By: Henry J. Fromage and Movieboozer Staff & Contributors –
I don’t know if the worst movies this year were more in the big budget blockbuster category than usual, or if those are the only kinds tricking us into watching them, but you’ll find a few in our lists of the worst 2022 had to offer cinematically below.
Without further ado:
5. Halloween Ends: It’s not even that this film was marketed as the big final showdown between Laurie and Michael and then pulled a switcheroo (the main complaint from franchise fans). I didn’t mind that they tried something different, it just wasn’t very good.
4. Bullet Train: This one looked so cool, but by the end I was exhausted and had a headache. Sometimes more is too much more.
3. Blonde: I tapped out after an hour and a half. While Ana de Amas turns in a brilliant performance and is certainly deserving of her accolades, the film is remorselessly bleak and the treatment of the character (especially being a real-life person) felt sadistic.
2. Don’t Worry Darling: There is a lot to like here- this film looks great, there are some cool effects, and the costumes and styling are a fashionista’s dream. But the plot… The plot almost feels like an afterthought. It falls apart as soon as the (predictable) twist is revealed and gets worse and worse.
1. The Bubble: What happened to Judd Apatow? I don’t think I laughed even once. Maybe we’re just sick of pandemicinema, or maybe this film is just a big ol’ stinker. Maybe it’s both.
I watched 96 2022 releases. Here are the worst of the worst.
87. Jurassic World Dominion: Better than the previous entry in the franchise Fallen Kingdom, but that wasn’t a high bar to clear. At least this one is watchable, but bringing back some of the original characters felt like a cash grab rather than actually trying to make a good movie.
88. Dashcam: This was a cool premise; Annie is a social media star who sings songs livestreaming while she delivers Doordash. It takes place during the height of the pandemic and was shot in late 2020. Where the film really struggles is with the main character, she is so unlikable and annoying, it’s a tall ask for your audience to follow her even if it’s for less than 90 minutes.
89. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: Another film attempting to capitalize on the legacy sequel and trauma theme that are in many franchises now. Sally returns after waiting nearly 50 years to kill Leatherface… K. Marilyn Burns sadly passed in 2014, so it wasn’t her reprising the role of Sally. Such a blatant attempt to capitalize on the latest popular trend in Hollywood, instead it was just infuriating to fans.
90. Morbius: I’m pretty sure everyone involved with the making of this movie had 0 understanding of Bats.
91. Where the Crawdad Sings: I don’t have the space to get into why this film is so bad. All I will say is look into the true story behind the author Delia Owens. If you know the ending to this film it will make sense as to why so many people despised this film.
92. Blonde: Andrew Dominik has an eye for direction; that has never been questioned. Even here there are some beautiful-looking sequences. Unfortunately, it is marred by this one-note trauma fest. Completely uninterested in Marilyn as a person and what made her so magnetizing, instead the audience watches Marilyn be assaulted for nearly 3 hours.
93. Don’t Worry Darling: Another film which looks impeccable. Olivia Wilde is a director and I hope she gets to make more films. But this movie is dumb. After it finished I thought meh and moved on, but the more I thought about the film the angrier I got and I realized it’s real bad.
94. Firestarter: This was such a flat an uninteresting movie. I’d rather have a film take swings (Don’t Worry Darling) than be this boring. However, they unnecessarily kill a cat in this, unforgivable.
95. Amsterdam: An absolute misfire of every cylinder. Bad writing, stilted acting, and it feels like it is 4 hours. Every scene looks like the actors’ first time seeing the script and they are reading their lines into a camera in a room alone with no other actors around.
96. Moonfall: This movie is a nothing burger. It should’ve been dumb fun, instead I was falling asleep in the theater. Something I never do. Your film has to be real bad for me to begin to fall asleep. I’m looking at you Chocolat.
Henry J. Fromage-
10. New York Ninja: I’d like to report that this lovingly restored Vinegar Syndrome project, that required creating an entire soundtrack for a lost cheesy martial arts vigilante film, is so bad it’s good gold. Unfortunately, while there are some pretty amazing jumpsuits and the effort as a whole is commendable in concept, in execution it’s a bit repetitive and draggy after the first half hour or so.
9. The Estate: A collection of comic talent including Toni Collette, Anna Farris, David Duchovny, Rosemarie Dewitt, Ron Livingston, and the legendary Kathleen Turner shouldn’t turn out a farce as uninspired and insipid as this, and yet they did. Turns out at least a jot of writing talent is a prerequisite for comedy, too.
8. The Bubble: See the above, plus 50 million dollars. Unfortunately an arguably even more starry cast under Judd Apatow’s direction couldn’t make comedic hay from the inside baseball topic of pandemic production bubbles, that somehow didn’t feel specific or realistic enough even when the film itself, was, you know, shot in a pandemic production bubble.
7. In Her Name: One of the joys of film festivals is discovering that under the radar gem, but with that comes a not insignificant chance you’ll instead discover a 100-minute sack of pretentious quirk masquerading as something with any kind of insight on the human condition. This may well be the apotheosis of such films.
6. Land of Dreams: “In efforts to understand and control its populous (sic), the government begins a programme to record citizens’ dreams.” I’m not sure why I thought this would be anything but artsy fartsy to a bilious, suffocating extent, but it is.
5. God’s Time: Another film festival anti-discovery, this New York-set caper aspires to Quentin Tarantino by way of Spike Lee and lands on insufferable.
4. Moonfall: This didn’t make the list because it’s a Roland Emmerich movie about the moon being a secret alien base that gets so close to the Earth that it causes massive planetary destruction but not so much that you can’t have a car chase with it. That’s all par for the course for this kind of movie. No, this made the list because it somehow wasn’t anywhere near as fun as it was stupid (and Emmerich usually doesn’t make that mistake).
3. Lady Chatterley’s Lover: The most grey/bluescale, clammiest looking timeless tale of sexual abandon you could ever ask for, it reduces this hot and heavy story of unbounded passion to a couple of pale, waif-like romantic protagonists banging in some of the grimiest looking locales the English countryside has to offer. Plus WWI undertones, or whatever.
2. Sharp Stick: Lena Dunham is an acquired taste for sure, but one I usually appreciate (Catherine Called Birdy was hella fun). This one, in which a young woman who is at least socially stunted if not literally… okay, I know you’re not supposed to say this anymore, but the word fits what it seems Dunham is going for… retarded endeavors to cross off a bucket list of sexual acts. It’s exactly as off-putting as it sounds.
1. The Next 365 Days/365 Days: This Day: This cut-rate European 50 Shades of Grey franchise with the sexual politics of, well, the septuagenarian Italians and Poles that produced it managed to drop not one, but two increasingly plotless, shamelessly softcore sequels this year. And I watched them both because that so bad it’s good high is the wagon I just can’t clamber back on. Kids, drugs are bad for you, especially in the age of fentanyl (Netflix… is the fentanyl in this analogy, I guess?)
