Well, as we leave 2024 behind us once and for all, we must exorcize all the demons of the year that has just passed. Most of them, for me, happen to revolve around shit movies, which makes it pretty easy. While this year has been a pretty damn good one for movies across the board, there have been some dull, irritating, and downright spectacular forays into the contrary – so, with that in mind, let’s dig in to some of our worst movies of 2024!
3. The Fall Guy
Now, I know that this will be a controversial pick for a lot of people, but I can truly not think of many more movies that annoyed me quite as much as The Fall Guy did. There’s something about the very specific brand of cloyingly self-satisfied humour on display through this film that had me grinding my teeth with unbridled irritation within about ten minutes, and it only got worse from there – I truly think the romance plot between a catastrophically underserved Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling riding the high of being somewhat good in Barbie might be one of the worst I’ve seen in recent years, and, with the state of modern romance writing in mainstream film, that’s really saying something. While the film isn’t a total write-off across the board, this aspect of it pissed us off enough to land it a spot on this list.
2. The Exorcism
Despite knowing better, there’s a part of me that does actually quite like Russel Crowe’s rebranding into Person who Leads Exorcism Movies – and, so, when I caught the first trailer for The Exorcism, I was pretty damn excited to see it. But this trudging, self-serious, and punishingly formulaic take on the exorcism horror is just such a disappointing waste of time for the many talented people involved both on and off screen. The worst part of it all? It doesn’t capitalise on the meta potential of this off-screen scary story, and backs off all the interesting details to tell an uninspired, lazy tale that you can almost chant the lines along to if you’ve ever encountered any exorcism horror in the last twenty years. It’s hard to believe that, in an era of so much innovative, interesting horror, this is the kind of shit that’s making it into the mainstream.
1. Madame Web
What else was going to be on the top of this list, really? Madame Web is a movie so terrible, so spectacularly, sensationally bad, that it nearly elevates its dreadfulness into an art form in its own right. From Dakota Johnson’s lavishly limp leading performance, to nonsensical direction that borders on arthouse, to dialogue so comically inhuman it sounds like it’s been passed back and forth through Google Translate at least half a dozen times per line, Madame Web is not just the worst movie of this year – it’s one of the worst movies of any year, of all time, and it’s going to go down as one of the most profoundly unforgettable missteps of the superhero genre. Do I think it’s a good movie? God, no. Is it still one of the most entertaining cinema trips I’ve taken this year? You better believe it.
What are your lowest lows of cinema this year? We’d love to hear about them, from blockbusters that blew it to indie movies that should have stayed in the sidelines. Let us know in the comments below!
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By Lou MacGregor
(header image via Guardian)
No But Listen 