As good as 2014 was for good movies (my own Best of 2014 list had to, by necessity, contain 15 entries), it was also a year that unleashed a fusillade of garbage. Can a year be both great and terrible? If 2014 is any indicator, yes it can.
Seriously, there was a big rock candy mountain of ickiness in 2014. For every great film, there was a dark twin waiting around the corner. For every good blockbuster, there was a disappointing one. For every Boyhood, there was an A Haunted House 2. Here’s a little professional secret that I think it’s okay to mention: My review of A Haunted House 2 was so bileful and negative, my bosses at the time had me re-write it. Even then, it was so negative, they refused to publish it. I eventually had to publish it myself. You can read it here.
Check Out: William Bibbiani’s Picks for the Worst Films of 2014
Some of the worst movies in recent memory I saw this year. Some were merely shrill, some were shrill and awful. Some were downright offensive. Some sucked so hard, I have trouble writing about them; thinking of them pains me. And at least one was a legitimately great film that was downright ruined by a bad ending.
It’s been said that one of the great pleasures of life is watching an ordinarily composed film critic totally lose their cool over a piece of crap. Well, dear readers, you may strap in for the next list, as I will lose my cool over the worst films of 2014.
Slideshow: The Worst Films of 2014 – A Second Opinion
Runners-Up:
Blended
Pompeii
Divergent
This is Where I Leave You
The Amazing Spider-Man 2
Annabelle
Witney Seibold is a contributor to the CraveOnline Film Channel, and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. You can follow him on “Twitter” at @WitneySeibold, where he is slowly losing his mind.
The Worst Films of 2014: Second Opinion
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10. Horrible Bosses 2
The sequel that the world wasn't clamoring for was also one of the year's most obnoxious. The three lead dweebs of these films are idiotic and shrill, and the filmmakers assume that we relate to them. The actors who play those dweebs are allowed to improvise and chatter and talk over one another, as if being noisy and unbelievably obnoxious is somehow the same thing as comedy. It also treats sex addiction like something titillating, forcing the funny and talented Jennifer Aniston into the most demeaning role she's ever played.
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9. Nymphomaniac, volume II
Lars Von Trier's Nymphomaniac is a great movie that feels as if the director has finally discovered what he's wanted to do this whole time. It's refreshing, dark, analytical, naughty, daring, and actually has an optimistic message. I even listed the first half of Nymphomaniac as one of the best of the year. Von Trier, however, included 90 seconds of footage that turned his amazing epic into something nonsensical and childish. He made a great film, and with a completely illogical ending, undid his entire epic. If you can turn off the film right before the ending, you'd have a classic. But we have those 90 seconds staring us in the face. And, as such, I have to list Volume II as one of the worst of the year. Oh Lars. You were so, so close. Why did you do that??
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8. The Pyramid
The found-footage film that will, we can only hope, kill off the genre once and for all. The Pyramid, through sheer incompetence and through a pile of dumb, forgettable characters, emerges as one of the stupidest films of the year. It's classically fatuous, exploiting every cliché you know. To make matters worse, it only employs the found-footage gimmick selectively, ensuring for some staged close-ups, but also enough shaky-cam action to obscure any interesting action.
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7. Maleficent
Disney has been raking in untold riches by re-staging their animated classics as neo-feminist polemics. The ugly and terrible Alice in Wonderland kicked off this trend, and it continues with Maleficent, a film that re-imagines the villainess of the 1959 Sleeping Beauty as a dark, wronged antiheroine. The film is awful to look at, and seems morally at odds with itself. Is Maleficent a villainess or a heroine? The film shrugs off any of her wrongdoing as justified, making her look like a feminist on paper, but who is, in actuality, a bitter and resentful monster. I hated this film so much.
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6. The Judge
The glossy photography, high-caliber actors, and movie-of-the-week plot (lawyer must defend his estranged judge father from a murder rap) might have you assuming that The Judge is good. Don't be fooled. This is one of the hammiest, most manipulative, most emotionally illogical films of the year. It pounds at your face with Big Moments, without pausing to consider the actual meaning or ramifications of those moments. Also, there is an incest subplot that is not addressed. Congratulations, The Judge. You made everything icky.
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5. Atlas Shrugged, part III: Who Is John Galt?
Putting aside however one may feel about Ayn Rand or her political philosophies, the notorious Atlas Shrugged movies, which concluded this year, are some of the cheapest, hammiest, preachiest pieces of polemical propaganda on any side of the political spectrum. Even if you do agree with Rand, you'll likely be chagrined by how cheaply and incompetently made these movies are. The best part of this series is that the third one had to be funded by a Kickstarter campaign, a fact that stands in direct contrast to the help-only-yourself philosophy of the film.
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4. Transformers: Age of Extinction
Michael Bay's latest ran 165 minutes of essentially nonstop action, and feels less like a movie, and more like an endurance test in movie form. I have never been so dazed and overwhelmed as when I walked out of this film, so pounded in the face was I with Bay's obnoxious brand of cinematic noise. Watching this film is like going to see a concert where four really glitzy hair metal bands are all playing different songs at the same time. Please place one hand firmly over your mouth, the other hand high in the air, as movies are now supposed to be fucking thrill park rides.
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3. A Haunted House 2
Is a racist joke less offensive if you acknowledge – after you make it – that it was kind of offensive? How about it you continue to make racist jokes, pointing out how they are offensive each time? I would argue that it would not only keep the jokes offensive, but ensure that you were really annoying as well. That was the experience of watching A Haunted House 2, the latest anti-spoof film in the ever-swelling canon of unfunny Wayans comedies. Director Michael Tiddes needs to run screaming from the Wayans. They're not doing him any favors.
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2. Tusk
#WalrusNo. I'm not bothered by the gruesome horror in Kevin Smith's Tusk. I'm not even bothered by the oddball premise (a 'blogger is kidnapped by a madman and surgically transformed into a human walrus). What bothers me is the lame – and loooong – attempts at mining “humor” from really, really obnoxious accents (seriously, shut up!), bad human behavior, and a senseless and awful Johnny Depp cameo. And then, just to make sure the audience knows it's getting the finger, Smith played a recorded conversation over the credits, wherein he openly admits that the film is essentially a prank. The joke is on you, audience. You were the suckers who paid for this trash. I used to love Kevin Smith. Tusk made me want to punch him.
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1. The Entire Month of January
January is famously an awful time for movies (some critics call the month “Fuck You, It's January”), but January of 2014 was a fallow pit of unending filth. If the high point of the month was the forgettable and boring Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, something is seriously wrong. Week after week, we were inundated with movies like I, Frankenstein, The Nut Job, and Renny Harlin's The Legend of Hercules. The cherry on the cake was Labor Day, the most anti-feminist, most offensive, most ham-fisted, most pandering, most awful film of the year. I never look forward to January – no one does – but no year could possibly be as bad as this one. Let's all dance the Gangnam Style with squirrels!
