Bad movies can have their charms, venturing into so-bad-it’s-good territory. Films that fall under that label can certainly be a crowd-pleaser at a movie night, or perfect to watch along with some professional riffers. These movies have the charm of incidental badness and started with good intentions. The Room and Birdemic endure because their directors championed their work with sincerity; delusion is a powerful tool for unintentional humor.
These 10 movies, however, are not that; they have no indie charm, no interesting personas behind the project, and no moments that will make you laugh. Instead, they are just awful from start to finish with little merit. This can happen to any genre, but these films offer up some of the shining examples of big projects that are painful to sit through from the opening frame.
‘Movie 43’ (2013)
Everyone can get drawn into a movie with an ensemble cast, and Movie 43, presenting itself as an anthology comedy with some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, was enough for most to tune in (myself included). It’s pretty evident from the first skit that this one was going to be an absolute stinker, harking back to cruder college comedies without any wit or nostalgia.
Here, you have several cringe-inducing skits intended to be hilarious, such as Hugh Jackman with testicles dangling from his neck while Kate Winslet pretends not to notice. The only redeeming factor is that, since it’s just a series of unfunny skits, you can turn it off at any point. There is no redemptive arc here, just a dull, repetitive comedy whose only appeal is watching celebrities embarrass themselves.
‘Jonah Hex’ (2010)
There were a lot of misses with early superhero films, and filmmakers couldn’t find the right formula. With Jonah Hex, it was obvious that director Jimmy Hayward was way over his head. He got the basics of who Jonah Hex is, a disfigured Confederate soldier-turned-bounty hunter (Josh Brolin). However, the character has superhero abilities and can talk to the dead. It also introduced a villain developing a superweapon.
Early on in the film, it becomes obvious that this was a misguided approach to the source material that tried to blend a Western and a superhero story instead of telling a compelling Western with elements of heroism. While that may sound like a minor difference, it’s a glaring problem when you watch the movie. Around the time of Jonah Hex‘s release, DC Comics created new, well-crafted stories set in the West, and as a fan of those books, the result was insulting. The filmmakers had no faith in Hex as a character and added bells and whistles and lost all the character’s appeal.
‘The Love Guru’ (2008)
If we’re being honest, even the Austin Powers films are kind of cringeworthy and only worked within that particular time and cultural climate. There is undoubtedly some nostalgia for them, and they certainly aren’t terrible throughout every frame. However, Mike Myers’ career largely imploded, aside from later voice-acting roles, after he introduced Guru Pitka in The Love Guru.
The character of Pitka himself is Mike Myers at his most unaware, a bizarre amalgamation of out-of-date tropes that worked in Austin Powers. That humor was starting to wear at that point, though, and for good reason. Besides being one of Myers’s worst characters, the movie just boils down to a series of inappropriate jokes. It becomes evident pretty early on that that’s all there is to the comedy.
‘Madame Web’ (2024)
A lot of Sony’s attempts to cash in on their rights to the Spidey-verse have fallen painfully flat. While Morbius is a tedious film, at least the collective had fun with it, trolling studios and putting it back into theaters to further failure and the many “Morbin Time” memes. Kraven was a blip on the radar, which, by that time, fans knew was going to be a disaster.
Madame Web, however, is something special, and we’re not just talking about the line, “He was in the Amazon, with my mom, when she was researching spiders right before she died.” Madame Web has horrible dubbing at times, a lack of any actual superheroism, and a poorly written script. It became one of the biggest bombs in the Marvel canon, as few fans had anything nice to say about it from the very beginning.
‘Master of Disguise’ (2002)
I don’t want to hear it! Dana Carvey is an utter comedic gem. His run on Saturday Night Live was fantastic, along with his impressions, his role in the epic duo of Garth and Wayne, and his variety show, which was canceled because he refused to compromise on his sense of humor. Given all of that, Master of Disguise feels even more painful as a vehicle for the entertaining comedic actor.
Since Carvey is so good at impressions, that’s the central premise of the movie. However, there is no setup to any jokes or punchlines; instead, you have just impression after impression. They all fall flat because there is no reason to care about anything going on. The film is an example of 2000s comedy at its most hollow and boring. The movie felt stale within the first few moments, and 80 minutes felt like three hours.
‘Slender Man’ (2018)
It seems like studio executives were asking themselves what horror kids are into these days, found out about the Slender Man, then made a movie about it, trying to appeal to everyone and effectively appealing to no one. In many ways, Hollywood can be slow to adopt pop culture trends. The film painfully exposes its limited understanding of the Slender Man creepypasta, a creature spawned from online forums and the phenomenal Marble Hornets video series.
The biggest crime with the Slender Man movie is that it’s boring but also feels misaligned, following the real-life murder that shook the nation when girls cited the urban legend as motivation in the 2014 Slender Man stabbing. It doesn’t capture the dread of the original concept or touch upon the potential dangers of how online culture can warp the perception of susceptible minds; it’s a dull horror film with a few cheap jump scares.
‘War of the Worlds’ (2025)
With this disastrous remake of War of the Worlds, you have to feel a bit bad for its star Ice Cube, who is a talented actor. Instead of using his talents, the movie confines him to a seat, as he plays a Homeland Security analyst watching the Martian invasion from home. There is just nothing of value to be found; the movie feels like a cobbled mess trying to find some coherence on the cutting room floor. Ice Cube’s responses and action time even seem off, as if he was given vague instructions as to what he was supposed to be seeing on the screen.
The worst part of the film, by far, is how obnoxiously evident it is that it is an Amazon movie, essentially acting as a long, drawn-out commercial for the corporate behemoth, with constant logos plastered on every piece of technology. It’s more dystopian and horrific than the invasion itself.
‘The Forest’ (2016)
Out of the films on this list, there is a chance this one has been wiped from memory. The horror film received some hype up to its release, taking its protagonist into the infamous Aokigahara forest in Japan to search for her missing twin sister. Early opinions presented it as a nice blend of American and J-horror. However, within the first few moments, it’s clear they aren’t treating the site’s severity with any respect (as Logan Paul also didn’t) and are seeing it through a misinformed Western Lens.
Since the first few scares came in the form of lunging ghosts, it was clear there would be no substance to the horror; it also clumsily revealed the truth behind the mystery of a disappearing sister and was poorly written. The film’s shift in the last act is more frustrating than shocking. Natalie Dormer plays both sisters, which feels trite.
‘Avatar: The Last Airbender’ (2010)
One of Nickelodeon’s most beloved series of all time, Avatar: The Last Airbender, could have been a slam-dunk in theaters. However, M. Night Shyamalan was the wrong director for this feature. His work has its own distinct style, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.
The movie was devoid of subtle humor and packed with wall-to-wall narration that often just re-explained what had previously happened on screen. Picks like these were insulting to fans of the original work, and the many issues with the adaptation became evident from the beginning. Add in horrible pacing, and battles where a single power takes longer to charge than it does for Ken from Street Fighter to say “Shinkuu Tatsumaki Senpukyaku.” It’s just a miserable watch, whether you’re a fan of the original series or not.
‘Cats’ (2019)
Cats is a Broadway staple, but for those unfamiliar, the story follows a tribe of cats called the Jellicles, who gather for an annual ball where their leader (played by Judi Dench in the film adaptation) chooses one of them to be reborn into a new life. Various cats perform songs to make their case. The movie includes the songs from the original 1981 stage musical, with one new track and some trimming of others for a more theatrical experience.
It all seems harmless, and since musicals had a bit of a 21st-century resurgence, it should have gone off without a hitch. The issue was that the technology used to craft the cats was so poorly implemented in its original release that Universal sent out a VFX patch to theaters to correct the mistakes. No amount of tweaking could fix the visual abomination, and the poor screenplay and horrible cinematography made it evident to fans of the musical and casual viewers alike that this one was an unsalvageable mess from the opening scene.
The studio systems have been in place for a long time; there are bound to be mistakes, and this list represents only a small sampling of catastrophic failures. So, we want to know what film you found particularly deplorable and wish you had never wasted the time watching.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
