The 10 Worst Movies of 2024

Wow, did we have some bad movies this year.  Normally, when I do my Worst Movies of the Year list, it's mostly horror movies, and that's still true this year, but we also got an abnormally high amount of superhero movies on the list.  From Best to Worst, here is my list!

#10. The Watchers

I'll give The Watchers points for creativity.  It follows a group of people who get trapped in a strange room in the middle of the woods and are watched by mysterious creatures at night.  That's a great premise!  It has a few interesting moments and great cinematography, but the movie has some serious pacing issues.  The 2nd act isn't as interesting as it could have been and the 3rd act is genuinely terrible.  Plus the characters are very stupid.

#9. Venom: The Last Dance

I've been pretty mixed on the Venom series.  I didn't like the first movie, but the 2nd is easily my favorite movie of the Sony Spider-Man villain-verse or whatever it's called.  This one is definitely the weakest of the three.  Venom himself has some fun moments.  It's fun when he acts like a silly goose or when he takes over various animals, plus the river chase sequence is actually really fun, but the writing is absolutely terrible, to the point that I wonder if this movie was effected by the Writers strike.  There are far too many supporting characters and the movie doesn't give us a reason to care about them.  The 3rd act battle had potential to be fun, but when you don't care about the majority of the characters involved, it loses a lot of impact.  The movie focused more on shallow fanservice than telling a compelling story.

#8. Imaginary

A movie about a murderous imaginary friend should probably have a little more...imagination.  Most of the actors do a good job, there was some neat production design in the 3rd act, and the 3rd act as a whole is fine, but this movie just isn't very interesting.  It glazes over interesting opportunities and Betty Buckley's performance is terrible.

#7. Night Swim

Speaking of boring horror movies that miss opportunities...I know a haunted swimming pool is a dumb idea, but it could have been fun!  There are some solid visuals with good cinematography and the family dynamic is well set-up, but the payoff isn't there.  The conflict of the family should have been the key emotional crux of the movie, but it's just glossed over.  And the evil swimming pool is kept very vague for most of the movie so it's hard to be invested in the conflict.  And the acting isn't very good to boot.

#6. Madame Web    

Now we're into the truly awful movies.  Madame Web actually jumped up a few spots in hindsight mostly due to the memes and making fun of the film.  Looking back, I have fond memories of watching this movie, which is impressive because it's a movie that makes all of the wrong decisions.  I do like the idea to make a superhero movie about a character with a kinda lame superpower, but the rest of the movie is such a train wreck.  It's actually embarrassing for the human race that people thought this was okay to release.  Everyone is bad in this and the ADR is hilariously bad.  The editing, sound design, and writing are all just a mess.  Everything is so bad that all you can do is laugh about it.  However, I wasn't miserable watching this movie, which is why it doesn't fall any lower.

#5. Y2K

A horror-comedy about machines coming to life on New Year's Eve.  The design of the machines look cool and there are two or three funny moments, basically enough to make a solid trailer, which is how I ended up watching this movie.  The problem is the machines don't actually do much.  They stand around and look menacing, but don't really do that much on screen.  And the characters can't carry the story because they all suck.  They're boring at best and extremely unlikable at worst.  The humor falls completely flat, especially when Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit shows up.  For being only 90 minutes, this was miserable to sit through.  

#4. Joker: Folie à Deux

I was actually pretty interested when I heard this was going to be a musical.  I thought the first Joker was solid, if nothing too special, so changing things up and making a musical out of this story was an interesting idea.  Unfortunately, the movie doesn't do enough with the musical elements.  You want a big showstopper and some memorable musical numbers, but we don't get any of that.  I also don't mind that the goal of the movie was to show why Arthur Fleck sucks.  That's fine, but they didn't do it in an interesting way.  There was nothing engaging about the story.  I think that's what's so frustrating about this movie because I can see so many simple ways to make this better, which made this even more painful to sit through.  Phoenix and Gaga both do what they can and I thought the animated segment to open the movie was great, but this was simply a bad movie in every possible way.  Their goals with the film weren't the problem, it's the execution.

#3. The Front Room

A movie about the mother-in-law from hell moving in, this movie was hell to sit through.  I see what the filmmakers were going for and Kattryn Hunter certainly gives a memorable performance as the mother-in-law, but this was simply insufferable to sit through and I desperately wanted it to end.

#2. Borderlands

I haven't played any of the Borderlands games, so I don't know how good of a representation this movie is of the games, but it doesn't make me want to play them.  There are only two things keeping this movie out of the bottom spot on my list.  One is the production design.  There was at least a little creativity put into it.  I also laughed once at one of Jack Black's lines.  That's it.  The rest of this movie is a soulless attempt at a cash-grab that feels several years too late.  It feels like no one tried or gave a crap in the slightest about this movie.  The characters suck, the story isn't interesting, and the action is nauseating at times.  Borderlands is an absolute mess and an embarrassment to cinema.  

Finally, the Worst Movie of 2024!

#1. The Strangers: Chapter 1

This movie and the filmmakers don't seem to know whether is is a reboot or a sequel, but honestly, it doesn't matter.  This is just the same movie as the original The Strangers, but done worse in every way.  There is nothing original here.  Nothing.  It's insulting to try and say that this movie takes place in the same universe as the first two films because it's just the same movie as the original!  The only redeeming quality is the crawl space sequence.  It has some decent-looking gore involving a nail.  That's it!  The characters are beyond moronic and they make the wrong choice at every possible opportunity.  It would help if they were likable or interesting, but there's nothing to them.  It's a slasher movie, so you'd hope there would at least be good kills.  Nope!  I hated sitting through this movie and while there are a few movies this year that I could say that about, this is also the least creative, which earns it the title of Worst Movie of 2024 for me.

So, what do you think?  Did I miss anything?  What's your least favorite movie of the year?  Let me know!