I didn’t think I would ever get here but here I am, now on the one year anniversary of when I started this site. I’ve done a lot of things over this time but the biggest thing for sure was movie reviews. I’ve written a lot of them over the past year which means I’ve seen a lot of movies over that time. Some of them were great and some of them were not so much. Below are the worst 10 movies I’ve reviewed since I started my site. Do not confuse them for a worst of 2016 so far list, that one will be coming soon.
10. Norm of the North (review)
I’m a big fan of animated movies with fun stories and memorable characters. This definitely was not the case here. Funny that an animated film released in 2016 looks like if it was released in the 1990s. Nothing felt original here as it was very cliche and derivative of other, better animated movies. Happy Feet and Madagascar immediately come to mind. Great animated films can engage both young and old but I did not find this very engaging as it was more on the boring side. A lot of animated films are funny for the kids but I did not find it very funny at all. The voice acting was okay but it didn’t really matter since the script and the story was that bad. If you need a good animated movie from 2016, watch Zootopia.
9. Mother’s Day (review)
I haven’t seen any of director Garry Marshall’s other “holiday” movies but I heard that they are not really good. Of course when you want to see everything, you’ll occasionally run into movies like this. The problem about films with interlocking stories is that it has to find just the right balance between them. This wasn’t the case here as the film would jump around between each haphazardly so none of them were ever able to gain any momentum. They also did not all fit together within the frame of the story. None of them were overly interesting as they all felt very cliche and predictable. All of the supposedly emotional stuff just felt forced as the acting screamed phoned in across the board. This film is just an insult to all mothers as it was just one big over-glamorization of motherhood, lacking any realism whatsoever.
8. Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 (review)
I haven’t seen the first Paul Blart: Mall Cop but I heard that it was terrible. You can chalk this one down as me trying to see all the 2015 movies I missed. Knowing what I knew about the first movie, my expectations were not overly high and rightfully so. I’ve personally never found Kevin James very funny and this was still the case here as all the comedy here seemed to revolve around fat jokes and all these other crazy characters. All the jokes here were just forced and not funny. The story itself was overly cliche and predictable and wasn’t very exciting as it just felt unrealistic and full of holes. I sincerely hope that this is the end of the franchise and that Kevin James just goes away.
7. Hot Pursuit (review)
You can also chalk this one down as me trying to see all the 2015 movies I missed. When I think of female buddy movies, I think of Sofia Vergara and Reese Witherspoon? This was when the movie felt apart for me. Vergara is okay in Modern Family but when I think of comedies, Witherspoon is not someone who I would normally associate with the genre. Because of this, I didn’t really believe in their relationship as I didn’t really see the chemistry between them. Also because of this, everything just felt forced and unfunny. What didn’t help was Witherspoon’s overacting here as the rambunctious Cooper. It just didn’t work here. Vergara was what I expected here, playing a cliche latina woman but unlike Modern Family, I couldn’t understand what she was saying half the time. I believe this film could have worked if only the had cast 2 different actresses.
6. Fantastic Four (review)
I didn’t see the original 2 Fantastic Four movies from 2005 and 2007 but I heard that they were terrible. Because of that, my expectations for this one were not overly high. I still believed that maybe with this reimagining that it would fix the series but I was very, very wrong. I can’t remember ever being so mad watching a movie than I was here. This movie was just so boring as it was just 95% buildup (and that’s being generous) to an underwhelming battle at the end between the four and Dr. Doom (Toby Kebbell). Buildup is okay if there’s some excitement but it just felt like it wasn’t going anywhere. None of this movie really made any sense but the worst culprit had to be Dr. Doom himself as his powers did not make any sense whatsoever. The visuals were pretty underwhelming and the cast had absolutely no chemistry which made me not care about any of them. They are considering making a sequel so there is still some hope but I would prefer if Fox just gave the rights back to Marvel so they make a decent movie.
5. The Boy (review)
Based on the first trailers, I wasn’t expecting this to be any good and surprisingly enough, I was right. While it still had potential, it was squandered by horrible writing and bad performances. In terms of horror movies, this was pretty standard fare with weird sounds, things moving on their own, and the like but it was all much too predictable. This story had no excitement whatsoever or made any sense. The movie tried to have a lot more going on other than the story but it just didn’t work. Even though the twist was pretty obvious, I still won’t give it away. I didn’t care much for the characters as they were stereotypical. cliche, and just plain old stupid. Having to sit through this was real torture.
4. War Room (review)
I’m not an overly religious person but it shouldn’t really matter. This movie was very popular and made a lot of money from who I assume are very religious people and that’s alright but it never spoke to me. I found that this just took religion and beat you over the head with it. Maybe it’s because I’m not religious but I just couldn’t take any of it seriously. I just found myself laughing at a lot of the supposedly serious stuff as it was just so gosh darn cheesy. The movie felt more like a soap opera or even a Lifetime movie than anything else. The acting here was just so unbearably bad but instead of torture, it was just sad. They tried to play this up as sad but it ended up being a much different kind of sad. The worst part of the movie has to be Karen Abercrombie’s Miss Clara who was just a caricature of a typical religious Southern lady whose over the top performance stood out the most here.
3. God’s Not Dead (review)/God’s Not Dead 2 (review)
Now let’s bash religion a little more! I clumped these two movies together since they are pretty much the same movie. They are both about devout Christians who have to defend their faiths to some evil atheist. These are just a bunch of pro-Christian propaganda which I find very off-putting. Christians are put on a pedestal and everyone else is portrayed in a very offensive way. Characters are one-dimensional in that they only exist to serve the filmmakers’ agenda. Most of them serve no other purpose for the plot other than furthering this pro-Christian agenda. The plot of both movies were not very original or compelling because of the reasons I previously mentioned as well as the fact that it also takes a lot of liberties in order to further its agenda. Bias is okay but what didn’t work about either of them was the terrible script and even worse performances.
2. The Boy Next Door (review)
This was the worst movie of 2015 but even that wasn’t good enough to make it the worst here but don’t get me wrong, it’s still pretty bad. This was simply 90-minutes of cheese and thriller/stalker movie cliches. Nothing about this movie was good. From the bad script, to the plot riddled with holes, to the terrible acting, there wasn’t really anything to be proud of. I found this movie very frustrating to watch as the plot was advanced by stupid and/or gullible characters making stupid decisions. The worst culprit here has to be Ryan Guzman’s bad, over the top performance as an obsessive teenager named Noah Sanborn. As bad as everything else was, the dialogue was even worse. I just found it very cringe-worthy where I often found myself laughing at things that were probably not supposed to be funny. Even though it was only 90-minutes, it often felt longer than that.
1. Septic Man (review)
Let’s be honest, who would have expected a movie called “Septic Man” to be any good? This movie is pretty much about a guy who falls down into a septic tank and then goes crazy. That was pretty much it story-wise. The plot also featured a subplot involving some sort of a conspiracy responsible for water contamination but it didn’t last long. Other than the guy being the septic tank, very little actually happens beyond this. This almost could have been okay but what really flushed this one down the toilet was the terrible, laughably bad acting and dialogue. This is supposed to be a horror movie but this one was not even scary whatsoever. I like laughing at bad movies as much as the next guy but this one was just sad. Any movie that starts off like this was probably not going to be good anyway.
The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.
