Worst list scalds, look away now. We all know that every film has something to commend in it, and that in any case the real worst films are zero-budget dreck that almost no-one will ever see or hear. We also know that simply getting a film made in this day and age is a remarkable achievement in itself. It’s understood. It’s taken into account.
But when a studio pays significant amounts of money to bring a film to your attention, it’s a legitimate response to say “uh, excuse me – this is really not very good.” That’s the case when the film comes out, and it’s still the case at the end of the year. With all of that in mind, here are the twelve worst films with a budget of over $25million that Hollywood plopped out this year. I’m not blaming anyone but the system . I’m sure these productions all provided important jobs. But there’s value in taking stock at the year’s end and looking them over with the clear-eyed acknowledgement that these were crap.
I will say this though: none of these films were memory-holed for tax evasion purposes. On that point at least – thank you, studio heads, for following through, in all senses of the phrase.
12. Joker: Folie A Deux – It was a bold move to take the most enthusiastic fans of the first movie and explain to them, at length, how wrong they were. But there wasn’t enough here to bring in any new fans either – so it was a move that led to this being a film for no-one. This failure was fascinating – but only conceptually, not, you know, actually.
11. Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Curse of Forgiveness – I found Part One of this hackneyed Space Opera to be an utter bore, but I watched this sequel in its extended cut, and found it to be… not as bad? Nonetheless it takes all the most superficial elements of Return Of The Jedi and The Seven Samurai, and shoots them with the eye of someone who loves PS3 cutscenes almost as much as he loves Leni Riefenstahl. Nothing is immune from Snyder’s heavily colour-graded moodiness, grinding slow motion and wailing orchestral score – not waves of peasants getting mown down by machine gun fire, their CGI blood swirling through the air like damp brown blankets flung from a laundry basket, nor Sofia Boutella working her way methodically through a multiple-position sex scene in which I was momentarily distracted by the urge to count her bronze-grey ribs. As with Part One, the saving grace is Ed Skrein as a psychotic space-Nazi – an all-out performance that I wish was in a better piece of pulp than this.
10. The Crow – Empty emo posturing that mildly sullies the original. FKA Twigs was pretty decent in Honey Boy, but Rupert Saunders manages to coax from her one of the worst performances of the year. The Crow tries to summon the moody fantasies of the 90s and Noughties – things like the original The Crow, but also Dark City, and the Underworld movies. But you can’t go back. Or at least, this film couldn’t.
9. Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire – I’m old enough to have seen the original in the cinema. That one featured Dan Ackroyd getting pleasured by a ghost. This one features the director humping the corpse of the franchise. I defended the last one, but… *taps table* I’m out.
8. Madame Web – One of the few films on this list that’s bad in a sufficiently funny way to make it watchable on that level. Camp goes a long way – especially when it seems to be driven by Dakota Fanning being genuinely furious she’s in this.
7. Megalopolis – A movie in which a man saves the day by showing off his greatest invention – a moving sidewalk that glows brown.
6. Anyone But You – Anything but this. Takes the two great new hopes of leading name, open-a-film, star wattage of 2020s Hollywood… and goes the extra mile to show that they have absolutely zero chemistry with each other. Miraculously this made money – Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney must have a monkey’s paw or two somewhere.
5. Argylle – Possibly the death of cinema. If only Babylon had come out a bit later, they could’ve ended it with a clip from this.
4. Red One – The Marvelification of Christmas itself. There was a very brief window where The Rock looked like he might develop into an interesting actor (Southland Tales, Be Cool). Instead, he’s evolved into the least charismatic leading man of our age. He would make Chris Pratt look dynamic and compelling. Here he’s acted off the page by Chris Evans, Kiernan Shipka, and in one scene even Nick Kroll. But he drags down every scene he’s in (which is almost all of them), in a movie so fundamentally algorithmic in nature that you might suspect the era of AI screenplays is already here.
3. Venom: The Last Dance – Is that a promise?
2. Borderlands – Stagey, trite, formulaic and hollow, this video game adaptation’s worst feature is surely its quippy comedy droid, Claptrap. Credits roll to reveal it’s voiced by…. Jack Black. Well, that explains that. Eli Roth, you developed the story, co-wrote the script, directed it… I was trying not to blame too many people by name, but this one’s clearly on you. With relentlessly anti-art tripe like this, the culprits need to be clearly identified.
1. Kraven The Hunter – Sony Pictures CEO Tony Vinciquerra described it as “not a bad film,” unfairly destined for critical savaging for vague reasons he declined to explain. In reality, it was simply terrible, imploding both Sony’s Spider-Man spin-off universe and Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s James Bond prospects. The only thing I was Kravin’ was the sweet release of death.
Have a wonderful 2025! xoxo
Whitlock&Pope 