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My Top 10 Least Favourite Movies of 2018
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7
4
5.4
This movie is the perfect embodiment of how I described this list's contents overall: it's just tediously dull. And that's mainly because it has no flair whatsoever. Right from the outset, the characters are given no personality at all โ they might as well be human-shaped planks of wood โ which kills any interest in the story. Even the music is underwhelming: it's got no sense of occasion. I remember, during what was supposed to be an intense scene in the climax, the music was sending completely the wrong message. Still, it wasn't so terrible as to outright infuriate me; that's why it's only number ten.
MaxL's rating:
110
4.5
5.4
Winchester (2018)
This horror film is about as far removed from scary as you can get. It tries way too hard in its opening scenes, just throwing creepy imagery in your face for no apparent reason. It's based on true events, and was even partially filmed on the property of the real Winchester Mystery House, but the plot itself gets increasingly crazier and stupider as it progresses. The climax is so preposterous, so senseless, that the ending contradicts the ghosts' previously (and rather hastily) established motivations. I typically find ghost-based horror films more interesting than scary, but this one is just plain silly.
MaxL's rating:
32
6.8
6.9
I know a lot of people like this movie, but I found it insufferably boring. I don't know how culturally or historically accurate it is, and the movie doesn't speak for itself: its world-building did nothing to enlighten me or draw me in. Strangest of all is the editing: the occasional random inserts โ usually flashforwards โ are a downright bizarre choice, serving no purpose but to abruptly take you out of the moment. What's funny is I saw it right after a film called The Forgiven, which also decided to subtitle a local dialect that was still recognisably English but apparently not clear enough.
MaxL's rating:
88
2.8
3.2
Slender Man (2018)
Another horror film that completely fails to be remotely scary. Personally, I think its absolute biggest failure is the characters. The four leads are so humdrum and devoid of personality that they might as well be cardboard cutouts. Hell, the movie cares so little about them that it doesn't even reveal their names until over halfway through, so why should the audience care what happens to them? There is one legitimately creepy moment in which a character's face is removed, but aside from that, this movie is an absolute dud. There's a reason it's currently in the IMDb Bottom 100.
MaxL's rating:
58
5
5.2
Slaughterhouse Rulez (2018)
To be honest, the only reason I even know about this one is because I heard from my sister that it was the new Simon Pegg and Nick Frost movie. The premise sounded somewhat interesting, but it turned out to be a tone-deaf horror comedy with an irresolute and directionless air. For example, Nick Frost's introductory scene seems like an entirely improvised routine, and it goes on for far too long. Even the actors look completely lost: several performances come across as confused and desperate. I don't know what the filmmakers were trying to achieve; all I know is that I couldn't stand it.
MaxL's rating:
475
5.3
6.1
Now, this one royally pissed me off! Looking back, I was way too lenient on the first Jurassic World; I'm not making that mistake again! The characters here are every bit as annoying as its predecessor, and the CGI is just as unappealing and unconvincing: the dinosaurs look like video game graphics, not even remotely live-action. But worst of all, the script is so relentlessly and insultingly stupid that I compiled a list on my blog just dedicated to the film's most idiotic moments (maxle2000.wordpress.com/2018/10/15/my-top-10-stupidest-moments-in-jurassic-world-fallen-kingdom/). I still adore the original Jurassic Park, and it honestly saddens me to see how far this series has fallen.
MaxL's rating:
78
4.5
5.6
Batman Ninja (2018)
Batman and anime sounds like an awesome combination, but Christ did it fall flat for me! Maybe it's because I don't watch much anime, but nothing about this movie works. The mix of animation styles is so drastically varied that the whole film becomes wildly inconsistent. In particular, the farm scene completely clashes with the rest. The plot itself is just as disjointed. Therefore, even though it's only eighty-five minutes long, it feels like an eternity. And the last act is so ridiculous that it left me downright furious! Of all the DC animated films I've seen to date, this is easily my least favourite.
MaxL's rating:
5
3.5
4.2
Native (2018)
This has apparently been floating around film festivals since 2016 โ it took two years to finally get a general release โ and, honestly, it's not hard to see why. Again, this one is only eighty-five minutes long, but those eighty-five minutes felt like eighty-five hours. It's one of those movies with deliberately slow pacing and vague storytelling, which I generally can't stand aside from Stanley Kubrick: I find it very pretentious. I got so sick of looking at the same dull, dark sets for almost the entire runtime. Not to mention, the ending is thoroughly predictable. All that combined to make this an extremely tedious sit.
MaxL's rating:
121
3.8
4.3
A Wrinkle in Time (2018)
It's a remake of a Disney TV movie that I haven't seen, but I hope it's at least better than this. In this case, the world-building is so haphazard that even the characters aren't invested: when fantastical elements enter the picture, they just go with it without any questions or even moments of disbelief. The script and acting are beyond awkward; not a single line of dialogue sounds natural. As a result, this movie was so frustrating to watch that I gave it my first 1/10 rating of the year โ though, as you no doubt can guess from its ranking, not the only one.
MaxL's rating:
117
5.6
6.5
Peter Rabbit (2018)
Much like Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, this movie violated something very near and dear to me, except this one hurt me even more. The classic stories by Beatrix Potter are one of the cornerstones of my childhood, the very definition of wholesome children's drama. So imagine how much it sickens me to see them warped into this crass, witless and insufferably annoying facetiousness! Every second of this movie feels like a slap in the face. I can't even say the filmmakers merely didn't get the appeal of the original books, because there's one legitimately good animated section done with no dialogue and in the style of the 90s animated series. If you cut out that scene and billed it as an animated short, I would have loved it. In my mind, that scene proves that they did understand the books and were actively trying to spite them with the rest of this god-awful movie! It's not just bad: it's offensive! Beatrix Potter must be spinning in her grave โ and, to borrow a quote from The Italian Job, wishing she could jump right out of it and kick the filmmakers' teeth in!
MaxL's rating:
Welcome to my annual recap of the past year's highest and lowest points for me as a film buff. I've been doing this best-and-worst pair of lists consistently every year since 2011.
But, before we begin, here are the usual reminders I include before these recaps to explain my criteria. To be eligible for either the best or worst list, the movie simply has to have been released to the general public within 2018, so films that premiered at a festival in an earlier year but we're released publicly until 2018 still count. What I don't count is movies that were released in another country in an earlier year. For example, British and Irish audiences didn't get to see Coco until January, so I had to retroactively add it to my best of 2017 list. Speaking of which, these lists simply reflect how I'm feeling at the end of the year itself; it's possible that, at some point in the future, I might add something else to the list or shuffle the titles around, depending on what I watch or rewatch. Keep in mind also that, even though I do see a lot of movies every year for the sake of these lists, I haven't seen everything that came out in 2018 โ but we'll get into specific examples in the lists themselves.
So, now that that's out of the way, what did I think of 2018 overall? Well, to be honest, my experience with movies this year was pretty gruelling. It started out okay: of the few movies I saw in the cinema during the first six months, most of them were good. But from September onwards, when it got to the point where I started catching up on what I'd missed by watching several movies from earlier in the year in rapid succession, things got pretty soul-crushing. So many of those movies were either unremarkable or just plain bad that I frequently struggled to even fill a 280-character review on Twitter. Compared to previous years, there weren't even that many popularly lauded movies that I could look forward to watching later. So, of the eight years I've been doing these top ten lists, this year might be the worst.
And now let's get into the reasons why. These are the ten movies released in 2018 that I personally felt were the most painful to sit through. I have to say, the bulk of this year's bad crop was just draining for me. Many of these movies were so dreary and lacklustre that, combined with a year in my personal life that really soured my mood (yeah, I was not in good form this year), they left me with very little desire to even form and articulate concrete opinions; like I said, I often struggled to write a mini review on Twitter that even came close to just 280 characters.
As I said before, this is just going by what I've actually seen, and I didn't see every movie this year that garnered a bad reputation. I usually go willingly into bad movies just for the sake of this year-end list, but there's only so much pain I can take! So, for example, you're not going to see The Cloverfield Paradox on my list, or The Nun, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, Show Dogs, Mortal Engines, The Spy Who Dumped Me, Reprisal, Holmes & Watson, Sherlock Gnomes and, of course, Fifty Shades Freed. But the big one is Venom, which I avoided simply because I have no intention of supporting this emerging trend of movies about comic book villains; I want to help pre-emptively kill it.
So, without further ado, these are my top ten least favourite movies of 2018.
Runners-up:
American Animals
Early Man
The 15:17 to Paris
The Forgiven (which I mention in the list itself)
The Happy Prince
Pacific Rim: Uprising
Tomb Raider
But, before we begin, here are the usual reminders I include before these recaps to explain my criteria. To be eligible for either the best or worst list, the movie simply has to have been released to the general public within 2018, so films that premiered at a festival in an earlier year but we're released publicly until 2018 still count. What I don't count is movies that were released in another country in an earlier year. For example, British and Irish audiences didn't get to see Coco until January, so I had to retroactively add it to my best of 2017 list. Speaking of which, these lists simply reflect how I'm feeling at the end of the year itself; it's possible that, at some point in the future, I might add something else to the list or shuffle the titles around, depending on what I watch or rewatch. Keep in mind also that, even though I do see a lot of movies every year for the sake of these lists, I haven't seen everything that came out in 2018 โ but we'll get into specific examples in the lists themselves.
So, now that that's out of the way, what did I think of 2018 overall? Well, to be honest, my experience with movies this year was pretty gruelling. It started out okay: of the few movies I saw in the cinema during the first six months, most of them were good. But from September onwards, when it got to the point where I started catching up on what I'd missed by watching several movies from earlier in the year in rapid succession, things got pretty soul-crushing. So many of those movies were either unremarkable or just plain bad that I frequently struggled to even fill a 280-character review on Twitter. Compared to previous years, there weren't even that many popularly lauded movies that I could look forward to watching later. So, of the eight years I've been doing these top ten lists, this year might be the worst.
And now let's get into the reasons why. These are the ten movies released in 2018 that I personally felt were the most painful to sit through. I have to say, the bulk of this year's bad crop was just draining for me. Many of these movies were so dreary and lacklustre that, combined with a year in my personal life that really soured my mood (yeah, I was not in good form this year), they left me with very little desire to even form and articulate concrete opinions; like I said, I often struggled to write a mini review on Twitter that even came close to just 280 characters.
As I said before, this is just going by what I've actually seen, and I didn't see every movie this year that garnered a bad reputation. I usually go willingly into bad movies just for the sake of this year-end list, but there's only so much pain I can take! So, for example, you're not going to see The Cloverfield Paradox on my list, or The Nun, The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, Show Dogs, Mortal Engines, The Spy Who Dumped Me, Reprisal, Holmes & Watson, Sherlock Gnomes and, of course, Fifty Shades Freed. But the big one is Venom, which I avoided simply because I have no intention of supporting this emerging trend of movies about comic book villains; I want to help pre-emptively kill it.
So, without further ado, these are my top ten least favourite movies of 2018.
Runners-up:
American Animals
Early Man
The 15:17 to Paris
The Forgiven (which I mention in the list itself)
The Happy Prince
Pacific Rim: Uprising
Tomb Raider
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