By: Henry J. Fromage and Movieboozer Staff & Contributors –
2021 boasted plenty of amazing cinema… and just as many abominations that amused and horrified. Strap in and prepare yourself for the very worst this year had to offer:
10. Locked Down: Remember that pandemic heist movie starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Anne Hathaway? Me neither. I fell asleep every time I tried to watch it.
9. Cosmic Sin: one of 8(!) films released this year starring (and I use that term loosely) a phoned-in Bruce Willis. I’m pretty sure this was constructed Godfrey Ho-style using footage from another, almost identical film called Breach. It’s sometimes laughable, but mostly forgettable.
8. Sweet Girl: The marketing leading up this one was all “Jason Momoa is in this and he’s hot!” which was enough to get people to watch it, so yay? But this movie contains the most absurd twist since… well, ever, and it’s just so, so stupid.
7. The Woman in the Window: This Amy Adams psychological thriller was such a dud it inspired a spoof series called The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window, likely to be followed up with The Woman in the Other House Also Across the Street from the Girl in the Window Down the Block from Yet Another Woman Drinking Her Juice in the Hood.
6. False Positive: Not sure what they were going for here, but I recall having a pretty good time watching this pregnancy horror trash. There’s one scene that will be burned into my head forever.
5. Dear Evan Hansen: Full disclosure: I attempted to watch this after a few wines on a plane. I tapped out after 30 minutes and watched Little Shop of Horrors instead.
4. Diana – The Musical: Netflix released a recorded version of the Broadway show hoping it would entice people to see it live when it opened. For me, it worked – it’s some of the most wonderful unintentional camp (Actual lyrics: “Harry my ginger-haired son, you’ll always be second to none”) I have ever witnessed, and I loved every moment of it. Sadly, the show was DOA and closed after less than a month and I never got to go.
3. 2025 – The World Enslaved by a Virus: Now available on Tubi (which should tell you everything you need to know), this is the latest in delusional and incompetent auteur creations (my personal favorite genre). Picture a younger, Christian Tommy Wiseau. This is the special kind of bad movie. Watch it immediately.
2. Karen: This is not one of those special kinds of bad movies. This is just bad (think The Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson). It’s a 90-minute meme.
1. Me You Madness: This one broke my brain and I took Henry J. Fromage along for the ride. You can check out our descent into Madness here.
9. Yes Day
8. Red Notice
I like to look at my bottom ten as a mixture of pure bad and disappointing. Here is my bottom ten from not good to truly bad.
10. The Superdeep: So much promise here, but a messy film, poor CGI, and bad dubbing on the screener I received really hurt this film. Decent ending though.
9. Dear Evan Hansen: The music in here is not bad, probably why it has stuck around so long. I have nothing else nice to say about the film.
8. Things Heard & Seen: Just plain boring. I’m honestly trying to remember anything about this film other than who is in it and the main plot. Suffice it to say, you don’t need to check this one out on Netflix.
7. Halloween Kills: Oooof. Truly bad. It’s as if David Gordon Green knew what he wanted to do with this new sequel, but then when the studio asked him to make another, he just made this on the fly. Didn’t enjoy any of this.
6. Crisis: It wanted to be our generation’s Traffic so bad. Instead, it was a bore with nothing interesting to say.
5. Wild Mountain Thyme: Pretty bland for 95% of the run-time. Then in the last 15 minutes Jamie Dornan says something that is truly Wild. Comes out of left field and it is hilarious.
4. False Positive: I don’t know what this was. Was it supposed to be satire? Was it meant to be a modern-day Rosemary’s Baby? Neither goal was accomplished and it is just a mess.
3. Space Jam: A New Legacy: It was while watching this film I realized, oh, not every film is made for everyone and this film was not made for me. However, I didn’t turn it off there, but I did tune it out.
2. The Woman in the Window: It’s become a running joke, but Amy Adams you need a new agent. She has two films on this list which no one should strive for. Please make a change… Please!
1. Every Breath You Take: With the talent level in this film, it shouldn’t have been so bad. Everyone acted like they were getting a paycheck, like this was purely an obligation to make something they didn’t want to. It should’ve been mediocre at best.
Henry J. Fromage
10. The Eternals: I don’t think I’ve seen a quicker fall from the pinnacle of movie-making grace to an absolute bomb than Chloe Zhao’s foray into the Marvel machine. It’s clear there were a lot more hands in the pot, at times editing sequences that could have been gorgeous like the fall of the Mayan civilization into a hash, but that’s all the more reason to steer clear of focus group cinema.
9. Spiral: Chris Rock sure seemed to have a vision for resurrecting the Saw franchise, but in the end he just ended up making one more entry in a franchise that’s been in linear declined ever since Darren Lynn Bousman took it over… so why hire him for this supposed fresh new take?
8. Space Jam: A New Legacy: Wow, was this thoroughly unnecessary, and somehow did the impossible- it broke through the fog of nostalgia and made a lot of people realized the original was a fairly terrible movie as well.
7. Ghostbusters: Afterlife: Jason Reitman, what happened to you, man? This is the absolute nadir of nostalgia-driven filmmaking, somehow constructing an entire film out of ‘member that? I puked in my mouth a bit at CGI Harold Ramis. They couldn’t help themselves.
6. The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard: I remember the first one being an amusing airplane-type movie, but I may have been suffering from a head injury or something, because if it was anything like this joyless, lazy exercise in action comedy filmmaking, it must have actually been terrible. This certainly was.
5. 2025 – The World enslaved by a Virus: Just a German-produced dystopian movie shot for like 500 Euros about a bunch of Christian youths fighting back against the One World Order or something, something COVID. Joshua Wesely is the kind of director/writer/star/caterer whose conviction is only matched by his incompetence. Somebody please get him a bigger budget stat!
4. Dear Evan Hansen: Yeah, casting 28 going on 38 year old Ben Platt as a high school kid was a bad decision, but that’s only like the fifth worst decision in a story that I have a hard time believing could be successful in any context. Broadway is indeed a whole different world.
3. Creation Stories: There’s a cottage industry of Trainspotting-inspired British films, at least stylistically and thematically, and most of them are godawful. Add this story of rock producer Alan McGee starring Trainspotting‘s own Ewen Bremner to the pile. Not everyone’s Danny Boyle, including Danny Boyle most of the time.
2. The Match-Stick Flame: “Dalton, a former Navy SEAL working as a detective, tries to take down the mob headed by his ruthless father, Match-Stick, who has unleashed terror after getting out of prison.” Craig Robert Bruss is exactly the type of writer/director/star/head gaffer that would write that kind of synopsis, and the execution is everything bad movie lovers could hope for.
1. Barbie and Kendra Save the Tiger King: The layers of disgust, surprise, and enjoyment in this brutally bargain basement green screen barely feature length film about a couple of bimbos who try to save Joe Exotic from COVID are thick and strong. This is so trashy and mercenary and yet committed it’s hard not to respect the grift.
