It must have been a pretty good year if I only have 10 picks for the Worst Movies of 2018 list, and even those were a stretch. Admittedly, I’m spared a lot of January movies while I’m busy covering Sundance and TCA. So these are only the worst movies I saw in 2018 and I trust everyone else about The 15:17 to Paris, Gringo and Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare.
10. Den of Thieves – Generic crime move exacerbated by aggressive male bravado. But they’re making a sequel which which will automatically be better because it will have history behind it.
9. Life Itself – I’m a white male critic who doesn’t like anything that has any emotion.
8. Red Sparrow – One of three rapey Hollywood movies on this list, this one presumably from the woman’s perspective (albeit written and directed by men So it’s their idea of a woman overcoming sexual servitude). It’s also dreadfully slow and boring.
7. Breaking In – A laughable thriller with ridiculous villains. Gabrielle Union deserves better.
6. Winchester – A boring horror movie. With all the rooms in the Winchester not one of them was interesting.
5. Slender Man – this horror movie was so amateurish it looked like they forgot to shoot scenes that were integral to the plot. I heard the producers actually removed them without the director’s knowledge and that makes sense. Sylvain White is no hack.
4. Welcome to Marwen – A profoundly wrongheaded adaptation of Mark Hogancamp’s inspiring true story. Robert Zemeckis decided that his WWII Marwen fantasies would involve rape and exploitation of women.
3. The Predator – Marwen, Sparrow and The Predator are all bad for women so there’s no need to rank their offenses, but The Predator is certainly the worst movie as a movie. Deriving humor from making women uncomfortable (on top of hiring a pedophile in real life), mistaking babbling improv for comedy and turning one of Cinema’s coolest monsters into a generic bore make The Predator the year’s biggest disappointment from such promising talent.
2. The Little Stranger – Easily the most boring movie of the year. A mystery that’s not very interesting unfolds very, very slowly,
1. Nostalgia – You’d think a movie about nostalgia would be my jam but not one that’s all about what you’ve lost. Nostalgia is a positive feeling for me. Plus, this movie just blatantly has every bad thing happen to characters it can think of. What else would you expect from the creator of I Melt With You? Real life is tough but it’s not this contrived.