Sai Hemanth
I generally hate to go hard on movies, especially because I know the effort it takes to make them. However bad they are, I give them the benefit of doubt and never ask our readers not to watch it, with an anticipation that it may appeal to them. These fifteen movies deserve to be termed “worst”, not because of the lack of hard work gone into making it, but the lack of effort on the creative side of the things. After all, all the money and effort in the world don’t necessarily make a great film. It’s forgivable if a big Hollywood movies go bad during the execution phase. But when the thought process behind the movie is lazy, I don’t think twice before pointing it out. And sometimes, it really bothers me when I can clearly see that the makers have taken the viewers for granted. This is when I am upfront about labeling a movie as bad or worst. Anyway, with that said, here’s the list of some really bad movies of 2018.
15. Terminal (2018)
I’ll start with the only positive I could find in the film: the visuals here are top notch. Everything else, though, is paper thin. The quick edits, once popular maybe twenty years ago, project a disjointed, often disorienting spin that keeps you from being involved. The actors, while adequately doing their jobs, are marginalized without any attempt to explore motivations etc. There’s a mechanical feel to the characters and all of them are one-dimensional. They are too often depicted in conversation with only one actor in the frame, without seeing the characters together on the screen, so you rarely get the feeling of actual people communicating the way humans do. Which is a pity, because technically, the filmmakers are supposed to know how to edit dialogues between two people. It seems like the makers here were more interested in visual effects than the story or the actors. I’ll stop before turning this into a rant.
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14. How It Ends (2018)
‘How It Ends’ is disappointing, vague, inconclusive and poor. As the runtime passes, you realize that this movie is indeed on a road to nowhere. Nevertheless, it is hard to jump the ship and abandon this movie due to some engaging performances from the cast. Both Theo James and Forrest Whitaker do a good job at keeping the audience intrigued only for there to be no pay off by the time end-credits roll. The story is about a desperate man trying to get home to his pregnant fiancée in the midst of an apocalyptic event. As an audience, we are as bamboozled as the characters on screen as it is never made apparent what has actually happened. There is no coherence in the events happening on-screen. This at first helps raise the intrigue but all stories need a beginning, middle and an ending. This film does have a beginning but then just becomes a series of events that lead to no satisfying conclusion.
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13. Kickboxer: Retaliation (2018)
It’s the sequel to ‘Kickboxer: Vengeance’, which was a 2016 remake of the Jean Claude Van Damme film. The big finale is essentially a remake of the finale from the first classic movie. It’s not a scene-for-scene remake but they have clearly copied it visually with all the usual beats. There is one main difference with this movie: it’s not good. In this film, the bad guy does actually kill Sloane in the finale. Yes, you read that right. Kurt Sloane is actually killed in the finale. But fret not because Kurt’s kidnapped wife manages to bring him back from the dead with one of the adrenaline/steroid concoctions used by the baddies despite her not being a doctor. Kurt comes around, shakes off the fact he had just expired for around ten minutes and goes on to win the fight. I rest my case.
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12. Fahrenheit 451 (2018)
‘Fahrenheit 451’ can be summed up in two words: wasted potential. After a second civil war, the government has decided to get rid of all books to prevent future unrest. This film has no sense of a structure or character development. It fails to recreate the world from the book, which is supposed to be the backdrop of the film. Motivations are not just unclear but non-existent and no clues are ever given as too how the system became what it was. The result is painfully boring and doesn’t give me much to talk about. Any interesting concept is clearly ripped from the source material without clear understanding. Shannon is unapologetically loud and Jordan is a blank slate; neither work. Throw in a hilariously bad romance sub-plot and some severe logical issues and you have what is most likely one of the most disappointing films of this year.
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11. The Titan (2018)
Tom Wilkinson and his team of secret biologists need to develop some kind of superhuman to be sent to a remote planet, Titan. He needs to be able to live there without the need of life support — we are never told why. So no oxygen tank, no pressurized suit etc. Therefore in some way advancing human evolution to live in extreme conditions. When Sam Worthington ends up on Titan, where it seems to be boiling hot and dry as a bone, it does seem rather weird. They turn him into a fish, teach him to sit underwater for hours at a time, just to send him to this boiling dessert planet. In the end, they only get to send one guy up, and by the time they do, he has morphed so much into a fish person he would be unable to reproduce anyway, so the idea of re-starting the human race on another planet is already doomed to failure, and considering it cost thirteen billion dollars for the mission, it’s a very expensive waste of time. The film is a waste of time for audiences too.
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10. Looking Glass (2018)
Whilst the plot provides the basis for what could have been a gripping and tense horror movie, the end result is that of sheer disappointment and befuddlement. Nicolas Cage has always been and still is a very adept actor, and I suspect that is why I continued watching until the end. I kept thinking “surely he’ll turn this around soon!” But alas, he never did, or rather was never given the chance to. Sadly, the plot actually had great potential and it could have been used to create a high caliber movie with edge-of-your-seat suspense and shocking twists, but this goes unrealized and instead, the actors just coast through what seems almost like a rough copy, instead of the final cut. Never mind all the potholes and unanswered questions, but on top of that, the editors left a mic in the frame in the bedroom fight. I’ll leave it to you now.
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9. Fifty Shades Freed (2018)
The biggest problem with this film is its story — or lack thereof. Ana and Christian are married, go on a honeymoon, enjoy life. Then her ex-boss is back in the picture wanting some kind of revenge. It just makes little sense, but the film tries to provide an explanation at the end as to why the ex-boss was so fixated on Christian. It is dumb and doesn’t try to convince you. You’ve got a couple of playroom sex scenes and scenes of how rich people spend their money. Then a sub-plot of pregnancy and kidnapping, none are very interesting. And that’s your film. With the high popularity of the books, I’m not surprised that audiences flocked to the cinema to watch the trilogy but I haven’t heard a good word said about the franchise.
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8. 211 (2018)
Well, the idea for the story sounds pretty solid itself. But the film is poorly executed. Much of the writing is bad and the dialogue clunky. When the lady cop and her rookie partner are talking, I swear they seem to be taken out of The Room book of filmmaking. Many of the plot threads that are started seem to go nowhere. Nic Cage is really good as he tends to be but again, he’s the best thing about the film and the only one really trying. The kid playing Kenny is pretty decent for a child actor. My main problem is with the villains. The merc team robbing this bank are supposed to be super intelligent and crafty in getting out of these situations. Yet in the end, they literally rush out hauling heavy bags of money on their shoulders into the line of fire of the swat team and get gunned down in seconds. No part of the film, other than those two actors, is even satisfactory.
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7. Patient Zero (2018)
A virus has laid dormant in us since the beginning of time. And the extremes of modern stress have caused it to awaken. We’re all, in essence, “Patient Zero”. I really wanted to like this movie but I struggled. The acting is really good from all of the cast, a couple of unknowns were a bit stiff but were otherwise fine. Stanley Tucci is great as always. Where the movie falls apart is the basic story. Directing and editing can’t do much good. I also didn’t think the music added anything and seemed very out of place in some scenes. There were a lot of people making poor decisions and not reacting to situations the way you normally would. It is a shame as the story did put an original spin on the genre it just wasn’t done well. I have seen other movies by both the director and writer of this movie and they were half decent, but that’s not the case here.
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6. Reprisal (2018)
There’s some seriously bad acting going on in this movie and Bruce does contribute his fair share that too. The story is so full of plotholes you’ll have to work hard trying to figure out why and how things are happening the way they are. The “special” effects will leave you wondering too. I am particularly baffled by the scene at the end when Bruce shoots the bad guy and he falls over the railing of the bridge. You see him falling over it and when he disappears out of sight there is a cloud of dust as if to show the body hitting the ground. But in the next shot, the guy is lying dead on some stone pavement that split his head open. So where did that cloud of dust come from? Now, I could continue pointing out all other fails but I’ll stop here out of respect and a little sympathy for Bruce.
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5. Open House (2018)
During the first open house, a sinister figure seen only from the knees down comes to the showing. After it’s over and they’ve returned home, son says to Mom that open houses are weird because you give people keys to your house so they can look at it when you’re not home. But how do you know they ever leave the house? Therein lies the entire plot. Given the massive house and the number of rooms in it, of course, the ominous stranger who possesses those legs we saw earlier is still there stalking them. These two are so ignorant of what’s going on around them that the homicidal stranger climbs into bed with Mom and she doesn’t even notice. The characters are so flat, so one dimensional that I cannot sympathize with their plight. There are characters that have absolutely no point to them. The killer removes the kid’s contact lenses, then proceeds to kill him. That’s just an example of the absolute nonsense this movie is. It’s easily one of the laziest script writing I’ve come across in a long time.
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4. Show Dogs (2018)
NYPD dog Max is involved in a customs investigation which crosses path with FBI agent Frank’s investigation into a stolen panda. A lead sends the duo to join a dog show in Las Vegas. They befriend dog trainer Mattie and the various dogs in the show. This has a few lazy references, one of which is Turner and Hooch. I’m not a fan of that movie and this is somehow worst. The film which is supposed to be fun but ends up a painful watch. I’m a huge fan of ‘Bojack Horseman’ and was really looking forward to Will Arnet’s work in this film. He is very talented and could’ve done a lot, but that doesn’t happen. He certainly seems like he’s not having any fun and neither is the audience. This is a kid’s movie without the fun or the joy. The talking animals aren’t fun. The buddy cop duo isn’t fun. The investigation isn’t fun. None of it is fun.
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3. Black Water (2018)
The first few scenes hinted at an interesting plot. I thought that Jean and Dolph can come up with something but it goes spiraling down as the runtime progresses. Unfortunately, Jean Claude Van Damme looks fatigued and goes through the motions. He didn’t look interested at all or look like he wanted to be there. None of the characters are developed enough and are very difficult to get behind. ‘Black Water’ looks shoddy, especially the badly organized and sometimes incomprehensible editing and awful visual effects, so fake looking that it doesn’t blend well with the setting at all. The action is both dull and chaotic, there is nothing exciting and it’s choreographed with no enthusiasm or finesse. The script is too talky and has no tautness, the pace is flabby and the story gets far too complicated with the twists not being that much of a surprise. The direction seems indicative of a lack of experience or ease.
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2. Slender Man (2018)
‘Slender Man’ is a movie one ends up watching just to satisfy a morbid curiosity. It’s obvious to anybody who has visited online horror forums before that nothing good is gonna come out of a major motion picture based on an internet creepypasta. The source material is not elaborate or cohesive enough to justify making a full-length film about it unless the writers are able to expand on it and fix it, which is not the case here. The awful CGI is distracting, though there’s not a lot more they could have done here. The biggest problem is the concept behind the story, too broad to be scary. It negatively affects the cinematography that follows the same generic path. There are one or two interesting images that would form nice compositions if they were part of a collage in an art exhibit, but here they’re just not very special. If anything, the biggest flaw in this film is taking itself too seriously. It misses the opportunity to have fun with its own stupidity and prevents the audience to do the same.
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1. Future World (2018)
This is a post-apocalyptic story in a ‘Mad Max’ vein. We have motorcycle-riding raiders, lunatics, topless slave girls, even a few actors you’ll recognize from other stuff. I really liked the general idea behind the plot, but it is completely let down by the screenplay. The dialog is lackluster and feels forced. Lots of times I was left scratching my head wondering why the characters are saying what they are saying. Unfortunately, it manages to fail on almost every level. To make this kind of film you either need a lot of money or truly inspired production team under an immensely gifted director. Here the makers’ efforts come off as clumsy. The fight scenes are too choreographed to be gritty but too tame to be fun. The locations are boring and look like sets. For some reason, even indoors, every scene where there is a punch-up some guy on a motorbike rides by. The script, like I said is awful, the characters are dull and the acting is massively over-hammed.
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