‘There Will Be Blood’: Beloved movies that are actually terrible
Not to sound contrary here, but there have been so many films in recent years that audiences have adored – en masse, it would appear – that are completely and utterly terrible. For some, this isn’t too difficult to admit; we all have those bad films we unabashedly adore, regardless.
However, for other people to point out that a movie they adore is terrible on some level is enough to provoke an endless sweep of antagonism. Please don’t hate us (or do, we don’t really care) – here’s a ranking of twelve of the absolute worst movies that everyone seems to love.
12. Anything from the Harry Potter franchise (2001 – 2011)
We’re not potheads or whatever it is that fans of J.K. Rowling’s boy wizard call themselves, which is possibly why we fail to see the magic in these movies.
But come on. Be subjective – they’re terrible. While older cast members like Alan Rickman (Die Hard) and Robbie Coltrane (Great Expectations) are admittedly wonderful, the young cast members (like Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson, and Rupert Grint) are as awful as every vaguely experienced child actor inevitably is. Harsh but true.
11. There Will Be Blood (2007)
Is Paul Thomas Anderson’s critically acclaimed drama really a "masterpiece"? Or is it a bit silly? Considering it’s a movie where one man (Daniel Day-Lewis) threatens to drink another man’s (Paul Dano) metaphorical “milkshake” before bludgeoning him to death with a bowling pin, we’re going to go for silly.
10. The Hunger Games (2012)
Be honest with yourselves – The Hunger Games is basically the safest US remake of Battle Royale Hollywood studios could muster. It also has the shakiest camerawork imaginable to distort any and every shot of possible violence committed by and against children, which makes it an unfathomable slog of a watch.
9. Les Misérables (2012)
Tom Hooper’s reactionary adaptation of the bloated stage musical is painful from start to finish. Watching Russell Crowe (Gladiator) and Hugh Jackman (Logan) wrestling each other’s egos over octaves is one thing, but to further add to the overall agony of this almost three-hour long torture effort is seeing posh-boy Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything) play a revolutionary revolting against the government. Awful on every possible level.
8. Avatar (2009)
The movie has been repeatedly criticized for being a white messiah fable, which is fair. However, on top of that, this is the cinematic equivalent of a pair of hemp trousers you bought at a festival to look "woke" once but that you’ve subsequently buried at the bottom of the laundry basket ever since. It strives for big important statements but doesn’t have the weight to deliver them.
7. Love Actually (2003)
Thanks for ruining Christmas forever, Richard Curtis (About Time).
6. Boyhood (2014)
As a general rule, if your movie opens with one of Coldplay’s most irksome songs, it’s already lost us as an audience. We expected better from you, Richard Linklater (A Scanner Darkly).
5. Her (2013)
Spike Jonze’s AI romance is the biggest load of white people bullshit ever, in which Joaquin Phoenix (The Master) gets so lonely he basically wants to bone his phone, realizes he can’t, and decides to bone (wait for it!) a real live human instead. Revelatory!
4. Shutter Island (2010)
With a twist that’s obvious before Leonardo DiCaprio (The Revenant) even steps off the damn boat, Martin Scorsese's mysterious thriller is riddled with languid, uninventive clichés and stock characters straight from an unpublished collection of Goosebumps stories.
3. Inception (2010)
Christopher Nolan’s dream heist movie thinks it’s so smart. Look! Upside down streets! Spinning tops! A man running across a wall! But really it’s subpar nonsense, the sort of movie a bunch of college kids taking a philosophy course would likely come up with after taking their first ever hit of dope (and not even inhaling).
2. Wonder Woman (2017)
We were promised a feminist superhero movie to make up for the many years where we had nothing but scintillating shots of Scarlett Johansson’s asscheeks in her form-fitting Black Widow costume to hold up as our female representation in modern superhero movies. We got this movie in which Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) is super into a dude and where an island full of women aren’t just having a super chill time scissoring it up and drinking prosecco.
1. A Quiet Place (2017)
Director and star John Krasinski (The Office) was apparently not a fan of horror movies before he made this horror movie, which is ostensibly 80 minutes worth of fakeouts and shushing gestures made for people who aren’t fans of horror films.
This overly sentimental crud is riddled with plotholes, isn’t scary in the slightest, and features only one horrifying scene (involving a bare foot and a nail) that would have been just as cringeworthy had they used a Lego brick instead. That’s the level of fear we’re working with here.
