I’ve covered the best and now here comes the rest! In my opinion, 2017 was a year of extremes when it came to movies. While 2016 had an abundance of good films, 2017 had a much smaller amount of great films. That being said, 2017 also brought us a handful of movies that physically hurt to watch. The following ten films I’m about to spotlight are so bad, so devoid of anything worthwhile, that anyone with half a brain should steer clear of them or risk dropping a few IQ points. Unlike my spotlight of some great films from 2017, this list is my definitive ranking. I didn’t go out of my way to watch every awful film from 2017 (you’ll notice the absence of The Snowman) but there was no way I was going to subject myself to anymore of this trash. Let’s not waste anymore time, here are the 10 worst movies of 2017 (in my own personal opinion).
10. The Emoji Movie
Oh boy, you know it was a bad year when The Emoji Movie only just barely makes the list. It’s almost redundant to talk about this movie at this point since everyone has already criticized it to death. The plot is derivative of much better animated films, the characters are all one-dimensional, the product placement is so blatant that it actively influences the film’s plot and the whole endeavour just feels like a soulless cashgrab made to appeal to the smartphone generation. We’ve heard it all before but what keeps it from ranking any higher on the list is that it’s actually pretty watchable. The criticisms I mentioned above still stand but the animation is actually pretty appealing and the thinly veiled product placement does lead to a few (unintentional) laughs from time to time. I think critics were more upset with what this movie represents than what it actually was, it’s not THE worst movie of the year but it’s still awful enough to snag the number 10 spot.
9. XX
I almost feel bad about including this one on the list since it did have a very admirable idea behind it. XX is an anthology horror film designed to showcase four female directors whose work is rarely seen by the general public. The problem is that none of these directors brought their A-game. The film suffers from the typical shortcomings of the anthology format with each of the shorts being underdeveloped due to their limited runtime and the shorts themselves are pretty uninspired. The first two shorts are original but the first lacks any sort of satisfying payoff and the second ditches the horror in favour of an immensely unfunny comedy segment. The last two shorts are more well-made than the first two but feature such cliche horror premises as “the stalker in the woods” and “woman gives birth to the antichrist”. I’m all for showcasing some seldom seen talent, but something went horribly wrong here. Maybe the directors featured here just aren’t very good in general or maybe it was the limits of the anthology format that killed this one. My guess is that it’s a combination of both since one of the directors directed the fantastic horror-thriller “The Invitation” from 2015 and the director of the second short (which was frustratingly bad) isn’t a director at all but rather a musician. I’d like to see this concept revived with some better creators on board since it is a good idea, but this first attempt just fell incredibly short of the mark.
8. Death Note
I’ll be brief here since I already gave this movie a full review but needless to say, Netflix’ Death Note adaptation was pretty bad. In an attempt to cram over a season of television into a 100 minute film, the film suffers some major problems in the script department. Certain aspects of the plot are glossed over while others just aren’t explained at all. The main antagonist of the story, L, is also painfully underdeveloped lacking the depth and intelligence of the original character. If you’re unfamiliar with Death Note, you’re going to leave this film confused and if you are familiar with Death Note, the film will irritate you at every turn due to its inferior recreation of the source material. They had all the ingredients they needed to make a solid Death Note film, a good horror director, a talented cast and the blessing of the original creators, they just didn’t have the script to complement these elements. Just stick to the original in this case.
7. The Bye Bye Man
Once again, I’ll keep this brief since I already reviewed this one. The Bye Bye Man is everything wrong with modern day horror films. It takes a bunch of common horror tropes, combines them, and adds in some horrible characters for good measure. The result is a film that is as irritating as it is painfully derivative. There isn’t a single character in this film that you can latch on to, each one of them is annoying and unlikable which makes it pretty hard to care whenever one of them gets killed. In addition, The Bye Bye Man’s backstory is incredibly stupid and, as I mentioned earlier, very derivative of other, better horror films. They build this guy up like he’s the next great horror villain but forget to make him scary or compelling enough to make us care. The Bye Bye Man came out all the way back in January which is typically the dumping ground for movies that the studios have no faith in. If this is any indication of the quality that January films bring, the film may have succeeded in scaring me as I’ll be dreading the upcoming month that much more.
6. The Circle
Here’s a novel idea for a film, what if those big tech companies like Google or Apple were actually evil and collected our personal information to use for their own personal gains? Wait a minute… All joking aside, The Circle’s use of timely themes and anxieties just serve to highlight just how little understanding the writers have of the modern tech landscape and the actual honest to god problems that exist within the real world. They wade in the kiddie pool of satire while delivering a story that refuses to take any real risks when it comes to its characters or its message. Everything is black and white, there’s only the big evil corporation and the righteous heroes who oppose it. The presence of some truly great actors cannot save this tired and played out story from being anything other than completely asinine and devoid any meaningful social commentary. This feels less like a movie and more like a really shitty episode of Black Mirror.
5. The Space Between Us
Now let’s transition from failed social commentary to light, meaningless, young adult fluff. The Space Between Us is a young adult film that seems intent on making us hate all young adult films that came before. It features a sci-fi twist on the boy-meets-girl formula by having a sick boy from outer space meet your average teenage girl from Earth via the internet and having him literally travel across the galaxy to meet her. What follows is one of the most hollow teen romances I have ever seen. First off, the two leads have zero chemistry. I didn’t believe for a second that either of them really and truly cared about the other. It doesn’t help that the romance is so poorly written that when they first acknowledge their feelings for each other, I genuinely thought I had accidentally fast-forwarded through a good chunk of the film and missed the scenes of them actually developing a relationship. The film also features a twist that is so incredibly obvious, I actually blurted out “Oh fuck off!” when the twist was finally revealed. I don’t see many teens or adults getting much enjoyment out of The Space Between Us and the box office numbers reflect that. Keep as much space between yourself and this film as possible.
4. Smurfs: The Lost Village
It may seem petty to put a film intended for young children on this list, but I think on behalf of this film’s target audience, someone needs to take a stand and demand better entertainment for younger filmgoers. Smurfs: The Lost Village commits the cardinal sin for any film by being as dull and uninteresting as possible. It features a pretty interesting idea for The Smurfs in that it introduces an entire village of female Smurfs which causes Smurfette to question her own identity. Smurfette has never really had much of a personality of her own, all of the other Smurfs (being male) have their own quirks and interests whereas Smurfette’s defining trait has always been that she’s “the girl”. A film that seeks to rectify that problem seems like it could actually make for something that both children and adults could enjoy, unfortunately they never answer the damn question. For all that the film has to say about finding your own identity and standing out from the crowd, the film itself is as paint-by-numbers as an animated film can be. You’ll predict just about everything that happens in the film before it happens and be bored to tears while doing so. While the movie does feature some pretty stellar animation and an all-star voice cast, this does not mask the fact that the film doesn’t have an original thought in its head. You could show this thing to your kids and it may shut them up for an hour and a half, but with the abundance of quality children’s entertainment out there, why the hell would you? This is easily my least favourite animated film of the year, The Emoji Movie may have been a complete sellout, but it at least wasn’t this boring.
3. Chips
Now we’re really getting deep into the garbage. What’s worse than a horror movie that isn’t scary? How about a comedy that isn’t funny. Chips is an abysmal attempt to take a slice of 21 Jump Street’s pie by creating a comedy out of a decades old television series. Unfortunately, instead of a talented comedy writer at the helm we have Dax Shepard both writing and directing this trainwreck. Where do I even begin? As I said earlier, the movie isn’t funny. I know humour is subjective but I feel like most of these jokes will inspire more groans from its audience than legitimate laughs. The movie seems to love it’s sex jokes as the film is jampacked with them. The jokes are usually pretty mean-spirited as well with Michael Pena’s sex addict character being chastised by Dax Shepard’s character for sleeping with a woman who is “only a 4 out of 10 broooooo!”. Wow, a 4 out of 10, this guy must really be an addict huh? I don’t know what else I can say beyond that, Chips is just a really difficult sit. It may just be my taste in comedy, but this was without a doubt the worst comedy I saw all year.
2. Geostorm
Where do I even begin with this one? Geostorm is a film that has no soul. There isn’t a single spark of creativity or artistic merit present in Geostorm’s 109 minute runtime. The film attempts to capitalize on the success of Roland Emmerich’s disaster films (films that weren’t even very good to begin with) by going through the familiar motions of one of those films while bringing absolutely nothing new to the table. Every one of the actors present in this film look like they’re just counting down the minutes until they get their paycheck while they recite their banal dialogue with all the conviction of a high school production of Hamlet. Never have special effects seemed more artificial than when they’re creating the illusion of Gerard Butler disinterestingly flying through space. Despite the end of the freaking world being at stake, the whole thing flies by without any feeling of suspense or excitement, just boredom and frustration. Here’s an interesting tidbit, this movie shares a plot with the 4th Sharknado film. I doubt this was intentional but that says it all right there, this movie shares a plot with the worst fucking Sharknado movie except it expects to be taken seriously! That’s Geostorm in a nutshell, a Sharknado film without any of the fun or self-awareness. If that sounds like a good time to you, than see a doctor immediately since I’m reasonably certain you have a concussion.
1. Fifty Shades Darker
And now, in the most obvious choice of all time I award the worst film of 2017 award to the long-awaited sequel to Fifty Shades of Grey, Fifty Shades Darker. I could write an entire novel about how bad this film is, but I’ll try to keep it brief. First off, if you were one of the few people who actually enjoyed the story of the first Fifty Shades, I regret to inform you that this film begins by basically un-doing everything. Any semblance of conflict that was present in the first film is wiped away in a matter of minutes as our characters decide that the BDSM thing wasn’t really a big deal, Christian can do without it while Anastasia is inexplicably okay with it now. So with the main conflict of the first film gone, what exactly is this movie about? Well it’s about 131 minutes of pure torture. The romance in this film is, no joke, the most poorly written romance I have ever seen. It isn’t charming, it’s downright creepy! Christian comes off like the ultimate stalker with billions of dollars at his disposal to ensnare his prey and Anastasia is very strangely okay with this. I don’t like to generalize but if you got genuinely absorbed in the romance of this film, you need some serious psychiatric help! The two leads also have horrible chemistry which makes the romance just that more unbelievable. Speaking of the leads, I know that both of these people have done good work in the past, but they are really phoning it in here. I couldn’t believe a single word either of them was saying and I think I can attribute their poor acting to the fact that the script is a smoldering dumpster fire. This film apparently sticks closer to the “novel” it was based on which was a horrible fucking idea! Every line of dialogue delivered seems unnatural and unlike anything that a real human being would say.
The film is so divorced from reality that you’d be forgiven for believing the movie was written by an alien who had no real concept of human relationships or sex. But none of that stuff really matters to the target audience does it? They’re here for one thing and one thing only, the steamy sex scenes! Well I regret to inform you that the film botches that aspect as well! Most of the sex scenes in the film devolve into pretty standard missionary love-making that aren’t very sexy in the slightest. The sex scenes are also pretty tame considering they’re the main draw of the film, I’ve seen more explicit material on your average HBO series. If you went to see this piece of garbage just to see some people slamming their pelvises together, you do realize that there’s this thing called the internet where you can pull up a video of just about any depraved sex act you want right? It also doesn’t cost you $11.50 and your fucking dignity! Fifty Shades Darker may just be the worst widely released film I’ve ever seen and that is no exaggeration. It earns its spot as the worst film of 2017 by a landslide.
And that does it for 2017. Despite the negativity shown in this list, I do believe that 2017 did bring along some truly excellent movies, let’s hope that 2018 follows suit. Anyways, a Happy New Year to everyone and I’ll see you in 2018.
