The Worst Films I Saw in 2024
Monday is about movies, and sometimes TV. Here’s the first film “newsletter” of 2025, and so it’s about the worst 2024 releases I saw.
Last week, right on queue, for the end of the year, I delivered my favourite films of 2024 — a fairly weak year, really, for new releases. Although, I’ll acknowledge, there are a few allegedly great films from last year I didn’t get to — and do want to watch in 2025.
Anyway, what’s a round of “lists” without a Worst of the Year, right? I try to be more positive with anything bordering on a “review” these days — I’m paying with both my own time, and money these days and I’m working a full-time job outside of writing, so I’d rather tell you about things I dig, occasionally warning you away from something I found spectacularly dreadful. Certainly with music, I have no real agenda around shitting on stuff, that can just sit in the bowl (or float there). It doesn’t need me sink it. But movies? Well, that’s a more robust thing — and ripe for a bit of incredulity, init.
And because, I already did the work listing everything made in 2024 that I saw, and offered wee capsule reviews, I can go back and mine it for more content. So here we go with an Absolute Worst of 2024, in no particular order beyond how they reappear like the floaters that just won’t sink.
Argyle:
This was a fun movie session to attend — in that me and my son drove out to Porirua for a fun Friday night outing, but my god this film was STUPID. So stupid we could laugh at it, and sure it wasn’t quite ever trying to take itself seriously, but at the same time I’m sure it thought it was a lot more clever and meta than it actually was. Just a convoluted crime-caper mess.
Sasquatch Sunset:
An intriguing short-film concept gets over-acted to death and stretched to feature length breaking point.
Back To Black:
I wrote about this because I found it so frustrating. The dumbing down and rewriting of a famous person’s life is no stranger to the biopic, but in the last decade it’s just became The Move. Which is odd really when you consider how much easier it is to fact check things. I will always blame Bohemian Rhapsody as the real starting point of this particular brand of evil. And I am too much of a bore and pedant to find these things to just be “a nice film anyway”, which is often the take away from audiences. That pisses me off, frankly. /end rant.
Reunion:
A lazy Netflix comedy can fill the void. Sometimes. Like pizza, or any lazy takeaway option, you just tend not to talk about it much after. A shower, and a new day. We got it so wrong watching Reunion. I guess it’s cast, and the gist of its premise suggesting some sort of hidden gem awaiting. But no. Just a turd buried in that crevice.
Winnie The Pooh — Blood and Honey 2:
I genuinely enjoyed the first film. Winnie The Pooh: Blood and Honey was stupid in a brilliant way. But carrying it on was just stupid in a bad way. I was brutally disappointed. Which serves me right for rushing to attend a special preview screening, lol.
Godzilla x Kong — The New Empire:
Oof! Fuck! POOR! I don’t write many individual film reviews anymore, but this one got me pissed right off eh…
Dave Attell — Hot Cross Buns:
I keep watching Dave Attell specials because so many comedians talk about him being the modern-day comic’s comic. But shit he is a sad, soulless sack, and brutally unfunny. Desperate to be un-PC in a world that’s changed. And just awful. Yes, yes, he has the mechanics of how to tell a joke, but he looks lost, old, sad, and petty. And there’s something close to the definition of madness in me still checking in to find out why and if he’s funny. I’ll cop to that.
Unfrosted:
This is the worst film I saw at home in 2024. Just pitiful, woefully unfunny, so desperately pleased with itself, and Jerry Seinfeld is both dreadful as an actor (we always knew this of course, it used to work for him) and seemingly an awfully smug know it all billionaire-ish jerk. Ew.
Megalopolis:
I had a ticket to the premiere, but a clash meant I couldn’t go in the end. So, eventually, I caught up with this film — because, you know, big name director making a return after years away, and a big, OTT premise and solid cast. By god, this was stupid. I hated it. I could not get on board with it. It was just big, bad and not needed in this world. Like some sort of test for people’s taste and patience.
The Beach Boys:
This documentary offended me big time. I took it (very) personally! This band deserved more than this white-wash no-conflict nonsense. As with my rant about biopics above, I find this despicable — that you can spend a life listening to a band and learning about them, through books and films and analysis, and then someone can release a half-baked film that becomes the new standard. Fuck this film and everything about it! Grrrrrr
MaXXXine:
This is without a doubt the most letdown I have felt by a film in a LONG time.
All that good work they did with the first two films — and an amazing opening monologue and scene by Mia Goth…and then, they just ran out of ideas and went full bonkers, with no real plan. Shit I was angry about this! LOL. Went to the midnight premiere, and crawled home at 2am feeling like I’d wasted a whole night and precious sleep. You know I get real pissed off at something when I write about it twice! Look out!
But I really did feel like this final film ruined an entire trilogy.
Deadpool & Wolverine:
Films like this are made to be protected by the fans. They are for the fans. So me jumping in with a big fuck you take down of what I didn’t like is redundant. But the more I thought about this film after — probably the wrong move entirely, and dare I say it a rarity from anyone that saw it — the more I thought about how juvenile, boring and one-note, whilst also being convoluted as all hell this shit-stain of a film happened to be.
Joker — Folie à Deux:
So. There’s a theory that Todd Phillips tanked the franchise on purpose with this film. So he could separate himself from the success of Joker and go back to making anything else. I did not believe that at all — until I finally saw this. Easily the stupidest thing, and tortuously slow and void of, well, anything, that I’ve seen in quite the longest time. Eurgh!
The Red (aka Rippy):
It seemed like a good idea, a horror on the big screen for the night of Halloween. A silly one about a killer Kangaroo — yes please! That was until I saw it. Literally a short film remade to feature length, but with no additional footage of the kangaroo and a convoluted new plot attached, this was like pulling fingernails out in a cinema.
Beatles ‘64:
I thought I could watch anything about The Beatles. Then this sanctimonious load of shit drifted by and would not flush. Still love the band. Do not need to see anything about them at all, beyond what is already there and known. These attempts to bring new light are done. Over. Finished. There’s nothing new under this sun.
The Lord of the Rings — The War of the Rohirrim:
This was the Beatles documentary of Lord of The Rings films. And a 2hour+ animated movie should never happen!
So, there you go. That’s the worst of the films that I made it through across 2024. There were a lot of other stinkers, but none as bad as these. There were a lot of boring, but not terrible films too. And then a very small handful of gems, as covered last week — and linked to again at the top.
I don’t usually revel in shitting on things anymore. But these films deserve all my scorn and more.
Anything on this list you’d defend with your life? And what stinkers were you subjected to in 2024?
In fairness, "juvenile" is part of the recipe for Deadpool movies haha
The only film I disagree with here is Argylle: I didn't think it was aiming for meta, necessarily. I just enjoyed it on its own level.
I’ve only seen one of these, thank God, and I agree with your assessment-Argyle was appalling. All that talent and it was just stupid and boring.