Here’s something we don’t talk anywhere near enough about during movie-awards season:
What’s the worst movie you saw in 2022?
I’m thinking specifically about 2022’s new releases — whether they were streaming only or actually in cinemas — but if there’s a mega-stinker from earlier years that you saw for the first time in 2022, I’ll take that, too.
I still have some 2022 movies left to see, but it’s tough to imagine any film outdoing “spy” “thriller” Blackbird [pictured above] for sheer terribleness. Written, directed, produced, financed by, and starring Irish-dancing impresario Michael Flatley, it is, to quote my own review:
awful: sometimes hilariously so, and sometimes it’s just plain baffling. It’s the sort of awful that comes about when a raging egomaniac is surrounded by yes men and women who daren’t tell him he’s proudly strolling down the street naked.
Blackbird’s profound badness was instantly legendary, and it looks like it will be having a regular recurring engagement at London’s cult-favorite Prince Charles Cinema. But this is not a so-bad-it’s-good flick. It’s so bad it’s B A D.
Since Blackbird was a UK-only release, I’ll also mention my second-worst film of the year, the US-only release The King’s Daughter. It’s a mysteriously bonkers fantasy in which Pierce Brosnan plays King Louis XIV, and it is, again quoting myself:
ostensibly a movie in the same way that a Victorian folly is ostensibly a Japanese temple or a medieval castle. That is: not at all. [It’s] like a themed high-school prom from 1994, and an accidental horror.
I don’t think I saw a 2022 film that drew my ire to nearly the same extent that Licorice Pizza did last year (although I did see it at the beginning of 2022, so maybe it counts?). But Downton Abbey: A New Era was just shoddy storytelling, albeit in the sake of fan service; however, not being up on the canon and just a casual fan, I was lost and almost entirely bored. And I found Bullet Train a disappointing slog with a view bright spots, floating in a sea of gratuitous blood.
I probably saw some older films that were atrocious as well - I think I saw The Fountainhead in 2022, and good god is that both a bad film and a film I don’t like.
I have been casually interested in Slaughterhouse Rulez, simply due to the Michael Sheen factor, but I am glad to hear from you and Jens it is one to skip before I waste my time!
I'll cheat a little - the worst film I saw in 2022 is from 2018 according to IMDB, but I'm pretty sure it only turned up on streaming in 2022. It's Slaughterhouse Rulez. An absolutely abysmal misfire, with Simon Pegg and Mark Frost cannibalizing their previous performances for tics, a "plot" that is choc-a-bloc with hoary cliches that do not seem to be played for laughs, and countless winking references to movies much, much better than itself. The satire is tediously rote, the horror element is perfunctory, the humour is dreadfully predictable. A probable #2 and actually from 2022 is The Gray Man with the gray man himself, Ryan Gosling. It's a James Bond wannabe written by a group of accountants, full of colour and gunplay and yet unbelievably boring and by the numbers. It fulfills the basic criteria for a truly bad movie - it has the actors and the budget to be good - but no story to tell, no reason for its own existence. (And now, to cleanse my mind, I have to mention two of my favourites - Top Gun: Maverick, and Barbarian. Oh, I feel better already.)
I don’t think I saw a 2022 film that drew my ire to nearly the same extent that Licorice Pizza did last year (although I did see it at the beginning of 2022, so maybe it counts?). But Downton Abbey: A New Era was just shoddy storytelling, albeit in the sake of fan service; however, not being up on the canon and just a casual fan, I was lost and almost entirely bored. And I found Bullet Train a disappointing slog with a view bright spots, floating in a sea of gratuitous blood.
I probably saw some older films that were atrocious as well - I think I saw The Fountainhead in 2022, and good god is that both a bad film and a film I don’t like.
I have been casually interested in Slaughterhouse Rulez, simply due to the Michael Sheen factor, but I am glad to hear from you and Jens it is one to skip before I waste my time!
This might be too pitiful a comment so ignore it. Discovered you via the Omnibus list, hello!
I think I saw 1 new movie in 2022. Top Gun: Maverick.
I watch tons of movies. From 1930s and those days! TCM is basically all I watch.
The exception is sci-fi and anything Christopher Nolan makes.
I'll cheat a little - the worst film I saw in 2022 is from 2018 according to IMDB, but I'm pretty sure it only turned up on streaming in 2022. It's Slaughterhouse Rulez. An absolutely abysmal misfire, with Simon Pegg and Mark Frost cannibalizing their previous performances for tics, a "plot" that is choc-a-bloc with hoary cliches that do not seem to be played for laughs, and countless winking references to movies much, much better than itself. The satire is tediously rote, the horror element is perfunctory, the humour is dreadfully predictable. A probable #2 and actually from 2022 is The Gray Man with the gray man himself, Ryan Gosling. It's a James Bond wannabe written by a group of accountants, full of colour and gunplay and yet unbelievably boring and by the numbers. It fulfills the basic criteria for a truly bad movie - it has the actors and the budget to be good - but no story to tell, no reason for its own existence. (And now, to cleanse my mind, I have to mention two of my favourites - Top Gun: Maverick, and Barbarian. Oh, I feel better already.)