morally corrupt act of teaching a child to check out emotionally during nonconsensual acts of sexual abuse. After an uproar, the studio recut the film and rereleased it in its second week.

Sherlock Gnomes

[dx_custom_adunit desktop_id="RTK_K67O" mobile_id="RTK_5yk0"] Who wants this? Who wants a Johnny Depp-starring, animated adaptation of Sherlock Holmes as a gnome? And why does the resulting film shift between broad, crude gags and a buttoned-up tone of voice so carelessly? Looks like making an entertaining film was not elementary.

Peppermint

After watching her family get gunned down in front of her, Jennifer Garner loses her mind and goes on a rampage. She mows down nearly half of Los Angeles in scenes of wanton carnage, shot in underlit, overly shaky coverage. Watching the white Garner destroy a predominantly Latinx cast with glee and fervor is icky to say the least. Also, it's called Peppermint because of ice cream. That's just a true fact.

Overboard

Switching up the genders wasn't enough to save this remake from peril. The Anna Faris-Eugenio Derbez starring Overboard features stale gags executed poorly. Can someone give Faris a good comedy to star in already?

The Nutcracker And The Four Realms

[dx_custom_adunit desktop_id="RTK_K67O" mobile_id="RTK_5yk0"] Christmas joy? More like a fat piece of coal. The Nutcracker And The Four Realms follows the unfortunate trend of "live action Disney adaptations of public domain stories with way too much CGI" started by the Alice In Wonderland films. It is, charitably, an eyesore.

Mile 22

At one point in this Peter Berg directed mishmash of ugly violence and unfollowable action sequences, someone literally says the phrase "Say hi to your mother for me" to Mark Wahlberg's character. This is a meta reference to Andy Samberg's portrayal of Wahlberg in Saturday Night Live. So, like, maybe Mile 22 is actually a Brechtian masterpiece we're all too stupid to understand.

London Fields

After a long delay in release, in part because of legal battles with the producers and star Amber Heard over what wound up in the final cut, London Fields saw the light of day. And was widely panned as a flimsy melodrama with nothing real to say. It's the rare case where an arduous lawsuit is more interesting than a movie.

Life Itself

[dx_custom_adunit desktop_id="RTK_K67O" mobile_id="RTK_5yk0"] On paper, Life Itself is a home run. Give Dan Fogelman, creator of smash TV series This Is Us, free reign to do his tear-jerking thing with an incredible cast. On screen, Life Itself is a batter who popped up and the ball smacked him in the head and he screamed "HOME RUN" and ran the bases anyway. It's bad, is what we're saying.

The House That Jack Built

A one-word review of The House That Jack Built: Yuck. Want more? You asked for it. It's an overlong, pretentious, dour serial killer movie from provocateur/creepo Lars von Trier. It cuts between images of horrific violence against women and children and insipid monologues about the nature of art. And you have absolutely no obligation to ever watch it.

I Can Only Imagine

We can only imagine who would want to see a film based on a Christian rock song. But those who did were treated to a mawkish, over-sentimental, and frankly insulting portrayal of abuse and redemption. Blessed are the worst films, for they shall know fresh Rotten Tomatoes scores in Heaven.

The Happytime Murders

[dx_custom_adunit desktop_id="RTK_K67O" mobile_id="RTK_5yk0"] The Happytime Murders features one idea: What if puppets but dirty? That's it. No other jokes, nuances, or intriguing wrinkles. Just this one joke, hammered into the ground, over and over, until you're begging for it to stop. It doesn't even have fun spoofing the noir genre -- like its other jokes, the least amount of effort is put into this part, too.

Gotti

Garnering an impressive 0% Rotten Tomatoes score, the Eric-from-Entourage-directed biopic Gotti assuredly made its way into your consciousness at some point this year. MoviePass, that infamous movie ticket subscription company that flew directly into the sun, pushed Gotti harder than Gotti pushed his criminal lifestyle. Still, no one saw it, and those who did hated it.

Game Over, Man!

The Workaholics should've worked-a-harder on this film. Game Over, Man! tries to be a loving homage and parody of 1980s action cinema, especially Die Hard. Instead, it's cheap-looking, lowest common denominator, problematic fare. "Come out to Netflix, we'll get together, have a few laughs"? Game over, man.

Fifty Shades Freed

[dx_custom_adunit desktop_id="RTK_K67O" mobile_id="RTK_5yk0"] Finally, we as a society are freed from the burden of Fifty Shades films. And we ain't prudes. We're highly onboard with a big-screen, big-budget erotic thriller. It just, you know, has to thrill. And be erotic. And Fifty Shades Freed is neither. Unless your very specific kink is "watching actors who clearly hate each other tolerate being naked close to each other sometimes".

Death Wish

Arriving in theatres at "exactly the wrong cultural time", Eli Roth's Death Wish plays like alt-right propaganda. It's about a good guy with a gun who goes out and shoots up a bunch of bad guys with guns. And it is straight up toxic. If you're thinking about checking out this film, you must have a... well, you get it.

Death Of A Nation

Putting aside Dinesh D'Souza's noxious, factually wrong politics for a second, Death Of A Nation falls apart as a film. Its footage, stretched to their breaking points of usability, consists of poor historical reenactments, archive footage of better movies, and D'Souza himself walking around and looking pensive. Let's hope Death Of A Filmmaker's Career is the follow-up.

Dark Crimes

[dx_custom_adunit desktop_id="RTK_K67O" mobile_id="RTK_5yk0"] If Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond wasn't enough of a "Jim Carrey being very pretentious" fix for you, might we recommend Dark Crimes? It's a "dark" film about a "dark" detective trying to solve a "dark" crime based on a "dark" novel. And when we say "dark", please know we mean "a 15-year-old who just got into Boondock Saints' idea of what 'dark' is".

A.X.L.

Another of MoviePass' movie pushes, A.X.L. has a cute enough premise: A young boy discovers a military-created robo dog and reprograms it to be good and care about friendship and stuff. Unfortunately, any nice message being communicated was covered by the film's shoddy construction and completely forgettable style. Just watch The Iron Giant instead.

The 15:17 To Paris

What's worse about Clint Eastwood's latest? The exploitation that comes from casting the real life men involved in a terrorist attack on a train? Or the feelings that come from realizing these real life men have no idea how to play themselves onscreen? Let's hope Eastwood's other 2018 title, The Mule, is a bit of a redemption for the legendary Hollywood figure.