Photo: Chrispecoraro (Getty Images)
2024 has been a solid, if somewhat strange year for movies. This year saw the release of some great films across both streaming platforms and in theaters.
However, most of the highest-rated movies on reviewer aggregator Metacritic weren’t big movies with giant productions and massive budgets. Instead, 2024 was a year where smaller movies and non-franchise films received critical acclaim; stuff like Longlegs, Challengers, Terrifier 3, The Substance, I Saw The TV Glow, The Brutalist, and The Wild Robot. Meanwhile, bigger movies from giant studios often struck out at the box office and with critics.
Here are the 10 worst-reviewed movies of 2024. Click here to see the worst games of 2024, according to Metacritic.
It’s never a good sign when your movie trailer looks like an extended SNL skit from five years ago and that’s exactly what Red One looks like. This holiday adventure starring Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson imagines what if Santa Claus ran a paramilitary group and was kidnapped by mercenaries. Critics imagined watching anything else.
Remember about a decade ago when every few months brought a crappy new film adaption of a somewhat successful young adult novel series built around a dystopian world and teens living through it all? The Hunger Games was the big winner of this Hollywood gold rush. But those days are long gone. In case you forgot, though, Uglies is here to remind us why we all moved on from those movies.
I get it. Garfield is a popular cartoon cat that is famous around the world. And the comic’s creator, Jim Davis, is not squeamish at all about slapping Garfield’s name and face on anything so long as he gets paid. So it’s not surprising that Hollywood producers keep trying and failing to make a popular and successful Garfield movie. Yet, the latest attempt—with Chris Pratt voicing the pasta-loving cat—is yet another failure.
I don’t think many people were demanding a reboot of The Crow. But Hollywood executives don’t care what you think! They can’t let a semi-popular IP linger without trying to reboot it a few times to squeeze as much money out as possible. Unfortunately, The Crow reboot was hated by everyone and was also one of the biggest box office flops of the year, so this cash grab provided mostly pennies for those involved.
Sometimes when an actor gets behind the camera and writes, directs, and produces a project it can yield fantastic results. Then other times, you get garbage like Poolman, a vanity project from Chris Pine. I enjoy Pine’s work and he seems cool enough, but this boring 100-minute “comedy” about a dumb pool guy getting wrapped up in criminal shenanigans is about as enjoyable as eating chlorine tablets.
This movie dares to ask the question: What if technology was bad?! What if AI was evil?! What if computers are no good!? What follows is a mostly by-the-numbers tech horror film that feels like it’s trying to capitalize on the success of Megan, but there’s not a cool murder robot doll so who even cares?
The first Winnie-The-Pooh horror movie wasn’t good, but it was kind of fun to see a popular character—who had recently entered the public domain—be turned into a horror monster. You might expect the second attempt at this to be worse, but surprisingly it reviewed better than the first, though not better enough to avoid making this list.
I’ll just quote former Kotaku editor Alyssa Mercante’s excellent review of this trash fire:
“It is devoid of humanity and personality, despite trying very, very hard to establish that it is quirky. It is the woman with frozen peas on her head in the grocery store aisle—she’s so crazzzzzyy, love her! It should not exist.”
While there are some sickos out there who will tell you that this Spider-Man spin-off movie is ironically very good, the reality is that Sony’s attempt at a Madame Web movie was a boring, messy trainwreck that would be completely forgotten by now if not for that funny meme about studying spiders in the jungle. And so, it sticks around as a meme. Some might say that’s a fate worse than death.
*A very long and wet fart noise*
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