{"id":1664,"date":"2025-01-07T15:51:44","date_gmt":"2025-01-07T15:51:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.craigsilliphant.com\/?p=1664"},"modified":"2025-02-08T19:43:40","modified_gmt":"2025-02-08T19:43:40","slug":"the-6-worst-movies-i-saw-in-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.craigsilliphant.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/07\/the-6-worst-movies-i-saw-in-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"The 6 Worst Movies I Saw in 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For someone learning the craft of film, screenwriting, or criticism, a bad movie can be just as important as a good movie. Sometimes more important. It shows you what not<\/em> to do. I guess I learned a lot this year, as this list is a few titles longer than usual.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Side note: you may ask yourself how films like Madame Web<\/em> or Hot Frosty<\/em> didn\u2019t make this list. They were both strikingly bad movies. Madame Web was poorly constructed, with amateur mistakes (and amateur acting as well). I actually watched it hoping that it could fill the #1 Worst Movie slot this year. However, the same lowered expectations that worked in Saturday Night\u2019s<\/em> favour, worked for Madame Web as well. It was one of those bad movies that transcends; it was so bad that it became ridiculously entertaining. I had such fun with this garbage movie that I actually bought it on blu ray. Go figure. And while I won\u2019t be purchasing Hot Frosty, it was also a blast. A very dumb blast, but a blast nonetheless. And even though they\u2019re both horrible films, and my Letterboxd ratings of them are quite low, I can\u2019t put something on a \u2018worst\u2019 list if I had that much fun with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read the Top 10 Best Movies of 2024 here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read #11 to #30 of 2024 here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read Dave Scaddan\u2019s Top 20 Albums of 2024 here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Click to subscribe and get articles like this delivered to your inbox!<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

At any rate, here are my Top 6 Worst Movies of 2024:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6 Megalopolis<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A lot was made this year of Megalopolis<\/em>, an ambitious, dystopian epic from Francis Ford Coppola (he spent like, $120 million of his own money to get it made!). Set in a future version of New York, it follows an architect who attempts to rebuild the city into a utopia. And while some of it is visionary, too much of it falls apart. Bad visual effects, awkward dialogue, and a general lack of focus undermine its potential. Megalopolis is incoherent and overindulgent in the worst ways. Where is Chevy Chase when you need him to tell Coppola that he should embarrassed?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5 Horizon: An American Saga \u2013 Chapter 1<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Horizon: An American Saga \u2013 Chapter 1<\/em> is an epic (meaning, super bloody long) tale of frontier life directed by Kevin Costner, set in the turbulent years following the Civil War. Costner also spent like, $38 million of his own cash to finance this mess. It\u2019s an ambitious idea, but unfortunately, it\u2019s mostly a drag. There\u2019s very little in the way of compelling characters or storylines. It feels more like a prolonged introduction rather than a complete movie. Most of the stories feel like anecdotes from a television show; like the Yellowstone <\/em>prequel, 1883<\/em>, except, with less compelling storylines and characters (and it\u2019s not like 1883 was something to brag about either). Do I really have to watch Chapter 2? And Chapter 3 and 4 and whatever they end up making? Horizon is all hat and no cowboy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4 Despicable Me 4<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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2024 was a bit different, but usually this Worst List is filled with movies I had to watch with my kids. For every brilliant family film each year, there are tons of duds. I can\u2019t say I\u2019m a big fan of Dreamworks or the Despicable Me franchise. I don\u2019t find Minions as cute as everyone else, in fact, I cynically think they were created by an algorithm (like Poochy), something to market, rather than a brilliant creative idea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despicable Me 4<\/em> continues animated franchise with Gru (Steve Carell) and his Minions returning for another adventure. Gru balances family life with his return to villainy. As always, the Minions provide plenty of slapstick chaos, while Gru navigates his relationships. It not only struggles to offer anything fresh, but it hits a new low for even these movies. It\u2019s basically a series of tropes and references to better movies or TV (not to mention a plot from The Simpsons). Hot garbage. My kids might say they enjoyed it, but in fact, I was watching them watch this pile of poo and I can tell you, they didn\u2019t laughed once.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3 \u2013 Babes<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I\u2019m not sure how this went wrong, but it did. It\u2019s a comedy, directed by actress Pamela Adlon (Californication<\/em>) and featuring Illana Glazer and Michelle Buteau (both from the clever and hilarious Broad City<\/em>). It\u2019s about two best friends navigating the challenges of pregnancy\/motherhood. It\u2019s really bad. The writing sucks, the tone is a mess, and everything is soaked in flop sweat. There are some scattered laughs and a few good ideas that might have worked with a better execution. But it wants so bad to be a Judd Apatow movie. Beyond a few inevitable laughs from the usually hilarious Glazer, it\u2019s totally forced and drastically unfunny.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2 – Meet Me Next Christmas<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In the last few years, in a similar manner to what I said about Madame Web, my wife and I have taken to watching Hallmark (or Netflix) Christmas movies. Most of them are terrible, including the ironically enjoyable ones like Hot Frosty, which I mentioned off the top. However, when the movie doesn\u2019t have that extra level of fun that Hot Frosty benefitted from, it\u2019s just plain bad. Meet Me Next Christmas<\/em> is stuffed into your stocking like a smelly piece of coal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Blah, blah, blah, it\u2019s about a woman who meets a dude at an airport lounge and tells him (despite the fact that she has a boyfriend) that if fate has its way, they can meet at a Pentatonix <\/em>concert in New York on Christmas Eve. A year later, she\u2019s broken up with her boyfriend and heads to New York — but with no tickets to the show. She has to undertake a series of adventures with a concierge that\u2019s helping her get tickets. A number of things make no sense.  First of all, you don\u2019t need tickets to the show to find the guy: stand out front, dummy. Second, Pentatonix play themselves in the film and they follow along with her adventure being huge dicks by not lifting a finger to help. Also, Pentatonix sucks. Autotuned pap for the hard of hearing. This movie sucks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1 – Godzilla x Kong<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And yet, with all the sourness I could muster for some of these previous films, nothing was stupider and more unwatchable than Godzilla x Kong<\/em>. The worst movie I saw this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s<\/em> the latest installment in the mostly ill-conceived MonsterVerse franchise, bringing together the iconic titans for an epic battle. The film centers on a fragile alliance between Godzilla and Kong as they face a new threat\u2014an ancient, powerful force that could destroy humanity. Usually, these movies fail because it all becomes noise and spectacle and the human story gets lost. In this case, the human story didn\u2019t get lost, which ends up being too bad. The humans were underdeveloped, forced and hollow and some normally amazing actors are rendered annoying. Some people may find thrills in the giant monster battles, but it was all just ridiculous noise in a CGI washing machine for me. What a piece of shit. It took me three runs at it to finish it. The fact that I put in that time makes me stupider than the movie itself. Which is saying a lot, because it was a hopelessly stupid movie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(For a better Godzilla movie, with excellent human stakes and great action and tension, check out Godzilla Minus One<\/em> from 2023).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Avoid these movies at all costs! I took the bullet so you didn\u2019t have to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read the Top 10 Best Movies of 2024 here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read #11 to #30 of 2024 here.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read Dave Scaddan\u2019s Top 20 Albums of 2024 here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Don’t forget! Click to subscribe! Don’t let the social media algorithms decide what you get to see and what you don’t. You’re the master of your own destiny. <\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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