10. The Snowman
Yes, it delivered a delightful meme in the form of that adorably simplistic poster, but The Snowman was still an all-around terrible thriller. The story was convoluted and clumsily arranged, especially in the way it incorporated flashbacks involving a Val Kilmer subplot while the characters are all a snooze, especially our lead character, played by a weary Michael Fassbender, who is named Harry Hole. You'd think a film whose lead character is explicitly named Harry Hole would at least be amusingly off-the-rails junk, but no, The Snowman is really just a bore. It can't even make the reveal of its killer all that fun or bonkers! Maybe that Snowman killer gave us all the clues, but he still couldn't give us a good movie.
9. Rings
I haven't seen the other Ring movies and this attempt at relaunching the franchise for the tech-savvy world of 2017 doesn't exactly whet my appetite for more of this universe. While super low-quality long-delayed horror movies finally opening in the early months of a year are far from rare, Rings was an unusual bad horror movie in that its flaws didn't generate from bad jump scares or a dumb killer, but rather from how its plot decided to focus on mythology to an excruciating degree. A bunch of bad performances make the already tedious mythos Rings is trying to establish all the more tiresome to experience. Scares are few and far in between here, but when they show up, they're just as bad as the rest of this forgotten turkey.
8. Suburbicon
What's a George Clooney directed drama doing in this list primarily consisting of dismal blockbuster cash-grabs and bad horror/thriller movies? Well, it's because that George Clooney drama is Suburbicon, a staggeringly inept attempt at wry social commentary that tosses out a couple of talented actors into a film that doesn't just feel like knock-off Coen Brothers but rather a knock-off of knock-off Coen Brothers movies. The few jokes fall flat while it's never clear what kind of tone or atmosphere this thing is aiming for. All I know is that it goes on far too long and its attempt at providing social commentary regarding race relations in the 1950's are astonishingly poorly executed.
7. Transformers: The Last Knight
How does the Transformers franchise keep sinking to new lows? It's not too hard when you've got The Last Knight running around and deciding to bombard the audience with a whos-who of forgettable new characters and heaps & heaps of exposition in place of anything resembling excitement. Constantly shifting aspect ratios are guaranteed to leave the viewer nauseous as is the forced lead romance between Mark Wahlberg and Peter Quill's mom while puzzling storytelling decisions that don't go anywhere (like an array of evil Decepticons the movie spends extensive screentime establishing before quickly killing them off or how Optimus Prime being evil barely has any impact on the plot) abound. Even in a series with enemy scrotums and too many racist stereotypes to count, The Last Knight still felt like the nadir of this wretched saga.
6. The Space Between Us
A romantic drama devoid of either compelling romance or interesting drama, The Space Between Us failed mainly due to how little fun it had with its core premise. A boy on Mars going to Earth so he can be with his crush is rife with potential to be a fun romantic drama but The Space Between Us is more interested in showing its two leads engage in endless acts of carjacking and having its entire cast partake in tired predictable storytelling. The only thing really noteworthy of this dull project is that it may be the one movie in history that has both Gary Oldman and Logan Paul in its cast.
5. The Emoji Movie
PATRICK STEWART IS POOP
PATRICK STEWART IS POOP
PATRICK STEWART IS POOP
PATRICK STEWART IS POOP
A romantic drama devoid of either compelling romance or interesting drama, The Space Between Us failed mainly due to how little fun it had with its core premise. A boy on Mars going to Earth so he can be with his crush is rife with potential to be a fun romantic drama but The Space Between Us is more interested in showing its two leads engage in endless acts of carjacking and having its entire cast partake in tired predictable storytelling. The only thing really noteworthy of this dull project is that it may be the one movie in history that has both Gary Oldman and Logan Paul in its cast.
PATRICK STEWART IS POOP
PATRICK STEWART IS POOP
PATRICK STEWART IS POOP
PATRICK STEWART IS POOP
4. Bright
If you want badly done social commentary and grimy action sequences that are no fun to watch in one movie, then Bright was seemingly made for you! Will Smith's poor track record for leading man vehicles this decade (how is this not the worth movie he's appeared in in the 2010's???) continues on with this David Ayer movie that has absolutely no time for nonsense like "fun" or "enjoyable characters". For some reason, the people behind Bright seem to hate the world and creatures of fantasy storytelling almost as much as it's most bigoted in-movie characters, which just creates an incredible dreary slog of a production. The fact that this movies idea of clearly establishing anti-Orc prejudice early on comes in the form of Joel Edgerton's Orc character getting a "Kick Me' sign placed on his back shows you the level of thought that went into this rancid feature.
3. The Bye Bye Man
Giving your 2017 motion picture a name like The Bye Bye Man is a bold move I kind of admire, but there's nothing else here to look fondly on. Looking as cheap as a dollar store necklace (especially in the titular bad guy's CGI dog who seems to have walked right out of 1996) and packed with abysmal performances, The Bye Bye Man is the sort of horror movie that instills boredom instead of fear. The only thing on my mind after this movie ended, beyond why anyone thought this turgid script was fit for filming, was "How did Faye Dunaway (yes, that Faye Dunaway) get roped into this"?
2. The Mummy
The Mummy isn't just a bad movie, it's a shocking calamity that left me astounded anyone really thought this was well and truly gonna work as a standalone movie, let alone as something intended to kickstart a Marvel-style cinematic universe. Tom Cruise is hopelessly miscast as the lead character while the titular Mummy wastes Sofia Boutella on a version of this mystical entity devoid of menace, fun or personality. Big VFX action sequences go by without leaving any sort of impression on the viewer or the story (London gets devastated by a sandstorm powerful enough to destroy Big Ben and it has zero influence on anything in the film) while the less said about Russell Crowe's Dr. Jekyll character (and his lazily designed Mr. Hyde form) the better! It's an atrocious movie through and through that decides to end on a nonsensical note befitting a movie as slapdash and poorly made as The Mummy.
How a movie that bad isn't the worst movie I saw from 2017 would be beyond me in any other year, but there is one film from 2017 that is far worse than all the rest....
1. 9/11
Behold. Look upon it and despair. A movie about the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center starring Charlie Sheen sounds like a peculiar proposition on its face but in execution, it's way worse than your imagination could ever conceive. The movie essentially becomes a feature-length treatise on how Sheen's character, playing a work-obsessed dad straight out of some 90's kids movies, gets to prove to his soon-to-be-ex-wife how awesome he is in times of crisis. Jokes about the weight of a character played by Luis Guzman and an extended monologue wherein a white woman explains to a black person why race doesn't have any impact on someone's financial status ensue. It's all as uncomfortable to experience as it sounds and I'm enraged at the thought of actual human beings thinking this insulting motion picture should exist.
Behold. Look upon it and despair. A movie about the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center starring Charlie Sheen sounds like a peculiar proposition on its face but in execution, it's way worse than your imagination could ever conceive. The movie essentially becomes a feature-length treatise on how Sheen's character, playing a work-obsessed dad straight out of some 90's kids movies, gets to prove to his soon-to-be-ex-wife how awesome he is in times of crisis. Jokes about the weight of a character played by Luis Guzman and an extended monologue wherein a white woman explains to a black person why race doesn't have any impact on someone's financial status ensue. It's all as uncomfortable to experience as it sounds and I'm enraged at the thought of actual human beings thinking this insulting motion picture should exist.
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