Worst movies of 2024 –

(10) Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver

Oh, Zack Snyder. No matter how much digital blood is splattered, no matter how many naked bodies are exposed, no matter how many laser projectiles and sharp axes are pumped into people’s bodies…. it can never compensate for the fact that Rebel Moon was and remains a completely hopeless beginning to an already forgotten sequel. That the second part of Snyder’s space opera was marginally better than the hopeless part 1 did not matter when the director still did not understand the definition of restraint and dramaturgy. Picking a pop culture phenomenon you like and throwing it into a blender is not enough to tell an exciting story, as Rebel Moon had absolutely nothing to say behind the mushy CGI surface. On the contrary, with Part II, Snyder has become a parodying shadow of himself in what may be one of the ugliest, loudest and most pointless film productions of the year.

(09) Defrosted

When a retired Jerry Seinfeld announced he was returning to work to direct a feature film based in part on the real-life breakfast wars of the American 1960s, many of us were hoping for something funny. A funny movie based on a quirky, humorous and effective script. Instead, we were left to mourn. Improvised, school theater-like, misguided, lousy swamp in which Seinfeld proved one last time what a terrible actor he really is (and an even worse director).

(08) The Crow

When a two-foot-tall Swede thinks he can handle any cloak after grimacing like a stoned toddler in the role of a demon clown in full makeup, and puts on the leather jacket of comic book icon Eric Draven – anything can happen. And so it did in the much maligned film adaptation of James O’Barr’s beloved comic book. The Crow (2024) wasn’t just bad, and it didn’t just hit the mark. It was terrible, and it was clear throughout the film that Ghost in the Shell director Rupert Sanders did not understand the original story that captivated us comic book fans in the late 1980s.

(07) The Union

The action comedy in which Marky-Mark and Halle Berry planned to play 32-year-old high school sweethearts who reunite when Berry’s nail-biting super spy needs a new partner (to which she chooses a construction worker who can barely jump over a discount) stands out as perhaps one of the worst films of the year. Much of this downright embarrassing Netflix tragedy felt to us like a bad Saturday Night Live sketch, not least when international super spy Roxanne (played by a 60-year-old Halle) would run after bad guys and look like an extremely old lady trying to catch a pine marten with a net. The script and direction don’t get much worse than this.

(06) Ms. Web

Heads up, Morbius: Sony has exceeded its meme potential with Madame Web, one of the most mind-boggling Hollywood productions we’ve seen in years. No, delete our previous statement. Morbuis was at least memorably lousy and fun to make jokes about. Madame Web was just pathetic. Artificial. Incoherent. Hopeless. A sad excuse for a spin-off. An anti-film. But worst of all? We barely remembered anything about the movie, which is one of the worst fates a movie can really suffer. It seemed like every person on earth understood what a terrible idea this was, except the film’s tunnel vision producers who were determined to squeeze the very last drop out of a franchise that never recovered from its worthless superhero efforts. When the best thing about Madame Web were the trailer’s merciless YouTube comments, you began to wonder if Sony wasn’t deliberately trying to sabotage the world’s biggest Web slinger.

(05) Joker: Folie à Deux

Sure, the 2019 character study was a blatant rip-off of Taxi Driver, but it was also heavy, tight, dark, interesting and ultimately a very well-executed character study that gave weight and motive to both Gotham and the Joker as a character. That film really didn’t need a sequel, but as we all know, money comes first. Mostly before quality, these days. The sequel Joker: Folie à Deux ranks as the fifth worst film of the year and is a ridiculously flat and especially silly contrast to its predecessor in every conceivable way. The musical numbers feel like worthless sketches and the once fascinating portrait of Arthur has been replaced by hollow nonsense.

(04) Kraven the Hunter

It can’t be easy being the final nail in the coffin of an entire movie universe. However, we did not weep for the fate of Kraven the Hunter; instead, we cheered the death of the Spider-Man spin-off thanks to Aaron-Taylor Johnson’s charming anti-hero. With Kraven the Hunter, the pack of panting, ignorant Sony producers had beaten the Marvel horse, with director JC Chandor trying in vain to save a doomed comic book movie from oblivion, but the ugly end result spoke for itself. It was yet another in a long line of grotesquely bad comic book reels spewing out of Sony’s mismanaged film factory, and although Sony has had several chances to learn from its mistakes, Kraven the Hunter was riddled with exactly the same problems as, say, Morbius and the recent Venom reels; it was yet another soulless, sleepy and toothless piece of garbage pumped into cinemas to hold onto the Spider-Man license. Johnson’s belly laugh wasn’t enough to save this train wreck of a movie, but at least the shoddy quality led Sony to at least scrap their plans for this cinematic universe. Always something. Merry Christmas to you, too, Sony Pictures!

(03) Red

Santa Claus has been kidnapped by a 300-year-old super witch and his stoically charming and deadly boring bodyguard can’t find him. What to do. Contact an old hacker sleeping in his bathtub and have him use the computer to find the evil witch’s dark lair. All this while the bodyguard in a snotty leather jacket and the sunglass-wearing, arrogant hacker bicker continuously for two hours. No, there is nothing about this billion-dollar caricature that is funny, successful, Christmassy or charming. Red One was simply terrible, from the first frame to the last.

(02) Dear Santa

Spelling correctly is not always easy, as we here at Gamereactor know. This also happens to little Liam who happens to write “To Satan” on his wish list instead of “To Santa Claus. Jack Black gets into the skin of Beelzebub himself and begins to ruin Christmas as much as possible, which in this downright disgusting nonsense film quickly becomes an unbearable moment on the streaming couch for all involved. There isn’t a single element in this Farrelly film (the brothers who once made There’s Something About Mary) that isn’t abominably bad, and since Jack Black has appeared in both this and Borderlands, it’s safe to say he’s had the worst year of his career.

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(01)Borderlands

How do you describe the misery of Borderlands without just swearing and using sex words? Difficult, it is. That’s how awful it was, this tragically careless, stupid and super sloppily put together adaptation of Gearbox’s beloved action cavalcade. Everything here was bad. So painfully bad that several of us at the editorial office actually had to leave the theater during the press screening. The script feels like it doesn’t really exist, the characters say little of what they want, and the action scenes are like one big joke.