The Top Ten Worst Films of 2018.

Let's. Get. This. Over with!

Usually I begin with a longer preamble before jumping into the year, but not this time. I was no fan of 2018. While the slate did offer up good things, it was a total snooze fest as far as the general sense goes. From my perspective, it seemed like the quality of the output was consistently middling. While it got off to a good start with Black Panther, as it went on, it seemed more stagnant than usual, especially in regards to the summer season (Deadpool 2, Solo, Fallen Kingdom, Ant-Man and the Wasp, Mission: Impossible - Fallout, and Christopher Robin among others), whose output underwhelmed me, and I was oddly more taken by the independent fare around that time.

Or if not, it sure felt that way because 2018 was just horrible in genral. If 2017 was a slight improvement in the world mood, 2018 was a downright regression. Not only was it a wild personal ride that wreaked havoc with my anxiety, but a year with events that served only to stoke fear and hopelessness, with tragedies like the school shooting in Parkland, FL setting a grim tone, the fallout and raging bigotry from the Brazil elections, and the various natural disasters of hurricanes, wildfires, and earthquakes. That's without mentioning the madness courtesy of US President Trump's insane leadership, where it was one controversy after another, capping the year off by forcing the States into the longest government shutdown in history. Absolutely disgraceful.

So it was a rough year to say the least, and I'm thankful when these worst of lists finally come around, that way I can unleash some pent up anger. But even someone as self-sadistic as myself can't endure every piece of trash, so I've managed to avoid the likes of Slender Man, Death Wish, The Nun, God's Not Dead 3, Blumhouse's Truth or Dare (Based on the novel "Push" by Sapphire), or Death of a Nation, the latest propaganda piece from modern day Leni Riefenstahl, Dinesh D'Souza.

Anyway, before getting into the main list, here come the dishonorable mentions. Peppermint starred Jennifer Garner back in her Alias action mode, wasting her on a thoroughly unpleasant and ludicrous vigilante story that bordered on glorifying its bloodshed, with major twists that could be seen a mile away. Venom was an utter trainwreck of a spin-off, getting lost within the utter insanity of its production and unintentional humor, but in regards to its trashiness, it was ultimately too innocent to put in the main ten. A Wrinkle in Time squandered the talent of its cast and director Ava DuVernay, valuing colorful visuals over genuinely deep ideological meditation, instead settling for a stripped down and dull Disneyfied rendition of unadaptable source material. Pacific Rim: Uprising felt like a cheap ABC Pilot rather than a true sequel, pushing aside the original cast in favor of boring newcomers, and ultimately feels cheap and unimpressive compared to its exciting predecessor. Alicia Vikander tried her best to elevate Tomb Raider, but even she couldn't save it from the curse of dull video game adaptations, that at times was so incompetent in filming and scripting, you couldn't believe it had a $100 million dollar budget.

And without further ado, let's leave some films rolling in the street.
Like a turd in the wind.

Number 10

Life Itself
Dir. Dan Fogelman

Dan Fogelman has made a bankable name of himself in his career as a writer and creator, but maybe he should have checked his ego at the door, which runs rampant in this self-indulgent follow-up to his TV series This is Us. Following two distinct groups of people with branching storylines, the first half of the film subjects us to the lives of the Dempseys, as we follow in the overwrought and utterly obnoxious faux-philosophical musings of their daily life, that seems to have no idea what it wants to be, bouncing wildly back and forth between dark comedy and tragic meta-drama, with countless shoehorned Bob Dylan name drops to make itself appear deeper than it is. Most of the events of the first half aren't compelling or intelligent, just unpleasant and egotistical, as Olvia Wilde prattles on over ham-fisted allegories of life being the world's foremost unreliable narrator.

Things make a bit of an improvement in the second half, focusing on the much more tolerable Gonzalez family, but even then it's victim to melodramatic low points, and unfortunately a casualty of the film's tonal whiplash. It's hard to give this segment of the film much credit, when it shares the same space as a bewildering Samuel L. Jackson narrated opening. Your heart won't be aching from sadness, but from pain at the talented actors squandered in the film, including Oscar Isaac, Olivia Wilde, Olivia Cooke, and Antonio Banderas, although it has one saving grace in a heartbreaking Laia Costa. But the true insult lies in the film's infuriating ending, where it's ludicrous interweaving subplots come to a head, playing like an extended mad-lib session brought to life, with all the hilarious tone-deafness to spare. It basically amounts to two hours of Benjamin Button's collision course monologue, but taken completely seriously. Like a rolling stone, indeed.

Number 9
The Cloverfield Paradox
Dir. Julius Onah

The first 2018 movie I saw was also one of its earliest clunkers. The third entry in the ongoing Cloverfield universe, Paradox serves as the earliest chronological chapter that bridges with the other two, and after a decent opening twenty minutes, everything goes horrendously wrong. They say you can tell when a series has run out of ideas when they go to space, and that literally appears to be the case here, bringing the Clover monsters to our universe by ways of preposterous interdimensional and time travel, evoking distracting comparisons to the likes of Interstellar and Alien, as it tries and fails miserably to merge its heady Sci-Fi thinking with its psychological horror.

But heady as it tries to make itself appear, its script is an incomprehensible jumble of nonsense, constantly contorting its way out of dead ends to keep the plot moving, because the writers couldn't figure out what to do with their new ideas. As a result, the film constantly makes insane logic gaps to keep the cogs turning, requiring its characters to make bafflingly stupid decisions to keep getting themselves into trouble and generate tension. I lost count of how many times I went "Wait! What?!" But this was obviously never intended to be a Cloverfield movie, even with its DNA worming its way in during the final act, that feel tacked on at best, and completely contradict the timeline and internal logic of the previous films at worst. It's a leap of faith with no reward at the other end, and unlike its predecessors, this doesn't even have the decency of being entertaining.

Number 8
The 15:17 to Paris
Dir. Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood has made a number of successful films in his five decade directorial career, but this true story based film is not one of them, arguably standing as his worst of the century. Inspired by the actions of three American men who helped stop a gunman on a train, Eastwood pulls an Act of Valor by casting the actual men to play themselves, and focuses on the leadup to their act of courage. The unfortunate side effect of that is that Eastwood's bid for "realism" backfires on him tremendously. The film ends up sinking following a trio of wooden blocks who can't act to save their lives. The three of them didn't even need to try that hard, given that they're playing *themselves.* And even if they had all that emotion of their past experiences fueling them, they cannot project it, and make such boring company to be around.

Granted, it's not all their fault, as it feels like the film is written and directed on autopilot. Every line of dialogue feels incredibly lifeless, delivered in what a robot would guess human speech to be like, but has nothing that even resembles genuine humanity. And if you thought Sully was padded, this is a test of endurance as it winds its way through the agonizing motions, painfully building to its climactic act, which is so uncinematic and pathetically underwhelming, it doesn't even justify the waiting, and yet is so desperate to stretch itself thin, it barely even pays lip service to Frenchman and fourth subduer Mark Moogalian. I don't think Eastwood even cares about his craft anymore. He's far too enamored with pandering to his hoorah patriotic target audience, who won't care that this barely qualifies as a movie. I know The Mule was supposed to be a decent recovery, but this may have single-handedly put me off of watching any of his new films again.

Number 7
Fifty Shades Freed
Dir. James Foley

I honestly don't put these movies here because they're obvious. As deplorable as E.L. James books are, they do offer up the opportunity to make films that are so bad they're good. Instead, they're just plain bad. Freed comes to wrap up the tale of the whirlwind romance between wealthy entrepreneur Christian Grey, and the plain girl of innocence Anastasia Steele. At this point, you shouldn't be surprised by these films, because you know what you're getting. More unbelievable romance centered by two performers, that while talented and attractive, have absolutely no spark or chemistry whatsoever. The movie continues to try and pit together two people who absolutely shouldn't be in a relationship, one defined by its toxic and abusive possession and obsession, as well as grossly simplifying its central BDSM topic, clearly the product of a woman who had no idea what she was even writing about.

But above all, these movies have just been dull and surface-deep. Even living by the raunchy text of the books, there's absolutely no heat to these films, with the heavy lifting depending on two people who visibly look uncomfortable in their steamy scenes, that pad themselves out to the length of their soundtrack to get the film as close to two hours as possible. But even in the most off the rails elements, including the return of Jack Hyde and his revenge scheme on Christian Grey, the film never feels as wild as it could be, and certainly not as intense as it diludes itself into thinking it is. At least it's mercifully short, but even that's a glaring issue, as the film practically sprints across the finish line, even leaving character fates and plotlines dangling if you're watching the theatrical cut, before capping it all off with a hysterically obvious imitation of The Hunger Games. I've truly never seen a trilogy so thoroughly committed to being this underwhelming.

Number 6
Mute
Dir. Duncan Jones

After his paycheck from Warcraft, Duncan Jones could have done anything he wanted, and he insisted on this. Honestly, I really can't even see why, as this might be the single most inconsequential movie of the year. Everything about Mute just feels tone-deaf, from its world building to the haphazardly integrated themes running through it. At times, the film wants to feel like a Blade Runner-esque noir, despite the fact that it barely takes advantage of that neon-lit future world, while other times it leans heavily into awkward dark comedy, from Dominic Monaghan as a pimp in inexplicable Geisha makeup, to oddly placed non-sequitors tying the film into Jones' capsule flick Moon. There is absolutely no consistency to be found in this film, bearing zero sense of singular identity of its own, making the film feel more schizophrenic than stimulating.

But at the center of Mute is a mystery and a love story, one depending on the strength of Alexander Skarsgard's silent bartender to carry it, unfortunate given what a mechanical surrogate that he is to follow, not that the material he's handed does him any favors, specifically his Amish beliefs that the film has no interest in expanding upon. He also isn't done any favors any time the film cuts away from him, and hands over the spotlight to the film's pathetic villains, with Paul Rudd playing straight as an awol psychopathic soldier, and Justin Theroux's awful and cartoonish child predator. But compounding its inconsequential nature, it is such an easily forgettable film, I could barely remember even seeing it the first time, something that no other movie on this list could achieve. It's rare that you see movies like this, that clearly has a lot of ideas on its mind, yet manages to say so very little.

Number 5
Holmes and Watson
Dir. Etan Cohen

Coming in just as the year was ending, Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly's third comedic pairing took what should have been an easy victory, and instead turned it into one of the most ill-conceived comedies of the decade. Holmes is strung together by a series of overextended improv sketches, forming the thinnest excuse imaginable for a narrative, as the duo try to solve a murder mystery with the Queen as the main target. The humor is constant, but painfully unfunny, as Ferrell and Reilly are set loose with a variety of wild comedic scenes, each that drastically overstay their welcome and leave the film moving at a snail's pace, including and especially one scene in which the duo try to stow a dead body for well over 6 minutes. Specifically the film feels like a loose parody of the Guy Ritchie directed Holmes films, right down to copying the slow-motion calculations, but that kind of target feels incredibly old hat to be tackling, making the film feel like it was sat on the shelf for 8 years.

After a while, the film reminded me of a sub-Million Ways to Die in the West Seth MacFarlane film, complete with overextended gags and non-sequitors, anachronistic cameos and pop culture gags, the reliance on crude and sexual humor, right down to a shoehorned Alan Menken musical number, which sees Ferrell and Reilly perhaps at their career nadirs. There's a surprising level of filmmaking sloppiness as well, with terrible scissor cuts all the way through, shots appearing literally out of focus, and a distracting amount of ADR dubbing to fill in gaps. In one scene, Kelly MacDonald's dialogue doesn't even match her lip movements! It's also a sad waste of the impressive talent on display, with Rebecca Hall, Rob Brydon, Steve Coogan, Hugh Laurie, and especially Ralph Fiennes looking visibly lost and unaware of themselves, and the only semi-decent snickers come from Lauren Lapkus as a feral cat-lady. By the time the film reaches its climax aboard the Titanic (don't question it), I was completely checked out. There's nothing elementary about it, my dear Watson.

Number 4
Gotti
Dir. Kevin Connolly

My MoviePass was a big help for me last year, but if their output as a production company is indication of their quality control, maybe it's for the best I let my subscription expire. Gotti explores the life and legacy of notorious mobster John Gotti, his ascension to crime boss of the Gambino Crime Family, and eventually his decade-long prison sentence. John Travolta heads the picture as the vacant and stereotypically written crime boss, already becoming a major black mark on the film given how inconsistent he is. At times he seems to be having fun, but at other points his performance is atrocious, particularly whenever the film leaps ahead to its 2001 scenes, with Travolta buried under ugly butt-chin old-age makeup. Not helping is the weak supporting cast surrounding him, with Kelly Preston laying her New York accent on thick, and Stacy Keach whose character's only defining trait is his constant f-bombs.

The script itself lends us no insight or connection into the mindset of Gotti's criminal rise, to the important people and family in his life, or even to himself. It reads like some six-year-old's understanding of what a mob movie is, playing like some elaborate fantasy with no thought given to internal logic or basic narrative flow, with Entourage star Kevin Connolly turning in such sloppy direction full of erratic pacing, and a hilarious level of cheap looking violence full of CGI blood. Worse still, by the end of it all, it's like the movie is celebrating Gotti as some hero of the people, relying on footage of real-life people calling him their protector, but with how little context the movie gives us in that regard, it just feels like the film is glorifying the trigger-happy brutality of a horrible human being. Gotti ends the film saying that you'll never see another person like him in a thousand years, but by the time we reach that point, I'm not even sure what kind of person he *is,* let alone we'll never see anyone like him again.

Number 3
The Hurricane Heist
Dir. Rob Cohen

The Fast and the Furious is a mammoth money maker these days, and original director Rob Cohen must still be stuck in 2001, given how desperate he is to recreate its success. The core premise of The Hurricane Heist is ludicrous, in which a gang of criminals plan to rob millions of dollars worth of cash that's to be destroyed, using a category 5 hurricane to hide their tracks. This is the kind of story you expect to see as part of some cheap fodder on Syfy, and even looks like one of their original movies with the cheap production qualities on display, overloaded with some of the worst visual effects and green screen sequences I've seen all year, especially as the film gets into the crazier stunts and "how did you survive that?" craziness of its second half. Anytihng to do with the hurricane becomes a well of unintentional laughter, beginning with our main characters as children surviving hurricane Andrew, bearing the mark of Lord Voldemort as it passes over them, and only gets dumber from there.

The plot is downright incomprehensible, placing far more emphasis on tesosterone over basic logic, depending on a chasm of suspension of disbelief on the part of its audience to work, including why industrial size shredders can be hacked into and overheated so that it can be stolen during the hurricane (One of many instances of me going "WHAT?!"). The film laughs at the concept of physics, as Cohen recalls his Furious days with incomprehensible car chases and shootouts. But anything to do with the hurricane is so laughably horrible, as wind gusts swallow up those unfortunate souls without main character immunity, Toby Kebbell plays frisbee with street signs, all leading up to a ludicrous climax where all parties attempt to outrun the walls of the storm's eyes, where the film blatantly tosses out any semblance of realism leftover before the storm magically vanishes with perfect timing. It's mesmerizingly bad from start to finish, leaving one to wonder how it managed to get made in the first place.

Number 2
The Happytime Murders
Dir. Brian Henson

When a movie's first joke is to have a puppet drop an f-bomb after missing a taxi cab, you know you're in for a miserable time. The first film released under the Henson Alternative label, once prominent puppeteer and director Brian Henson stoops to every lowest common denominator level of humor imaginable, arduously testing the patience of the viewer in the meantime. Like Sausage Party before it, The Happytime Murders makes the fatal mistake of equating cute inanimate objects swearing, doing hard drugs, engaging in hard sex, and doing other nasty things that humans do as being funny automatically. But all that does it reveal just how barren and thoughtless this movie really is, as it wastes so much time desperately trying to make the viewer chuckle with every cheap trick, from a married pair of cousins with inbred children, sugar operating as the puppet equivalent to cocaine, and the now infamous silly string money shot from the trailer, that ranks among one of the worst comedic sequences of the year.

Melissa McCarthy is woefully underserved as the human detective trailing the case, joined alongside prolific Muppets performer Bill Barretta as hard-edged PI and disgraced ex-cop Phil Phillips, that have such a toxic and detestible chemistry they're physically unbearable to watch. Not that what they're offered to work with gives them a boost, as the film progressively veers away from its weightier thematic undertones, soon becoming a more hateful and disgusting rendition of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, as even the laughs start to dry up and feel disingenuous, as the puppets at the center become pure, unfiltered objects of negativity and spite. I can't even give much credit to the puppetry, as outside of a few admittedly impressive effects, not only are the movements and designs so lifeless and unappealing, it's all in service of a film so comitted to sinking neck-deep into its repulsive cynicism, it's hard to garner any enjoyment out of it. Somewhere in the world, I can picture the late Jim Henson not just rolling, but writhing in his grave.

Number 1
Assassination Nation
Dir. Some hack

I'm not sure many people will even be aware that this movie exists. I really wish I was one of them, because while Happytime Murders was detestible, Assassination Nation is on a whole other level of awful, pretentious, and offensive. It's worse than just a bad movie. It's the kind of bad movie that thinks it's brilliant.

Four young women find themselves in the middle of a town gone absolutely mad, when hacked secrets start leaking their way out to social media, and the men of the town start taking to the streets ready for violence. Before the main film even began, I knew I was in for a rough time, as it opens with a montage of "trigger warnings" ranging from objectification, transphobia, bullying, suicide, and toxic masculinity. And believe me, running us through a montage of what's to come doesn't make any of that any less of a bitter pill to take.

Writer/director Sam Levinson (son of Barry) runs us through a number of said themes, and how the outreach of social media can turn those who use it into violent cannibalistic animals, but in doing so shows that he has no idea what he's talking about. As the quartet of unlikable leads wax philosophical in their mean-spirited fashion, spouting dialogue that no human being would ever say, it takes on the spiteful life of a Mean Girls movie without any charm, complete with a burn book style blow-up in the style of social media leaks, although a more accurate influence seems to be Spring Breakers (and neither succeeds). That said, any reason that any of this material should be compelling is to see what happens when good, decent people slowly turn into monsters, but before that outbreak, it appears like those people in town (which is named Salem, by the way, hahaha) were already hateful and despicable people, even the four leads that are meant to be our central emotional anchor.

The dark humor of the film is extracted in such repulsive ways, varying from the dad from Starnger Things making heavy handed speeches of his daughter needing to be protected, a town mayor openly shooting himself during a public conference, and some poor girl bashing cheerleader Bella Thorne's head in with a baseball bat. That's before even getting into the second half, where the film goes full on crazy, and the world suddenly sinks into The Purge, complete with goofy masks and machine guns. Despite a couple of eye-catching technical moments, it's all in service of a film so vehemently committed to being as tone-deaf and disgusting as possible, also managing to drag a talented supporting cast that includes Joel McHale, Anika Noni Rose, and Bill Skarsgard (who disappears before the second half even begins) down with the ship.

And I truly do emphasize the word disgusting, as this is a morally repugnant movie all around. Not that I'm uncomfortable with any of the issues that the film tries to dissect, but that I feel filthy for indulging it, when it seems to relish wallowing in the filth. The trigger warning montage is not only a hint of what's to come, it's a warning that the film is going to oddly and alarmingly enjoy reveling in those triggers, presented with absolutely none of the self-awareness it's stupid enough to think it has. It too often enjoys lingering over its gratuitous violence, making its female characters feel objectified, or Hari Nef about to be publicly hung for her transgenderism. It's like what an idiot thinks feminism is, playing like some satire of "SJW" culture, but taken completely seriously with a lot of bitter finger pointing.

Honestly, I didn't even want to give it the credit of a proper write-up, because that would be exactly the kind of response that this vile and self-satisfied trash wants. The only reason that it goes so overboard, especially with its aesthetics, is solely to mask the fact that it has NOTHING insightful underneath its surface. It is the purest, most quintessential example of a try-hard film, and I wouldn't encourage anyone to watch it.

But hey, at least it was for the lulz!

So concludes the latest edition of the Worst Films of the year list, and so if you'll excuse me, I'm about to go see a movie I think I'll actually like. But join me back next week, when we search for the diamonds in the rough, finishing 2018 off with some of its very best films.