2018 is being labelled nearly universally as not only one of the most painful years to bear through with gritted teeth but even more worse than 2017. Frankly, I felt that 2018 just simply held on to the new norm that was placed firmly by the awful misadventures and missteps we had to witness two years ago. Everything I summed up last year at the top of my Worst Films list (childish and racist behavior of the President, snobbish Congress, backward thinking Supreme Court, natural disasters and mass shooting being untreated) all sadly happened again. And like last year, I still was able to put one foot in front of the other because my hope in humanity still will not kneel.
But enough about that plight, which you can find everywhere you can click, what exactly happened in the world of cinema?
2018 was the year of "it's fine". Movies weren't predominately great or amazing or awesome or good or even bad. They were just fine. You paid for a ticket at the movie theater or streamed a flick through your favorite source and you walked away from it indifferent. The soul didn't change and the heart didn't grow yet your valuable time and money had been spent. It seemed nearly every major film was a disappointment in more ways than one and you felt a bit cheated. You couldn't even find comfort in the luxury of subscription services, most notably when MoviePass squandered all of its brief public goodwill at the start of the year to implement user limitations on a near weekly basis. Take your pick at what was the worst of that service: going from a daily movie to three films in one month, the peak pricing, the eventual shrinking of available movies, their bad entry into film distribution, their not-so-secret campaign to decry critics about one of their own releases, etc. To make matters worse, at least chiefly for myself, the theater chains continued to refuse lower their prices for tickets and concessions but instead began to enforce the "privilege" of reserved seating among all of their theaters.
As for what really went wrong in film in 2018, where do you start? Skywalker Ranch was shaking in their boots as they saw a lot of steam expunged from the Star Wars franchise. Mainstream comedies had to be reevaluated after many movies underperformed and/or saw no one laughing along. Nobody cared for political documentaries of any kind anymore thanks to the ongoing circus taking place every day in Washington. Action and thriller movies with badass female heroes being played by popular stars such as Jennifer Lawrence and Taraji B. Henson pretty much tanked at the box office. Pixar and Disney released sequels to two of their biggest 3D animated films only for both of them ending up being quite poor. A major television creator flamed out spectacularly on the big screen with a laughably bad weepie and decided to lambast professional critics, even after the general public also said no to it. Steve Carrell was once again rejected to become a major movie star thanks to a flop and a shrug of an indie. A forgettable dog pic had to be briefly removed from theaters and reedited due to an unbelievably stupid controversy. Once major horror and sci-fi franchises tried to rebirth themselves to modern audiences but were cut down by production woes, lack of hype, and sheer distaste. Two bro-friendly male stars of the 2000's suffered two of the biggest widely released bombs of the year, one of which was so bad pre-release that even Netflix didn't want to own the distribution rights. Universal Studios saw a lot of red ink being spilled thanks to some very bad calculations, whether it was for the poor release of their major Oscar bait or putting the money up for a strange sci-fi movie about cities roaming around on tank treads. And of course, as an encore, even more famous or celebrated male figures in Hollywood ended up being revealed to be total unrepentant scumbags. From all of this failure and more, I was able to drum up twenty "lucky" losers.
These are the films I have deemed the worst of 2018.
Now comes the usual disclaimer that everyone forgets to remember: This list is of my own opinion, not the general public nor the Internet consensus. If I didn't see the film at all or in its entirety, it isn't counted or considered to be included.
TOP TEN WORST FILMS
1. My Uncle John is a Zombie!
This is undoubtedly one of the absolute worst films I have ever sat through. Not just in theaters nor just this decade, I really do mean of all time. High school student films have more dignity than this piece of shit. Thankfully, the film remains hidden from the rest of the world, barely scrapping by via rare screenings. If it does come up to the surface, stay far far away from it.
2. China Salesman
I was planning on giving the gold and silver to two zombie flicks on this list but this travesty had to break it up. This is one strange movie that really doesn't know what it wants to be. It starts off as an action film that immediately burns all of its hype by giving us Mike Tyson vs. Steven Seagal (or rather Seagal's obvious stunt double). But then it starts focusing heavily on global telecommunication networking and waving the Chinese flag, both figuratively and literally. Then it turns into an African civil war pic where every citizen starts killing each randomly and the heroes need to save some phone towers. Once the dust finally settles on that ordeal, you think it's all over but no, there's still forty minutes left to discuss more global telecommunication networking! And just to make it even more insufferable and confusing, the director had everybody speak English despite having absolutely no form of proper diction (including Tyson), thus causing the audience to have no understanding of what they're actually saying.
3. Day of the Dead: Bloodline
For some strange reason beside monetary gain, the Dudelson family refuses to let the third entry in George A. Romero's Dead trilogy to stay, well, dead. There was a sequel to the sequel (which was actually a prequel), a remake in 2008 and now a decade later yet another remake with a completely pointless subtitle. This one is an endurance test as you have to bare witness to the one of the worst female protagonist brought to film lately: a lowly med student who always puts her own wishes and needs above everyone, puts many lives in zombie danger and never bats an eye when someone dies, and somehow gets away with it all. The only things that kept me from tearing my hair out from all of the sheer incompetence on display were some good gore effects and the hilarious fact that the main dumb guy is named "Baka".
4. Holmes & Watson
Full disclosure: I ran out to see this in theaters mainly in order to see if it could qualify for this list. It told many other bad movies to hold its beer because it wanted to show how bad you could get with a mainstream comedy. Who in Sony seriously thought that people would want to see a parody film of Sherlock Holmes close to a decade from its release, let alone one starring the very iffy Will Ferrell? To anyone thinking it can't be that bad: I hope you enjoy a scene with the main duo shouting for their maid for a minute straight; a running joke about Sherlock's hat; many mentions of masturbation, pissing and puking; Watson waving around and shooting his gun frantically; Sherlock switching from brilliantly smart to really stupid from scene to scene; an useless musical number (poor Alan Menken); and a series of peppered-in Trump jokes that are embarrassingly trite and date the film super hard. Writer-director Etan Cohen continues to show that it was Mike Judge who was the real mind behind Idiocracy.
5. The Happytime Murders
A lot of people were waiting for this to fail really just from the premise alone: an explicitly adult take on puppets from some of the people once behind and in the hands of the Muppets. I, like other film nerds, said it was already been done before with Peter Jackson's Meet The Feebles. I gave it a chance only to end up watching a wormeater, a movie that only offers up crude imagery and language just for shock factor only. What a waste of human talent and puppet material.
6. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
J. A. Bayona tried. He really, really tried to make some parts memorable or striking but the terrible minds in Universal Pictures, including the new prince of awful Colin Trevorrow, turned this turd into the dung heap left behind by a Triceratops. That ending left me so angry I was praying for steam to come out of my ears.
7. MFKZ
Oh man, this film is so edgy, the actual title is an expletive. Please, this animated film is a total poser and a total piece of crap. I would have been offended by its often racist depiction of Los Angeles denizens if I wasn't being distracted by the abominable story. Why should you really care about the main character? His paranoid storyline gets dropped with the stupid plot twist midway through, he gets shoved to the side to make room for more scenes with some lucha wrestlers and a doctor that just pops into the proceedings, his love story with some female stranger is a non-starter, and he doesn't even save the day in the end, only to be helped by some stereotypical gangbangers. GKIDS, I love that you help bring out more animated films to theaters and audiences but this one was a mistake.
8. The Predator
Blame both 20th Century Fox and Shane Black. No amount of savory dialogue or adequate acting can surpass the many terrible decisions brought forth by all the people behind this mess. The poor handling of the Predators, putting way too much emphasis on the lame human characters, the absolutely dreadful lighting and editing, the fact that there's an autistic kid with mental superpowers in a 2018 movie, it all stinks to high heaven. I don't care in the slightest if there is a supposed director's cut. I frankly would rather watch the AVP flicks in all of their grimy glory.
9. Making Fun: The Story of Funko
I originally had this much lower on the list but my anger towards it just grew and grew. I'm always a sucker for showbiz documentaries and the history of entertainment properties but this is not one of those. It is a glorified company video, designed to sucker in investors or be the splash video for Funko's YouTube page and website. After spending a third of its running time talking about the history of the toy company Funko, it then pads out the rest of the film with a series of short interviews with celebrities and ordinary folk, all of whom talk more about pop culture and entertainment in general rather than Funko themselves. To make matters worst, we have to cheer on as the people running Funko get ready to launch their big retail store so they can sell more stuff that is only licensed by them and not originally from their real minds and hands.
10. Gotti
One of the biggest fan films to ever get major theatrical distribution, it is not even funny how much of Goodfellas actor turned director Kevin Connolly cribbed from for his way too nice biopic of the famed NYC mobster. The film just skips around in time whenever it feels like it, often mashing the film footage with real life news footage, and sets nearly all of the scenes to those great 70's, 80's, and 90's tunes produced by Mr. Worldwide himself, Pitbull. Oh yes, even I remember when the 2012 song "Don't Stop the Party" was played everywhere in July 1985. The fact that the audience is supposed to like John Gotti and his eternally young, murder and hustling friendly, okay to sleep with an underage girl, not fat at all son, especially towards the end, puts the rotten cherry on this shit sundae.
THE NEXT TEN
11. Mazinger Z: Infinity
You know what Patlabor 2: The Movie needs? Wall-to-wall standard giant robot action to the point where nothing stands out, egregious product placement, pitiful fan service, a part where the entire world perfectly believes the clearly evil villain will be truthful and walk away once he's done, and end the proceedings with a badly hummed rendition of the Mazinger Z theme. I knew I was in for a bad ride when the behind-the-scenes video airing before the screening had the director literally asking the audience to enjoy the action and dumb down their brains.
12. Death Wish
Surely Eli Roth and Joe Carnahan, those two upstanding gentlemen of fine taste, would make an effective vigilante film for our current climate, right? Nope, instead they would just rather relish NRA-approved gun ownership, awkwardly extravagant gore, and a very white and very old Bruce Willis killing several non-white hooligans. Please keep in mind that Paul Kersey is a medical doctor in this remake, not an architect. Nothing wrong there!
13. Action Point
Stick to the trailer. Seriously, no joke, just watch the trailer. It's well put together and has all of the best moments of amusement park chaos. The film itself offers up nothing really of worth, not even with the shoe-horned father-daughter storyline that allows Johnny Knoxville some acting range.
14. Sicario: Day of the Soldado
When the news was originally announced at the prospect of a sequel/spin-off to Sicario, everyone collectively said no. The makers didn't listen and went ahead with making this ugly pic. Benicio del Toro and Josh Brolin are still great but screenwriter Taylor Sheridan ruined his track record of quality here, pulling some of the same plot tricks he did in the previous film, making us never care for a kidnapped snooty little rich girl, and essentially making a story that doesn't matter since everybody just brushes it all off in the end like an average cop television show.
15. Puppet Master: The Littlest Reich
The Puppet Master franchise got by the allure and perfectly toyetic design of its killer marionettes. Too bad the makers of this modern reimagining have the signature ones like Blade and Torch lose all the charisma a puppet could have and just have the little monsters move or be flung around amateurishly. It has some good kills and pretty darn good practical gore effects but the story is poorly handled and revels in repugnance, the climax is quickly strung together and ends up literally being a car crashing into a wall, and it concludes with an awful downbeat ending and pathetic sequel setup. A bad misstep for the promising S. Craig Zahler (Bone Tomahawk, Brawl In Cell Block 99), who wrote the script.
16. Samson
I enjoyed this a lot more than the usual Christian crap fare (dig that handicap massacre match between Samson and The Philistines!). However, it is such a wonderfully laughable mess, from the high school level sets to the cheesy acting to the bad CGI to the clearly you-missed-him action choreography to Samson being a total dolt to the weird moments when it wants to be The Passion of the Christ. And those beards. My God, those fake beards made me laugh until I cried.
17. The Meg
It gets slightly more fun after the halfway mark, at least if you're okay with PG-13 or less violence and need more China to be spoon-fed in your film diet. But the first half of this shitty shark movie is a total bore and rife with some really stupid characterization. Also impacting its entertainment factor: the sheer fact that nearly all of the main characters don't end up as chum.
18. Lu Over The Wall
Anime director Masaaki Yuasa and his studio Science Saru had a banner year in 2018 save for this middling work. More aggravating than entertaining, this surreal anime flick needed to have better control on its tone and animation quality and a much more coherent script. Seriously, the lowly fat secretary in the background ends up being the main villain?
19. Suspiria
I didn't put this divisive horror film here just because of some stupid fan outrage that one of my favorite films was remade. It deserves its placement due to being a tiresome watch. There are a few artistic flourishes that stand out but the pretentiousness gets toxic, the dancing loses its luster, the plot twists are headache inducing, Thom Yorke's score is lame, and the big climax is laughably amateurish. And I don't care about the real reason why Tilda Swinton was cast in multiple roles; every scene involving her under heavy makeup as an old male professor is near insufferable and very distracting.
20. Ralph Breaks The Internet
To go from my best film of the year to the last film on my worst of list. Wow. Trading in video game humor for a Disney-ifed take on The Emoji Movie and turning Ralph into a real toxic villain. What were they thinking?! Just keep on rewatching the Disney princesses scenes on YouTube rather than sit through this highly disappointing effort.
Next Up: The Best Films of 2018
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