Top 10 Worst Films of 2015 · 10:46pm Jan 9th, 2016

116 films. I’m no math expert, but I have a feeling that I’ve seen more movies this year than the past three combined. I mean, working at a movie theater helps, but this has been a wonderful year in film. In many ways, however, it has been anything but.

Last year, I hate to admit that I had developed a bit of envy over one of my IRL friend’s “Worst of the Year” lists. Having consigned most of my movie-going experience to the cream of the crop that was sure to be in that year’s awards race, I didn’t really see much that many people would consider “worst,” or even bad, for that matter, certainly not enough to create a Top 10 list.

Well, this year has allowed me to do just that. And before we take a look at this year’s best, let’s eat our veggies before our meat and potatoes with the worst films 2015 gave us.

(Disclaimer: If a film you liked is on the list, oh well. If a film isn’t on this list that you feel is more deserving than any of the following, chances are I didn’t see the film, or I didn’t hate it as much as the following. Lastly, there will be some ranting going on, so there will be spoilers, but let’s face it, you shouldn’t be watching any of these anyway.)

__________________________________________________________________________________________

10. Vacation

Yes, I grew up on the original National Lampoon series, and I enjoy more than my fair share of dirty, low-brow comedies, but they can’t be done as desperately and lazily as this one. When your movie’s opening joke involves Rusty Griswold getting thrown about in a plane so that his face plants firmly into a 12-year old boy’s crotch, there’s really no place to go but up, right? Oh, but it certainly doesn’t get any better from here.

Where the original film was about a dysfunctional family bonding over an exasperating road-trip from hell, this film puts the family aspect in the backseat to make room for jokes involving functions on a car that would never logically exist on any car ever, yet alone be allowed to be driven anywhere, to jokes featuring poop and penises that get carried on for so long because gorsh-dangit they are just that incredibly funny *herp derp*. It also doesn’t help that the characters themselves are too spitefully stupid to even care about as well.

Both Rusty and his wife are impossibly clueless at best and downright abusive at worst, a lot of the latter involving their eldest son, who is under constant emotional, physical, and even borderline-homicidal torment from his youngest brother. Rather than deal with their child, they instead either ignore him and his endless profane outbursts, or they ostracize the eldest son even further to the point where it quickly transcends feeling uncomfortable, and instead wishing with every fiber of your being that these two parents and their hell-spawn to jump off a bridge and into a river of pancreatic cancer. And through bland developments, the family manages to get along, and there’s even some BS, last-minute rekindling of Rusty’s marriage with his wife that you wouldn’t care about in your right mind (and frankly, neither did the film, apparently).

Not even the usually entertaining Chris Hemsworth could come close to saving this. All he seems to do for his paltry 10-minute screentime is make odd, repetitive faucet similes and stand and pose in a room with a massive dick bulging in his underpants, but hey, pee-pees! Laugh, monkey, LAUGH!! There is one joke in the movie made from a cameo by Norman Reedus that was actually kind of quick-witted and morbid, probably because he was probably the one person involved in this who showed any kind of restraint.

If there was any other indicator of how big of a waste of time this whole thing was, Wally World only takes up like five, dull, equally-nonsensical minutes of the movie’s climax, which makes it even more insulting considering that Chevy Chase’s Clark Griswold says to Rusty something along the lines of, “The journey sucks, it’s the destination that makes it worthwhile.”

Well, it didn’t seem like they even bothered on that front, but hey, thanks for at least admitting that they rest of the stuff beforehand was all crap.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

9. Fantastic Four

I know a couple of my friends might be shocked to see this rated so “high” on this list, but the reason for this is simple: I consider this to be one of those movies that’s so bad, it’s good. Between the cardboard characters, the atrocious pacing, and those final twenty minutes, I was laughing much more than I should have.

It’s sad to say that the travesty of an adaptation that was made just ten years prior was still light-years ahead of this. I mean, at least those movies appeared to try and look like they were having fun. This movie tries to pump Christopher Nolan-esque brooding and edginess into this one, and it’s honestly the base of the film’s unintentional comedy.

Doctor Doom is supposedly one of Marvel’s most threatening and powerful villains, but they turned him into this whiny misanthrope whose character was more than likely inspired by hours of Evanescence, Simple Plan, and emo fanfiction. He has no real personal connection to why he hates humans so other than repeated variations of, “Humans are a disease that needs to be purged from the Earth.” The only realy thing we CAN see is that he and Kate Mara’s Sue Storm were BF and GF, but they broke up, so he became a Tumblr cliché posing as one of Marvel’s greatest villains ever. The fact that we’re supposed to take this character so seriously, it only makes it more laughable.

Many people had complaints about Michael B. Jordan’s casting as Johnny Torch, a typically white character. That’s fine; creative liberties and all, but there’s literally no reason for him to be black other than “Sue’s adopted, herp derp!” and it’s made even worse when his personality is pretty much… um, black guy (he talks in lingo, makes a living racing cars, etc). One particularly side splitting scene involves Johnny blaming his father for his drunken spacewalk that caused him to get his powers, reminding him, and I quote, “I’m an adult!” and that’s when I lost it.

Oh, that’s right, I forgot to mention HOW these dumbasses even got their powers in the first place. They all get drunk one night after pissing and moaning about not getting to be an astronaut for a day, Miles Teller calls up his dudebro Ben to go to space with him for the lulz, and they all sneak into the space-machine at night and go off across dimensions without any guards or security to stop them. Then they come across an unknown green substance on this completely uncharted planet which they, being the very intelligent scientists they so clearly are, proceed to fondle like Playdoh, and, big shocker, it starts going wild and it violently gives them their powers. The mess they cause destroys the machine and the lab when it returns in a fiery explosion, wasting however many billions of dollars in construction and research it took to make it.
It sounds like I’m rambling like an idiot and that no one could possibly be this stupid to write something like this, but it makes it’s even dumber in context.

You got a big bad military that instantly exploits their powers, promising that they’ll return them to normal, despite everyone with two working brain cells knowing that they do not have the resources available to do so, and even if they did, like they’re going to just give up their Boulder Hulk because they asked pleasey-squeezey. And then the final fight where the clearly OP Doom effortly manages to pin down each of our “heroes,” and then gets instantly defeated with the power of their teamwork and friendship.

It’s hilarious, honestly, yet I’m barely upset that this film did not make nearly enough money to “grace” me with an equally terri-bad sequel. Well, considering director Josh Trank’s on-set incompetency and his less than graceful tweet blaming everyone but himself for this mess he made, at least this film looks to have a bright future… on the Rifftrax circuit.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

8. Hot Tub Time Machine 2

I remember when I first heard of Hot Tub Time Machine, and I was certain the film would just blow so hard. After it came out, it actually surprised me as a smart, if not, offbeat coming-of-age story with a ton of nostalgia value and a lot of great humor. I was certainly less than thrilled when I heard of a sequel, as there was really nothing that could be added to the first film to make it any better, but how unprepared I was to see the complete reversal of quality that was displayed here.

Where the first film relived the better aspects of the 1980’s, this film imagines a not too distant future that was no-doubt devised by a pair of eight-year olds under the delusion that they’ve attained maturity and comedic expertise by watching all of Seth MacFarlane’s movies a whole bunch of times.

Nothing about this future is remotely groundbreaking, which wouldn’t be a problem if they did something funny with their material, but nope, it’s just, “Wow, we’re in the future! Let’s make jokes involving genitals and boobies!” And that’s all this is. Where the last film actually had a story revolving around three middle-aged losers getting a second shot at life during their glory days, here, one of the guys gets shot… in the dick (<-- comedy gold!), and then they… do stuff… and occasionally go back to the dick shooting subplot so that they can put the audience under the impression that their time isn’t being wasted…

It’s really hard to say what actually happens in this film that actually merits any kind of importance. A lot of this is because of the characters. I mean, the characters in the first film were by no means likable, but there was something about them and the way they played off each other that was still funny, and you could still see how they could be such close friends; there was a likability in their unlikability. Here, all the characters seem to do is hurl endless strings of insults at each other that just makes me forget why I even liked them in the first place. Replace John Cusack with the disgustingly sweet and gratingly innocent Adam Scott, and you get the worst of both worlds here.

Not to be outdone, there’s a quarter-baked idea for a game-show in here that, through the writers not having any clue what they were doing but were going to get to the conclusion that they wanted to get to anyway, involves Craig Robinson having sex with Rob Corddry. They don’t want to, but hey, homosexuality is legal now, and I guess, by extension according to this film’s logic, it’s apparently legal to rape! And then there’s nanobots that make your balls swell to the size of oranges, and…

Yeah, there’s little else to say other than this is purely Demolition Man by way of Friedberg and Seltzer. Thank God, much like them, this movie didn’t earn nearly enough to warrant any more.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

7. The Green Inferno

I consider this movie to be to violence as Fifty Shades of Grey was to sex this year: both films were completely limited by their neutered R-ratings, but still didn’t have the balls to push the envelope to the point that these films could have been PG-13 minus the gratuitous moments needed to earn an R-rating. However, while Fifty Shades of Grey had a lead actress that was clearly trying her best, good cinematography, and a decent soundtrack, The Green Inferno has no strengths whatsoever.

With the existence of Cabin in the Woods, there should be no excuse in this day and age for a horror movie to be as default as this one is. The characters all fit those cookie-cutter horror-specific archetypes (a virgin, a nerd that speaks exclusively in useless facts and trivia, and the lazy stoner, the jock alpha, etc.), all of whom are too stupid to appear like actual human beings, and the tribe that kills them off just kind of functions at the whimsy of Eli Roth’s confused and unfocused direction. They’ll act like savages in one scene, then spritely in the next, it’s literally just biding time until it’s time to “gruesomely” kill someone off.

And when I put quotations around “gruesomely,” I truly intend this, because the violence in this movie is awful. To get the full experience of this movie without giving this one the time of the day like you shouldn’t, watch your favorite bloody scene in one of your favorite violent movies/TV shows. Right when it gets to the gore, put your face close enough to your screen without touching it, and then shake your head as fast as you can throughout. This film was supposedly inspired by movies like Cannibal Holocaust, but I’m pretty certain that that movie wasn’t nearly as castrated and bare-bones as this was.

If that’s not all, let’s throw in an on/off “pro-green” message! The forest is good, and humans cutting the rainforests are all bad- oh, wait! Those tree-hugging activists are really just douchey liberal pawns trying to further their own personal/professional agendas- lol, just kidding, the rainforest really is special, and humans need to be nicer to nature. The end!

Oops! Did I spoil the whole movie for you? Good.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

6. Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2

I originally had placed this film lower on my list, but after careful consideration, I felt that it truly belonged right here. This movie knew what it was going to be, and it didn’t intend on challenging its intended audience any harder than the tamest episode of Dora the Explorer. I knew the film would suck. I mean, the first Paul Blart was so bad that it’s actually one of the very few films I’ve ever seen that I could not bring myself to continue watching after 15 minutes.

I was fortunate enough to see this in an empty theater, and trust me it really helps when you don’t have some sweet, wittle kid in the seat behind you forcing you to bottle up your rage. I certainly remember the little I saw of the first Paul Blart and how much of a pathetic slob he is that, for whatever hellish reason, we’re supposed to care about, and it’s more of the same here. He has to constantly eat M&Ms (because he’s fyat!) and needs to eat with a vibrating fork so that he eats slower (because he’s fyat!) and acts all depressed about it (because he’s fyat). <sarcasm>What an intelligent and complex character this guy is, I’m sure happy that there are two movies starring him!</sarcasm>

Considering the star is Happy Madison favorite Kevin James, putting emphasis on Happy Madison, this film appears like nothing more than James getting a studio to pay for a massive vacation to Las Vegas while occasionally having to perform tired and obvious slapstick routines, quite a few of which were literal repeats from the first one (such as crashing into the glass door and unrealistically backwards somersaulting due to recoil). And you have to acknowledge a film’s comedic genius when one of the film’s opening jokes (yes, you’re supposed to find the following funny) is Blart’s mom getting hit and killed by a truck (which you see in graphic detail because nothing screams good times like vehicular manslaughter!)

Combine stupid to stereotypical characters into the mix, from Blart’s dunce of a daughter who decides NOT to call 911 as people are trying to break down her bathroom door to kidnap her, a hot hotel staffer that finds Paul attractive (because what woman doesn’t swoon over a whiny obese manchild with his face stuffed with food?), the Brooklyn mall cop (you’ll know this by his strong Italian accent and that he only wears a white wifebeater and gold chain necklaces), or the villain so bland and underdeveloped, that the writers actually thought making him heterochromic was the most defining trait of his personality, and you’ve got a surefire recipe for disaster.

I’m certain it won’t be the last we’ll see of him though considering the undeniably profitable market for sad-sacks that makes Louis CK look like Richard Simmons by nutritional and emotional comparison.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

5. The Gallows

I remember seeing the teaser trailer for this prior to Unfriended, and it’s seriously scores better than this hellheap, lack of context and all. When I saw the theatrical trailer reveal that the plot was a group of stupid teenagers breaking into a supposedly haunted school (because again, Cabin in the Woods clearly taught us nothing!), I knew it would all go downhill from there, and then I actually saw it.

The film’s “strongest” scene is a complete ripoff of the opening for Sinister (another rare Blumhouse gem), yet it’s still completely unfathomable in its complete disregard for reality. Because of a “set malfunction,” an actor, Charlie, gets hung to death during a performance of a school play. I would be more frightened by this, except for that nagging fact that no one in their right mind would ever ever build functioning gallows for a school play, yet alone allow minors to subject themselves to possibly getting killed by such.

The next hour or so occupies this perverted alternate High School Musical-verse where theater is widely accepted by everyone (especially those super-rad athletes) as gay and for nerds. The cameraman filming most of this in particular is quite easily one of the most insufferable and douchebaggy subhuman jackasses I’ve seen in recent memory. He and the other characters (one of whom is the lead actor of the play (who’s also on the football team (eek!)) plan to sabotage the play by breaking and entering into the school and then destroying the set and auditorium, which is all now clear-cut evidence on the cameras this film was recorded on. <sarcasm>I sure hope none of these loveable and intelligent characters die violently!</sarcasm>

Where films like Birdman took time into constructing their play-within-a-film, we only see three scenes of this “The Gallows” play, none of which suggest even a remotely interesting short, yet alone a two-hour story. Not that this film’s story is remotely sound either. The film tries to construct some deep connection between the lead-actor kid and the original production where his dad was the lead in the original production, and the Charlie kid was his understudy. This would be interesting if this wasn’t inside of a school trophy case where this would have been common knowledge to everyone. There’s also the lead actress who pops in out of nowhere, and they pull some lame-ass “twist” where she was in on the whole thing and it makes little to no sense, but hey, maybe I’m just not #deep for this movie.

Actually, the film’s horror elements don’t even really appear until the last half-hour or so (minus some cheap obvious jumpscares from characters popping in on camera or some loud noise offscreen), and when the “real horror” does arrive, it’s done so lazily, that there’s no emotion other than sheer boredom to be felt. There’s clearly some audio editing going on post throughout the last third, and it constantly wrecks the atmosphere of the film, so if you’re actually terrified by this film, chances are you’re scared of your own shadow.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

4. Hot Pursuit

While the previous film was bad, it at lease had the “saving grace” of having its actors be a bunch of kids who were so unlikely to further their acting careers, all their character names are their IRL names. How about a film that’s equally as bad and yet ruins your opinion on otherwise decent actresses?

I can’t say that there’s really been a movie in recent memory that has all but poisoned my opinions of the people within it. I saw this movie just a few months after seeing Reese Witherspoon in Wild, and now, I can no longer think of that film or her performance in it without a thousand-yard stare. Witherspoon plays the most grating, over-the-top hick cop who speaks almost exclusively in police code because I guess its intended audience would not have been able to figure out otherwise that she’s a workaholic and takes the job too seriously. And who do we get to pair with her? How about Sofia Vergara playing an equally-grating Hispanic stereotype that makes Jennifer Lopez ala Eric Cartman look politically correct by comparison? Together, these two make for one of the most intolerable on-screen pairings of all time, their voices sounding like a crying fingernail-baby dragging along a chalkboard.

If only that’s as bad as it gets, but there was just as little effort put into this story or screenplay. It’s an hour-and-a-half of forced screwball antics, lame jokes the writers felt proud enough to repeat literally dozens of times, and astoundingly dense character choices. This film tries so hard to make itself as wacky and silly as possible because it’s under the impression that if it doesn’t pacify its audience with as many shenanigans as possible, they’ll immediately lose interest. Some particularly bad scenes involve a truck somehow speeding right into Vergara’s parked bright-red sportscar, which blasts cocaine everywhere so Witherspoon can huff it and get high, along with an agonizingly forced bit where Vergara tries to convince a redneck that she and Witherspoon are lesbians by forcing her face against hers.

And because this has elements of crime and mystery to it, let’s also include some action scenes, like Witherspoon and Vergara catfighting in a hotel room or a chase from armed gunman in a bus full of senile elderly passengers who, like many “hi-larious” films before it, think that the endangerment of their lives is all part of some elaborate show. And then we also are “blessed” with a fugitive character whose only purpose TOTALLY isn’t to serve as Witherspoon’s love interest who shatters her black-and-white opinion on criminals.

In fact, this film feels more like a cartoon than a film, but where most cartoons end before fifteen minutes and actually have SOME moments of restraint, this one constantly hurls childish lolz with yee-haw gung-ho energy that for some reason felt the need to be 90 minutes long. Which is 90 minutes longer than any of it should have been.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

3. Love the Coopers

Now, of all the films I saw this year, I was probably the most surprised over how bad this was in particular actually turned out. I saw many trailers and posters for this, and I had no intention this was going to be that bad. I mean, it didn’t look like an instant classic by any stretch of the definition, but it looked harmless enough. I honestly can’t say I’ve been this intellectually abused by a holiday film since Christmas with the Kranks.

Every single one of these characters are flatter than month-old soda at best and insultingly petty at worst. The film is comprised of several stories to the point that it comes across more like a yuletide Magnolia, but this film thinks it can hack-and-slash the runtime down to half, and these characters are just one of many things that pay the price. The most remotely interesting story in here (and it’s not exactly a badge of honor, by the way) is between a sappily good ol’ young Army vet and one of the Cooper daughters that plays like the average Fox News stereotype of a liberal democrat. While they spend the film ragging on each others beliefs only for them to get together at the end like we all knew they would, their arc is sadly the most believable one here.

Diane Keaton and John Goodman are the matriarch and patriarch of this dysfunctional clan, and we’re supposed to feel for them because they’re getting considering a divorce over a vacation Goodman wants him AND his wife to go on but she doesn’t. Hey, can you spell “first-world problems?” Ed Helms’ daughter’s only lines in the entire film are calling people dicks (not even joking), one kid’s pointless story boils down to getting a kiss from his high school sweetheart, and Alan Arkin and Anthony Mackie both look tired and upset as I was, their performances indicating an anguish that I can only compare to the likes of testicular torsion.

Are the numerous stories and arcs overwhelming you? Don’t worry! We’ll have Steve Martin play the family’s St. Bernard and narrate every single god-damned thing to you so you don’t have to do any thinking for yourself! And no, I’m not on drugs, Steve Martin actually plays a dog, and yes, he really does explain everything to the audience like this movie was aimed at babies. A lot of it’s really unnecessary too. At least half of this film is flashbacks in which Steve Martin, who shouldn’t know half of what he knows, recalls some memory that some character had of Christmas long ago. This would have been a decent way to convey how much more chaotic Christmas becomes as one gets older, but it’s done so often that it just appears like shameless padding.

And yet, the director still finds ways to confuse the film further. Characters, for no real descernable reason and often on a whim, will just look like younger versions of themselves. There are one or two times in which a character appears devastated by something, and it’s shown by them literally shattering into pieces. All of this faux-whimsy feels extremely awkward and out of place, and when another scene comes along where a little kid punches a bully halfway across an entire mall, it looks like they’re taking this seriously, only for it to be their half-assed attempt at a Christmas Story-esque fantasy that the film teases you for thinking it real in the first place. This film is also so unsure of what it is tonally or aesthetically, they immediately follow a screwball moment of the dog eating off the table with one of the characters suffering a stroke.

This film tries to huff the fumes off of every holiday classic that it can, and as a result, it’s an unholy fruitcake abomination that’s as inedible as... well, you got the idea.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

2. Pixels

Perhaps one could argue that this would be the film that surprised me the most over how much it sucked, considering, like a fool, that it might actually be good. Yes, it still has Sandler and his posse of dumb buddies, but I still held on to hope. Turns out, this isn’t just another Adam Sandler movie, this is an Adam Sandler movie with every negative attribute maxed out.

I honestly wouldn’t say I wouldn’t be giving this film any of my attention today if it wasn’t for how oppressively narcissistic the whole thing feels. Where past films like Grown Ups and Jack and Jill were by no means watchable, at the very least, it was reduced down to Sandler and friends just chilling and going on vacation. This film decides to go the extra level to present Sandler as some Gary-Stu uber action hero who gets to save the world because gosh-darnit gee-whilikers he’s just so darn awesome! I’d even argue that this film is more of a self-serving fanfiction than Fifty Shades of Grey was.

(Run-on sentence incoming).

I mean, Adam Sandler literally masters Pac-Man the first day he ever plays it, gets to go to the video game world championships because of it (though loses to an intentionally-written jackass, and I’ll get to that), becomes friends with Kevin James, who is the US President (a creative decision that makes Trump’s potential presidency actually sound delightful), gets called to fight aliens in the form of video games alongside the shrill and ear-piercing Josh Gad and the jackass, played perplexingly by Peter Dinklage, both of whom instantly become better soldiers and marksmen than several countries’ militaries, beats Pac Man with driving skills that would make Dominic Toretto blush, leads an all out assault against the aliens after its revealed that Dinklage cheated (somehow, but who cares, it’s the only possible explanation as to how a demigod like Sandler could possibly be beneath a lowly peon like Dinklage), and then saves the world… by cheating (but it’s Sandler who cheated, so it’s okay!), and then ends with Sandler claiming Woody Harrelson’s wife from True Detective as his newest waif.

Of course, none of this is earned by any of the characters, but only through Sandler’s deceitful and manipulative writing. The second Bridget Moynahan’s character is introduced, crying and clearly distressed with a bottle of wine in her closet, with Adam Sandler being able to sit beside her and comfort her without any kind of protest of personal space, its so obvious, though the film loves to claim it isn’t, that she would be Sandler’s next cinematic trophy wench. Kevin James starts off a sadsack whose embroiled in scandal (mispronouncing a word in a children’s book, no doubt “satirizing” the pettiness of his haters like myself), only for everyone to love him and mock the h8ers as he does beer chugs and cake decorations with his wife. Josh Gad is disturbingly unlikable, screaming half his dialogue and gets his creepy fetish granted when a video game character he disgustingly drools over comes to life in the form of an enemy and falls in love with him because Sandler.

And I haven’t even gotten to how little this film actually honors the time period it supposedly reveres. References to the 1980’s and shameless cameos are thrown about lazily in quick, pandering succession like a bad episode of Family Guy, and they make Q-bert a character in the film who gratingly talks in fluent English and not his trademark gibberish, and yet, he’s still the most likable character in the film. There’s also very little backstory on the invading aliens, but who cares? Obviously Sandler doesn’t, because more story and character development would just take time out of showing everyone how awesome he wants everyone to think he is, and we can’t have that!

But why not? It’s for exactly those reasons that films like Billy Madison and Happy Gilmore are household favorites. I rooted for Sandler back when I saw his trademark manchild characters earn what they fought for: his father’s respect, his grandmother’s home, etc. All I see in him today is an insolent braggart who flaunts his superiority in my face and expects me to laugh with him all the way. I’ll laugh with you once you start making movies worth laughing along to again. Until then, enjoy my silence.

And now, for some “dishonorable” mentions.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Hitman: Agent 47

I know Rupert Friend tried his best on this one, and I know for certain he’s a great actor thanks to Homeland. I don’t think anyone could have made this work, and it doesn’t help that it’s too lazily-plotted, haphazardly constructed, and just atrocious to look at. This film easily has the worst effects of the year, which is only more tragic when you learn that Industrial Light and Magic was behind them.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

The Longest Ride

Some surprisingly committed performances and great cinematography just barely managed to squeeze this one away from the actual list. Other than that, it’s the same narratively trite and emotionally manipulative weepy-fest that Nicolas Sparks seems to be sadly capable of, except here, it’s two ridiculously by-the-numbers and absentminded love stories for the price of one, clearly because neither one on their own could actually stand alone as a feature film.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Sinister 2

The original was a great film on its own, and it’s clear from the sequel that there was no need for a second one. The film relies FAR too heavily on gratuitous gore and an abundance of jump-scares, many of which are caused by the demonic Bagul, who was far more scarier as a shadowy presence in the first rather than the constant in-your-face boo-scares he appears in here, and in trying to expand the story, they inadvertently destroy the canon of the previous film (like, how is this possible?).

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Poltergeist

Quite possibly one of the most gratuitous horror remakes ever, and also one of the worst. Everything that made Poltergeist a classic is gone. The sharp, terrifying practical effects are replaced with sludgy CGI, the likable characters are replaced with one-dimensional archetypes and even poorer acting, as well as some incessant need to modernize everything to the point that it becomes painfully dated.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

Jupiter Ascending

One of the most narratively and visually unoriginal films in recent memory. You have a lead character that literally serves no purpose to the story other than being saved like the dumbass in distress that she is by Channing Tatum and Sean Bean, boring looking aliens (that are literally just human/animal hybrids), and one of the most dismally atrocious performances from Eddie Redmayne. He should consider it a biblical miracle that the Academy didn’t pull an Eddie Murphy and keep him from winning his Oscar just weeks later.

__________________________________________________________________________________________

And the worst film of 2015 was...

1. The Boy Next Door

I can’t really even imagine how a film like this could get made. I mean, I know that stalker-thrillers sell well, especially in the cinematic abortion pile known as “January,” but even then, it’s very difficult to imagine how low standards have to have fallen for a film as anti-intelligent as this to even get greenlit, yet alone made and released.

Unlike the above films, which had SOME redeeming value, however small, about them. This film had not a one. This film gets things wrong that would seem impossible for any film to get wrong, but lo and behold, this film found a way. First off, these characters, every single one of them, are all horrible. Jennifer Lopez’s character is terminally stupid and monstrously selfish, and psycho stalker she gets to have sex with is doubly worse. Even with the atrocious writing that makes him a king-of-all-trades and a different flavor of crazy at the convenience of the mess that, for technical reasons, I have to call a “plot,” Ryan Guzman’s performance is so forced and unnatural, that he’s not remotely threatening.

What’s even worse than all of this is the drastic leaps and bounds over reality and logic this film makes to keep this film at 90 minutes. From Guzman’s glaring criminal history to the sheer amount of evidence against him to the open abuse Lopez takes from him (he’s literally attempting to rape her in one scene at her house with her son and soon-to-be-ex-husband in plain sight), she never acts against him. Even after she finds evidence that he slashed the brakes on her ex’s car (with her son in it) (but didn’t think to bring a USB or something even though she was looking for both this evidence and a sex tape he recorded of her), no, let’s not do that, because we need to kill Kirsten Chenoweth and set up the cliché final showdown where she still refuses to kill him and gets her son shot and her husband grievously injured. This should be the easiest frickin’ movie for Lopez, and it literally takes every single detour into a complete absence of intelligence necessary to keep it running.

Not that any of the other characters are any better of course. Chenoweth plays Lopez’s “best friend,” who laughs as her boyfriend belittles her job at a double date, so you know they’re close. The son is a gag-inducing goodie little two-shoes, and there are a bunch of bullies (who you can tell by their skateboards, baseball hats to the side, and saggy pants) who make fun of him because he suffers from seizures (silly rabbit, souls are for competently written characters!).

And yes, even the most basic elements that even the worst films manage to at least have a basic grasp on elude this film. The lighting and cinematography is all over the place, and it many of these scenes look like they don’t belong in the same movie. When Lopez goes on a double date with Chenoweth, they light the place like some new-age neo-noir movie, and whenever a scene takes place at a school gym, it looks lifted right out of Million Dollar Baby. This film even takes place over a couple weeks or so, and it can’t even get basic timing right. The scene before Lopez and Chenoweth’s dinner, she’s in bed and in her pajamas and she spots Guzman looking at her (pre-psychotic breakdown, btw). After the date, he calls her to come over, and he mentions her looking at her that night. How late even…? So he calls to help her with a turkey that he’s trying to cook, he says its frozen, and then it’s an hour later, and they’re eating a perfectly-cooked turkey that in no freaking way was cooked in that short of a time. And the movie is FILLED with stuff like this.

And yes, while Pixels made my blood boil, at least I could follow it, and at least it looked halfway decent. This movie doesn’t even have the tact or the skills to accomplish that. It’s a failure of a film on literally EVERY conceivable level, and for that reason, The Boy Next Door is by far the worst film I’ve seen in 2015.

God, I’ve waited a long time to do this. Thanks for sticking through. Best of 2015 list soon to be on its way.

Report moviemaster8510 · 325 views ·

Comments ( 2 )