The Bottom 20: The Worst Movies I Have Ever Seen

Okay, so in lieu of actually reviewing stuff for the past two weeks, I've been compiling the worst and best movies I've ever seen. Keep in mind this is all subjective, and even more, that my list may change in the future! That's the beautiful thing about art and the human mind. You can change your likes and dislikes any time. In no way are you bound to what you put down on paper.

With that said, I thought I'd start off with the bad first again, since I want to leave you on a better impression with the good stuff next. These are the worst movies I've ever seen. Most of them are things I've reviewed, yeah, and the actual reviews will go more into depth. But as my reviews are often humorously exaggerated, I thought I'd give more of an impression on what I personally, seriously think are the worst movies out there. They're not the SyFy-level low budget crapfests like Bear or the Asylum version of 11/11/11 - those films are what they are, and it's simply not worth really hating them. These films are ones that I personally just think are the worst out there, artistically or for moral reasons.

With no further ado, let's get on with it!

20. I Know Who Killed Me

Purely a mess, this film, which won almost every Razzie the year it came out, is the definition of a cinematic train wreck. Nothing about it works and nothing about it is enjoyable. Stupid, wrongheaded and incredibly poorly written, I Know Who Killed Me is a dud.

19. Idle Hands

Where is the worth in this thing? It’s the bottom of the barrel for garbage stoner humor. Idle Hands is a film for wastoid, worthless burnout morons, and a clear sign that the 90s – that decade of charmingly likable stoner humor – was over. After this, there really was no going back.

18. The Descent 2

Literally just thoughtless. There really was no plot to this thing for most of the runtime, and what plot there was just contradicted the first film and made absolutely no sense. I’d rather be in a coma than see this again, and frankly, seeing it is one of the most surefire ways to get in a coma in the first place. Hideous.

17. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation

So awful that it almost becomes brilliant. Almost being the key word.

16. Poltergeist III

Just undeniably worthless. A few interesting trippy special effects near the end can’t save one of the worst horror movie scripts I’ve ever seen in my life. This movie made me angry with how inept and mean spirited it was towards its characters and the franchise as a whole.

15. Hellraiser: Hellseeker

I hate almost all of these movies, but Hellseeker had to be the worst of the ones I sat through. Slow, boring, confusing and obnoxious, Hellseeker is just a headache and a half. Your time could be better served driving nails through your own head. It would have about the same effect.

14. Deadgirl

I didn’t really hate this film, because it’s simply too silly and inept to truly hate, but the morals and message behind this are so despicable and so prominent in your face that not having Deadgirl on a ‘worst movies’ list would be a crime. This is a misogynistic, hateful piece of trash that falls on its own face so much that it becomes almost as humorous as it is pathetic.

13. Hannibal

This has got to be one of the most inept films I’ve ever seen, with no clear purpose or meaning to the script, confusing character action and a horrendously unbalanced, lopsided pacing. As a movie on its own, it’s terrible, but as a sequel to Silence of the Lambs, it’s an outright disgrace.

12. Romeo + Juliet

Shakespeare is rolling in his grave. Thanks a lot, Baz Luhrman…you bastard.

11. Hollow Man

Like Deadgirl, this is incredibly misogynistic and hate-filled, but unlike Deadgirl it is much more outright offensive and blatantly unlikable. Animal violence, violence against women…it’s just a catalogue of misery. This was just an excuse for the director to act out his sick fantasies.

10. Aeon Flux

Blah, blah, blah, the cartoon was probably better than this, I get it. But Aeon Flux as a movie is wholly unredeemable. A collection of confusing plot elements and annoying writing, this is just an insipid experience.

9. The Box

I’m fairly sure that, in some parallel universe, it is a jailable offense to even watch this film, so hackneyed and unenjoyable as it is. Pretentious, unpleasant and nonsensical, it's just a feat of amazement that this ever got off the cutting room floor. The fact that The Box exists is just an insult to mankind’s creative process as a whole. Director Richard Kelly also made Donnie Darko; that should tell you enough, but this movie is actually far, far worse.

8. Old Dogs

A comedy about as funny as it is charming: that is, straight zero on both counts, all across the board. This movie is literally the most soulless corporate pandering I think you can get in a movie without simply having the actors hold up signs that say ‘GIVE US MONEY’ at random points. I’m not opposed to low brow comedy, it can be pretty funny when done with a certain energy and relentless disregard for good taste…but Old Dogs is simply the sell out to end all sell outs. Perhaps the least funny movie I have ever seen.

7. Black Dahlia

Long, boring, terribly, TERRIBLY written and by the end of it, you will be chomping at the bit to go beat up Brian De Palma for unleashing this film on humanity. There are so many bad things in this movie, even my 3000+ word review couldn’t cover all of them. Despite having talented actors at his disposal, De Palma couldn’t make anything in this moronic script come off as even the slightest bit convincing.

6. The Uninvited

The Uninvited, a remake of the only average Tale of Two Sisters, is one of the most unexpectedly painful and horrible experiences I’ve ever had in a movie. Just riddled with poor writing and plot holes out the ass, this film is just unbearable, as the utter stupidity of it all will begin to weigh on you like a ton of bricks. The plot holes build on top of one another like a game of Jenga, and by the film’s enraging conclusion, you will wonder how anyone involved with this even has a job at all. I don’t even think beginning film school students could create something this thoughtless and jaw-droppingly horrible. It’s just a dumbfounding trip into the worst the human creative brain can offer.

5. CashBack

Another one that seems to think hating on women is cool. And all I have to say is, get bent, movie. This makes Jennifer’s Body look positively modest and chaste in comparison. A movie that teaches us that women’s bodies are only there for the whims of one nerdy, depraved art student who I CAN’T IMAGINE WHY got dumped by his girlfriend, CashBack is just appalling and should be shut up in an underground vault for all eternity, never to be released. Feeling sorry for any of the characters in this piss-pile is just impossible as all of them are about as likable as black fungus growing on your sandwich. The outright, blatant misogyny is just suffocating in how rotten its stench is, but the rest of the comedy is so boorish and sophomoric that not even fans of Old Dogs and Epic Movie would find it funny – they wouldn’t even crack a smile. One of the most offensive, tasteless things I have ever seen on film.

4. The Traveler

A festival of seemingly endless, tasteless gore, The Traveler is one of the more egregious and terrible examples of the worst trends in horror today. It substitutes realistic characters for horrible one-note jokes and screaming, raging assholes impossible to elicit any sympathy from, and tension and drama for gore and blood and guts. Movies like this are the reason why horror is in such a dire state nowadays, as there is simply nothing there to latch onto. The gore is unpleasant and far too realistic to be entertaining, and the story is boring and rote to extremes I didn’t know possible. There’s no creativity to be found and all this movie seems to want to do is show you seemingly non-stop scenes of these people getting murdered, without any reason to care, as every character is unlikable. This is just a hateful, spiteful film that gets worse and worse as it goes on, without even one iota of quality at all, and I was just at a loss for words at how this even got green lighted. Films like this will be the death of horror as a genre – the final nail in the coffin. Don’t support this, don’t rent it…just forget about it.

3. The Road

If you really like child abuse, little girls screaming in pain and non-stop scenes of nothing but undiluted misery and pain, The Road is for you. This movie is simply indefensible, with so many horrible things in it that it all just becomes white noise. The thing about torture and really grotesque, hardcore shit is that you need to build up drama and have something to really say beyond “hey, this is really hard to watch!” There needs to be some purpose, some commentary or some kind of underlying story that justifies the violence, because otherwise all you have is exploitative crap. With this film, all you get is more and more of the worst of humanity, without convincing enough writing to come across as realistic – oh, and the fact that there are ghosts and supernatural demons doesn’t help the 'realism' factor either. This has no idea what it wants to be, what it wants to say or who it’s appealing to.

2. American Psycho 2

American Psycho is possibly Christian Bale’s finest moment, a classic of modern cinema and has a lot of great social commentary on the bourgeois white-collar class of the 80s. This movie is none of those things, and completely ruins the first film in its first five minutes as it has Patrick Bateman killed off unceremoniously by a young girl. Mila Kunis wins my personal ‘worst actress ever’ award in this, but to be fair, nobody could have done well by the hack-work script. Most of this is ear-bleeding narration that literally becomes painful to listen to. You will really have to turn this off for a while to get a break from the constant self-indulgent prattle this movie tries to pass for a story. There really is no story, and the closest this movie gets to evoking anything but contempt and hatred is when you see a couple of college aged girls trying to sleep with their teacher, played by William Shatner, to get better grades. That won’t evoke contempt – just derisive, unbelieving laughter. I hope whoever greenlighted this film doesn’t sleep well at night anymore.

And my number 1 worst movie of all time is...

1. Rock n Roll Frankenstein

Words can’t even describe the pain that this movie inflicted on me, with its utter disregard for anything that would normally pass for an enjoyable film. I just...ugh...just, ugh; that's the best description. After I finished watching this movie, I turned to my friend and proclaimed it, instinctively, ‘the worst thing mankind has ever created.’ I remember standing in my kitchen afterwards and seriously thinking I would rather just stop reviewing movies instead of reviewing this one. People, there are certain limits a man has, and for me, it is when I see a movie about a bunch of guys that create a Frankenstein’s Monster-esque creature, give it a gay man’s penis, and then the monster is sexually confused because of it. That’s this whole movie. And I hate myself forever for just writing that…FOR THE SECOND TIME.

Christ. Just kill me now.

So that's my 'bottom 20' worst films ever list, for those of you who were interested. Stay tuned for the 'best' list tomorrow!

Review: Old Dogs (2009)

Director: Walt Becker

Starring: John Travolta, Robin Williams

Website: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0976238/

You know, with movies like this, I don’t even think there’s much human input at all. It’s just like a machine spitting out cliché plotlines, shallow characters and unfunny lines into a mishmash of blandness. And by god is this bland – I mean, you have no idea. It’s so bland it hurts. Watching this was like having to listen to a dentist drill in your ear for an hour and a half, and actually I’m tempted to say that would be preferable to watching Old Dogs again.

Yes, starring John Travolta and Robin Williams, because…I got nothing; they just picked these two big Hollywood comedic actors’ names out of a hat…Old Dogs was a commercial and critical flop, and for good reason, because this movie just sucks ass! And that’s good enough reason for me to take a look at it and put a nail in this kind of half-assed toothless comedic farce once and for all. Let us commence the beating.

It starts off with Travolta and Williams – I’m sure they have other names but I’m just going to call them by their real ones – walking down the street and arguing about what’s going to happen in their latest business venture, which is as vague and generic as any half-assed comedy ever put out. And what are their characters like? Well, what kinds of characters do they usually play? Travolta as a womanizing and suave nice guy with a voice so girly that most women talk to him because they think he’s a woman himself? Williams as a bumbling fool with a heart of gold and a temper like a volcano? Check aaaaaand check! And yes, I have my revolver on standby for this.

So after Williams begs Travolta not to tell an embarrassing story about him to the board of directors at the meeting later, like a true friend, Travolta goes ahead and tells exactly that story. What a douche. The direction here takes on a very annoying ‘snapshot’ style where short, quick scenes are shoved in your face like clumsily made religious pamphlets from a street leper as Travolta’s voice over tells the story. This is the kind of lazy crap that a lot of modern ‘comedies’ fall into. They seem to think that instead of telling a real story, they can just throw in a bunch of hastily made two-second scenes with shitty music playing over it and hope people laugh. Well I’m not laughing, movie!

Oh, right. So apparently after his first divorce, Williams was depressed and Travolta took him on a tropical vacation where he got a tattoo misspelled by an idiot tattoo artist and then married some chick he didn’t know just because she looked hot, only to leave her the next day out of shame. It’s the kind of boring crap that these kinds of movies substitute for real comedy because they think people can relate to it, or something like that. Because having any real comedy with out-there scenarios and jokes that actually call attention to themselves is just immature!

The next day, Williams gets a message from that chick he married when he was drunk, and she wants to meet him in person to talk. Travolta forces Williams to go to a tanning salon because the movie needs to set up the first of its many hilarious hijinks. Oh, what’s it going to be, movie? Maybe things are looking up after all. What’s that? The salon lady looks at his tattoo funny and then proceeds to flirt with Travolta while Williams gets a mega tan that makes him look like a Guido or something. Nope, that’s not funny at all. Pass.

At the airport, Williams gets stopped by like three people in a row who think he’s Hispanic because of the heavy tan, because…I guess that’s all they’ve got. They can’t even make any real jokes, so they’re just throwing in bland misunderstandings and hoping they get a chuckle or two. It’s like a high schooler who spent his whole night on the Internet looking up porn instead of doing the big project that’s due the next day, and so he had to throw something crappy together at the last minute, appeasing the teacher’s mercy with the barest of his wit. That’s this whole movie. A shoveled together, last minute attempt at humor from a writer who spent his evenings getting drunk because this was the only work he was getting. And who can blame him?

Ugh. So Williams meets with the chick he married when he was drunk, and they exchange several bouts of creepily awkward laughter, because THAT shows us that these two characters haven’t seen each other in a while, right? They go to a restaurant when she drops two bombshells on him one after the other: she’s going to jail for chaining herself to a bulldozer and protesting the destruction of her home (….okay…), AND she has kids. Williams’ kids. Yup, he’s a father. A father who has to impress business executives in order to get a big stake in the company and has to take care of his kids as well. Can you feel the quirkiness yet? Because it’s coming. It’s coming in absurdly small amounts so as to not alienate any of the viewers, because good comedy never takes any risks, right? It never has anything that could possibly offend anyone.

…oh, I forgot this scene, where Williams slams the trunk door on the kids’ original babysitter, ruining her hands:

Charming! I bet she’ll be depressed for weeks and never be able to use her hands fully again for at least a year, but at least you got some laug…at least it was funn…oh, wait, I can’t think of any positives. Scratch that.

So now Williams and Travolta have to take care of two kids. It’s like Two and a Half Men if it was robbed of all good taste and any kind of jokes. For some weird ass reason the film starts to make jokes about how old Travolta and Williams are, with almost every other line having something to do with the two of them being grandpa age. Uh, are we missing something? These guys are old enough to be grandpas? I don’t know; I mean sure they’re not young men anymore, but grandpas? Hardly.

There’s one scene where Williams gets kicked out of his expensive condominium for bringing kids in – and trying to disguise them with hats and sunglasses, because that usually works. The alarm goes off and the lights turn on like there’s a burglar in the house, and the woman Williams talks to runs screaming like she’s being attacked. Ha. Haha…oh, wait, it wasn’t funny.

Then they move in with Travolta, who has poison-tipped spears in glass cases, a fifteen feet deep pool and other things eccentric rich people normally have for no apparent reason other than to seem different and quirky. Williams hires two morons to ‘baby-proof’ the house, which in this movie means asking stupid questions (“You got these spears a thousand years ago? You expect me to believe that?”) and eating food out of the fridge, like total assholes who any sane person would throw out and have arrested in a second, but the movie needs to have more things to kick around its two punching bags of main characters. The kids want to go camping, and scream so loud that they make the birds fly away, and so that’s what they do next! Camping.

This is the point where the movie really slides off a cliff and becomes flat out intolerable as opposed to just silly and clichéd. I’m going to try and sum up what happens in the next half hour of the movie without killing myself or setting out on a quest to murder everyone involved in this. Take a deep breath, people. This is gonna get ugly real fast.

So they go to camp, where this one weirdo thinks Travolta stole his girlfriend. The two guys get mistaken for a gay couple, and then they’re forced to participate in a game of ultimate Frisbee, where Williams hurts that weird guy and busts his lip. They get tackled and shoved around a lot and probably violently hurt, and then Williams blows the head off this statue of the camp’s founder. Then somehow he sets the whole thing on fire? I don’t know. They go back to the house and talk about taking pills like old men, except AGAIN they’re really not that old, so I don’t get why the movie keeps pretending they are. Does the movie assume we can’t tell the difference between the middle-aged Williams and Travolta and actual old people above the age of 65 or so? That’s really stupid, movie.

The kids knock over all the pills while Travolta and Williams aren’t looking, and thus more annoying garbage ensues as the two hapless bland personas suffer all the worst, most cartoony side effects of the pills when they’re trying to do important things, like hit on women at grief circles, and play golf games with Japanese men and Seth Green:

Ghastly. Can’t this movie even try to conjure up something watchable? Just once?

For that matter, yeah, this woman who Travolta was hitting on invited him to come to a grief circle where everyone just grieves about people, I guess. That’s all fine and well but…WHY would she invite some random guy who was hitting on her to a grief circle? Oh yeah, that’s real top notch dating material there! Is she going to have the honeymoon at a funeral parlor? Maybe first conception in the middle of a graveyard? It’s all just happiness and butterflies for this woman, isn’t it?

So because Robin Williams feels that he isn’t connecting with his kids enough, Travolta gives him some sound advice: Just be there for them, protect them and do what they want to do. So how do they go about that? Get this. Travolta takes Williams to a guy played by Bernie Mac who has developed a highly experimental ‘human puppet’ system where two people wear suits, with one moving his body and the other one being manually controlled to do whatever the first guy is doing. Because of this, Travolta and Bernie Mac are able to sit upstairs and control Williams’ movements as he has a pretend tea-party with his daughter.

Is it weird that the only thing going through my head during this was, "where did they get those costumes?"

Uh…okay. This is too much. THIS is their idea of how to foster better bonding between a father and his kids?! You can’t be serious! You really can’t be serious! That’s ludicrous. It doesn’t even matter how much you try to cover it up with sappy, poorly done emotional scenes afterward; normal human beings would never consider something like this as an alternative. Movie, shoot yourself. Repeatedly!

GOD! The rest of the film goes like this: Williams’ wife gets out of jail, and comes home, but Williams and Travolta have to go to Japan to seal the big business deal. They blow it because Williams is homesick for his family, and then the two of them and Seth Green have to invade a zoo to crash the birthday party and be there like they promised. Williams bribes a stuntman to borrow his costume and go to his kids, while Seth Green is kidnapped by a gorilla. It all ends happily ever after with this:

AAAAAAAHHHHH! That's the scariest thing I've ever seen.

Fuck this movie. It’s unfunny, it’s annoying, it’s clichéd and there’s simply nothing good about it, barely any scenes that aren’t completely horrible. Be ashamed if you ever spend money on corporate shitstockings as putrid as this. It is quite simply, unwatchable. And that’s no lie.