Top 10 time, so let’s find out which films made the cut…
10 – FANTASTIC FOUR
Studio interference, (alleged) on-set altercations, casting decisions that split the internet – things already spelled (Dr.) doom for the reboot of Marvel’s most famous quartet, but when the film itself debuted it turned out to be even worse than we had feared.
Having originally labelled it as just “okay”, we’ve since had time to think on it and realised that it was probably worse than we originally thought; a consistently dour tone throughout, the odd choice to go with younger actors for the older (in the comics, anyway) characters people know and love, and a complete lack of joy that the other Marvel movies managed to get away with, are only a handful of the problems that befell Josh Trank’s movie, as if the director deliberately sabotaged his own film just to show up the 20th Century Fox executives. What we are given, as a result, is a film that is as enjoyable as a fart in a swimming pool, and just as smelly.
Trank claims that there’s a much better version of the film that we will never see, one that’s free from the studio-imposed changes – but after the fiasco that we were eventually handled, we can’t imagine this one being much good, either…
9 – PAUL BLART: MALL COP 2
Well, of course.
Absolutely nobody demanded a sequel to the surprise 2009 box office hit from the reviled Happy Madison Studios, but we got one anyway – and it somehow ends up being worse than the first one, as if that were even possible.
Kevin James’ fat-man-falls-over-tee-hee schtick is beyond old now, but this movie still thinks it’s hilarious and has it be the main joke all the way throughout in several desperate attempts to get us to laugh, but his bruntish attitudes this time round, especially with his daughter’s impending move to college, make him an even more unsympathetic character to root for amidst all the stupidity.
It doesn’t even take advantage of the Las Vegas setting, having it all take place in only one hotel – the Wynn – which makes the entire film seem more like a shameless plug for the hotel (the owner even shows up at the end for a cameo) than an actual sequel that had reason for being. We’re not saying it would improve the film if it branched out to include Caesar’s Palace or somewhere like that, but it wouldn’t have hurt to explore more of the area rather than just this one place.
But as bad as Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 turned out to be, it would be another Happy Madison movie that would eventually be more shameful…
8 – PIXELS
We’re not mad, we’re just disappointed.
This had so much potential to finally catapult Adam Sandler, after several big-screen embarrassments like Jack and Jill and the Grown Ups movies, out from his slump and back into the adoring public eye. It had a fun-sounding premise of retro video game characters wreaking havoc on the city, a decent director behind it (Home Alone’s Chris Columbus), and a supporting cast that included, of all people, Peter Dinklage to help support it.
But no – Sandler kept to his self-established status-quo of dumb comedy and offensive jokes, the exact thing that made him an embarrassment to begin with, and we just got yet another detriment to his tarnished career which is made even worse here because, unlike most of his other films, this one at least had an opportunity to be good.
Oh, and it ends on an exceedingly creepy note involving two characters, one of them being a famous video game character, which is so wrong that even Sandler points out the creepiness of it. And when even Sandler doesn’t approve of it, you know that they seriously messed up…
7 – ENTOURAGE
Mark Kermode made headlines this year with his damning review of this movie, based on the HBO series of the same name. If you haven’t yet heard his golden meltdown, check it out here.
There’s honestly not much else we can add to that, he’s pretty much on point. It’s an unbelievably loathsome movie of excess, like The Wolf of Wall Street if there were no consequences whatsoever for the horrible things these people do, filled with many characters so drenched in that frustrating “bro” culture that you just want to smack them.
We wouldn’t necessarily say we hated it almost as much as Kermode did (after all, there are six positions left on this list), but we still hated it all the same.
Basically, what Mark said.
6 – THE GALLOWS
This year has been a seriously detrimental one for the found-footage sub-genre, with films like Project Almanac and Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension all failing to catch on, and even bringing down Doctor Who with it in that seriously lame episode with Reese Shearsmith in it. Only Unfriended and M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit came out unscathed, but when Shyamalan makes a better movie than some of those other ones, you know that’s a worrying sign.
But only one film would once and for all declare the sub-genre to be officially DEAD, and that would be this exceedingly stupid and incompetent horror film that substitutes jump-scares for actual fright, complete douchebags for likable characters, and a tired trope of carrying the video camera everywhere while recording everything – including when these people ILLEGALLY BREAK INTO A SCHOOL AT NIGHT – for something truly innovative when, in fact, it’s all a load of bollocks. Not to mention an ending “twist” that comes almost out of nowhere, and makes everything seem much stupider than it already was.
In a year where a good chunk of the horror films actually tried to step up their game, mostly to successful effect, this one reminded us all of just how low the genre can sink, and how we can declare, for the better of mankind, that found-footage is, for the time being at least, dead and buried.
