Hey, not every movie can be a Get Out or The Florida Project. But these cinematic atrocities were even worse than expected. Here, in alphabetical order, is our list of the year’s Razzie-worthy offerings.
A Bad Moms Christmas
An object (abject?) lesson in what happens when you rush a sequel into production without giving any thought to what made your first movie a smash hit. Trading character beats and fun performances for anger and chaos, this wasted the talents of everyone involved. NW
The Black Prince
[Trumpets blaring] Look at this mighty and defiant Maharajah… who waited until he spent all of his riches to whine about colonialism. RS
Bon Cop Bad Cop 2
From the province that brought you Bill 62, a buddy cop comedy tackling American ignorance and Islamophobia while featuring exactly one identifiably Muslim character… as a terrorist! RS
Focus Features
The Book Of Henry
Naomi Watts plays a heartbroken mother who copes with the death of her genius son by carrying out his impossibly convoluted plan to murder the child abuser next door. It’s supposed to be a feel-good movie for the whole family. It so isn’t. NW
Daddy’s Home 2
Actually, Mel Gibson’s bad behaviour has its sweet side. RS
A Dog’s Purpose
A shameless tearjerker where a canine dies five times just so you can learn to appreciate him. RS
Will Ferrell, Amy Poehler in The House
The House
Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler play cash-strapped parents who run an illegal casino to pay for their daughter’s college education. What should have been a low-risk gamble delivered zero comedic payout. GS
Kidnap’s Halle Berry, desperately looking for her agent
Kidnap
“A feature-length car chase with Halle Berry in pursuit of the monsters who’ve abducted her young son! It writes itself!” Actually, it doesn’t. Please hire a screenwriter next time so your star has something to do while the camera is trained on her face 80 per cent of the picture. NW
Fifty Shades Darker
Sex, violence and men who abuse their power are dominating the conversation right now. And a movie about those very things is left dumbfounded. RS
Live By Night
A decade after making a terrific film out of Dennis Lehane’s Gone Baby Gone, Ben Affleck turns the author’s Prohibition-era epic about a Boston thug running rum in Tampa into a godawful Godfather knockoff in which the filmmaker tries to play both Michael and Sonny. NW
The Mountain Between Us
How do you screw up a survival drama starring Idris Elba and Kate Winslet? You do nothing to make the audience feel the life-or-death stakes of the situation, stretch out every scene to an interminable length and decide to actively ignore logic, emotion and common sense. NW
The Mummy
Okay, “Tom Cruise fights a lady mummy” isn’t the most ambitious log line, but “Tom Cruise fights a lady mummy in a knockoff of the forgotten Tobe Hooper space-vampire thriller Lifeforce” would likely have been even more of a turnoff. NW
Courtesy of Lionsgate
Papa (Octavia Spencer) and Mack Phillips (Sam Worthington) in THE SHACK.
The Shack
It’s just another word for church. RS
The Snowman
Tomas Alfredson’s misbegotten thriller was supposed to launch a Harry Hole series, with Michael Fassbender playing Jo Nesbø’s troubled Norwegian detective. And then people saw it. NW
“The hammer is my penis.”
Transformers: The Last Knight
The fifth of Michael Bay’s exhausting, incoherent noise machines is exactly the same as its predecessors, throwing millions of dollars of CGI at its undemanding fan base with the expectation of pulling hundreds of millions of dollars from their wallets. This one had Anthony Hopkins, looking just as confused as anyone in the audience. NW
Underworld: Blood Wars
No one expects anything from these movies, which are just excuses for Kate Beckinsale to jump around firing two guns in the air going “Aaaarggghhh!” But they don’t have to be this bad. NW