Movies We Regret Watching
We've all been here before: It's Friday night and you want to treat yourself to an evening curled up on the couch with a new movie. Or maybe it's been a long week, so you buy a movie ticket and a tub of popcorn that costs roughly as much as a mortgage payment. If you settle into an AMC theater and Nicole Kidman reminds you, "Heartbreak feels good in a place like this." The lights dim. The movie happens, credits roll, and you walk gently into the night. Sure, it should be a positive experience. But on certain occasions, you leave feeling nothing but ... regret.
Yes, there's a difference between "movies you wish were better" and "movies that are bad," but both of those are starkly better experiences than "movies you wished you never saw in the first place." When you regret watching a movie, it may or may not have to do with the outright quality of the movie — sometimes, even a great movie can leave you feeling empty. When you rue seeing a movie, it's something you carry — day in and day out — and it weighs down your soul. This regret is real, and these movies made us curse the day we ever decided to watch them.
Looper's staff took a trip down memory lane and selected the films they wished they never dedicated their time to. Many were discussed, but only the worst of the worst made the list. Here are their choices.
Cats
This feels like an obvious take. Hackneyed, even. The adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's feline fever dream "Cats" has been the butt of every joke since it came out in 2019 — sometimes literally. Everyone knows "Cats" sucks. Jason Mantzoukas called it a "war crime" after being forced to watch it for "How Did This Get Made?" I'm not here to tell you that "Cats" is bad. I'm here to tell you about when I saw "Cats."
In December 2019, my friends and I went to see "Cats" late at night as a little goof. I ordered double adult beverages and went into the mostly empty theater fully armed, but I was still unprepared. The size of the cats and the perspectives on them kept changing — bringing the eerie "uncanny valley" of it to terrifying heights. At one point, Rebel Wilson's cat unzipped her cat skin to reveal a different outfit adorning different cat skin and then ate a bunch of screaming cockroaches with human faces!? The cats — which were apparently "jellicle" and which I still don't understand — moved like humans but also licked themselves. I saw the version with Cat Dame Judi Dench's human hand, shortly before she looked into the camera and said, uh, "Cats are not dogs." After the movie was over, I stood up and shouted, "What the f*** was that?!" Someone behind me yelled back, "I don't f***ing know!"
Then I went home, and a few months later, movie theaters closed thanks to COVID-19. "Cats" was the last movie I saw in theaters for two entire years. To say I have regrets is a severe understatement.
- Nina Starner
Skinamarink
When the indie fright flick "Skinamarink" was released in early 2023, Twitter lost its collective mind. But the general consensus was that each viewer's mileage varied greatly. Audiences either claimed that it was a tedious slog that barely qualified as a film or that it was the scariest movie they ever saw. Curious about where I might fall on this spectrum, I took the plunge.
"Skinamarink" clicked with me. I wish it hadn't.
The thing about this movie is that it plays on some specific experiences I had as a little kid. Back then, I slept on the upper floor of a two-story home, with my parents occupying a bedroom on the lower level. I would frequently wake up terrified — convinced for one reason or another that something sinister was in the house. I would walk downstairs and sit on the floor outside of my parent's door for hours. I was too afraid to wake them but also too afraid to go upstairs. "Skinamarink" dared to show me a version of those waking nightmares where things were just as dire as my young mind feared — and the results were horrifying.
The toll that "Skinamarink" took on me wasn't worth it. The film wormed its way into my brain, weaponizing the mundane setting and sounds of my home. I would lay awake at night replaying the movie's most disturbing scenes in my head. I felt like a child again in the worst way possible, scared to look out into the darkness for fear of what might be looking back. Hands down, it's easily the most upsetting film I've ever watched. I don't plan to revisit it.
- Ethan Zack
Troll
"Troll" came out in 2022 — a golden age for monster thrillers. Most viewers expected a shallow but engrossing experience. In this genre, it doesn't matter what movie you're watching — "Godzilla," "King Kong," "Cloverfield," "A Quiet Place" — you can expect a fun ride with some epic visuals and jump scares. The hype for "Troll" was buzzy, too. Critics gave it a whopping 89% on Rotten Tomatoes. (Listen, I hate to use the word "whopping," but that's what that ludicrous number is.) Netflix backed the movie, which is hit-and-miss these days, but still ... let's just say this movie should have at least been interesting. For me, that couldn't be further from the truth.
Admittedly, there were a few fun parts and a good frame or two. But overall "Troll" was slow, dull, and predictable. The use of tanning beds to fry the beast is laughable. (Take a lesson from Gandalf, guys — he cooked three stone trolls solo and never had to plug anything in at all!)
However, the bad viewing experience isn't even the worst part! This film's Norse mythology left so much intriguing material on the table. Arthurian legend keeps getting new chances. Viking lore has never had more cinematic momentum. Thor remains one of the most popular superheroes on the block. Northern European fantasy and myth are in vogue right now ... and "Troll" failed to capitalize on any of it. What should have been a slam dunk turned out to be a slog that is as sluggish as the beast's march toward Oslo. There's a reason it has a subpar rating on IMDb. Oh, and that much-hyped Rotten Tomato critic score? Yeah, the audience brought it down to a meager 50%.
- Jaron Pak
Parasite
Are you the kind of person who needs to set a book down for a while whenever the protagonist stumbles headfirst into painfully awkward situations? Do you tend to avoid horror media like the plague because no amount of melatonin gummies can protect you from the inevitable night terrors? I am ... and I do. I am a very anxious person. Visceral moments like this craft a full-body concoction — making my internal systems react as if there's a knife pressed to my throat. So, maybe I can be forgiven when I say this: I regret watching "Parasite."
I am cognizant of the fact that Bong Joon-ho's thriller is, objectively, a phenomenal piece of art. Do you know how many other non-English language films have won the Best Picture Oscar outside of "Parasite?" Zero! While that might just as easily be attributed to an American bias, it's not the only notable accolade that Jong-ho touts. The trophy case for "Parasite" is stacked and that's honestly what compelled me to see it. I ignored my previous history of watching similar stories designed to induce stress because I needed to know what made "Parasite" so special.
Well, I saw it. Joon-ho understands raw tension like Chad Stahelski understands fight sequences. Literally, the whole point of "Parasite" is that fighting for survival leads to recklessly desperate and lethally dangerous acts — aka the kind of thing that mentally derails me. I get why everyone loves it, but I can never watch "Parasite" again. Not if I like breathing normally!
- Cameron Roy Hall
Date Movie
I'm someone who appreciates a good parody. Before I was in kindergarten, I recited "Amish Paradise" by Weird Al verbatim. "Spaceballs" remains my favorite comedy ever. Of course, this upbringing caused me to pursue comedy in earnest in high school: I would film sketches with friends and upload them to YouTube. In hindsight, the sketches probably weren't great — but we had fun doing it! Needless to say, I was excited when "Date Movie" — ostensibly a parody of 21st-century romantic comedies — debuted in 2006.
I went with some buddies because we thought it would be good for some laughs. Even as a teenager with a sense of humor that probably still needed to be developed, I was aware that "Date Movie" was one of the worst things I'd ever seen. Throughout the film, I didn't laugh once. I instantly recognized every poor joke attempt — wondering who could possibly think this is funny.
Later, I recognized the inherent futility of parodying things that are already funny. "Amish Paradise" works because it takes a gangsta-rap hook and makes it about Amish people. Often, "Date Movie" had the same gags as the things it was parodying. "Along Came Polly" has a scene where Ben Stiller's playing basketball with some other guys, one of whom rubs his sweaty belly against Stiller's face. The same joke happens in "Date Movie." That's not even getting into references attempting to be passed off as jokes — like when an Owen Wilson stand-in pops in to say, "Are we too late to crash the wedding?" It's not a joke; it's not anything. If this was the sort of effort that Hollywood rewarded, it'd make me want to give up comedy.
- Mike Bedard
Entourage
Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy" poem tells the story of one man's journey through Hell and Purgatory before finding his way to Paradise. While the poem has been cited as an influential religious text, it's also a tale about overcoming pain to find a happily ever after. But how does a piece of 14th-century Italian literature relate to the "Entourage" movie?
In 2015, I spent most of the summer watching "Mad Max: Fury Road," aka the cinematic equivalent of Paradise, in theaters. However, I made the mistake of repeatedly watching the previews, meaning that I was regularly exposed to the "Entourage" trailer. For the first time in my life, I understood how Dante must have felt when he traversed the Seven Circles of Hell before he could kick back and enjoy himself.
For some reason that's still unbeknownst to me, I saw "Entourage" ... and it's easily the biggest movie-watching mistake of my life. That's coming from someone who recently spent a week binging the entire "Amityville" franchise instead of having a social life. "Entourage" is an obnoxious turd of a film that exists to depict women as property for a group of idiotic protagonists who are only interested in consumerism and money. Did an edgelord preteen write this nonsense?
Of course, it's possible to tell interesting stories about vacuous and irredeemable morons — provided that they experience consequences or humiliation for their actions. There are also plenty of entertaining raunchy comedies out there. Unfortunately, "Entourage" is the cinematic equivalent of toxic locker room talk. I hope everyone involved in its creation feels embarrassed.
- Kieran Fisher
No Country for Old Men
From a detached and academic standpoint, I appreciate that "No Country for Old Men" is worthy of critical acclaim. But I hate it anyway. Mostly, I hate that it's followed me around for the past 15+ years and that no matter where I go or what I do, it seems I'm unable to shake its dogged pursuit. If I'd never seen the Coen brothers' Oscar-sweeping bleak fest, I could keep blissfully mum any time it comes up in conversation (which, for some reason, it still does). Unfortunately, I have seen it, and that means I'm unable to stop myself from saying, "Yeah... I just didn't like it."
And then it begins.
Inevitably, what the "No Country for Old Men" fan hears is: "I didn't get it." Or they hear: "I didn't get the ending — please explain it to me in great detail. Don't you dare skimp on how symbolism and metaphors work or what various characters represent." No, it doesn't matter if I say: "No, no, I actually loved the ending because it meant that it was finally over." It doesn't matter if I say, "Yes, I'm sure it is a good book, I just don't like the movie." Without fail, said fan's takeaway of me is: "I guess I'm too silly a person to have appreciated it the first five times around."
That's correct — thanks to chance encounters and circumstances beyond my control, I've seen a two-hour movie I hate five times. (That's not counting all the many, many times I've had to relive it through passionate, shot-for-shot explanations of everything I "missed.") If you're asking why I don't leave it be when the film happens to come up — all I can say is because I've seen it.
- Kim Bell
Breaking the Waves
I am one of those moviegoers. One of my favorite movies is the Dolly Parton-Sylvester Stallone movie "Rhinestone." I've only walked out of one film in my life — Todd Solondz' "Palindromes" — due to its message of hopeless predestination and killing perpetual underdog Dawn Wiener (Heather Matarazzo). But I've come to forgive him because he resurrected her in "Weiner-Dog." A little.
There's only one film I wish I'd never seen. To be fair, Lars von Trier's films exist to break the heart and rail against injustice. Sometimes his protagonists are swallowed alive by bad luck. Other films like "Dancer in the Dark," "Dogville," and "Antichrist" have all touched my heart in one way or another. But then there's "Breaking the Waves."
For the uninitiated, the movie follows Bess (Emily Watson), a strict Calvinist who marries atheist oil rig worker, Jan (Stellan Skarsgård). The marriage is fruitful until Bess prays for Jan to be returned home to her. He becomes paralyzed from the neck down in an industrial accident. Fearing she's disobeyed God in her selfishness when Jan instructs her to find lovers, Bess does so. This endangers her health, position in her community, and church.
Bess is the first of von Trier's martyr heroines. But unlike Selma and Grace, she goes to the slaughter with only posthumous rewards returned. Worse, the film suggests that her total obedience to Jan and their depravity results in her being consecrated into Heaven — and thus her reward is Jan's restoration to health. This sappy gesture tries to tug the audience's heartstrings after hours of brutally realistic misanthropy about the human weight of religion and love.
- Melissa Lemieux
Street Fighter
Have you ever seen something so awful that it permanently turned you off a thing you used to enjoy? Maybe you used to love when your dog greeted you with a solid minute of face licking until you saw it chewing on a dead rat behind the trash cans. Suddenly, you realized that it's been doing stuff like that all along? If you're familiar with this type of perspective-switching gut punch, you'll understand what 1994's "Street Fighter" did to me.
You know "Street Fighter." Noted train wreck of a production. Raul Julia's last movie before he passed away. Jean-Claude Van Damme stars as the most inexplicably-accented American icon in film history. There are fight scenes with worse choreography than a slap fight in "The Jerry Springer Show." Sure, I've grown to appreciate it as a solid bad movie over the years — especially after learning its madcap backstory. However, when I first saw it as a young franchise aficionado, it was such a massive disappointment that I stopped playing the games.
This wasn't a small change for me. I was late to the "Street Fighter II" hype train, but when I got into it, I got into it. I became that kid who sank his allowance into those 1,256 "Alphas," "Turbos," and "Champion Editions" — while the rest of the world was already being disappointed by "Street Fighter III." When I finally got a chance to check out the "Street Fighter" movie a few years after it dropped, I was excited to finally see the franchise (I'd sunk way too many months into) in a glorious live-action format.
But then I watched the film. Long story short, turns out "Mortal Kombat" is fine, too.
- Pauli Poisuo
Vivarium
Cue: August 2020. For months, the Covid-19 pandemic ravaged the world. My partner and I had been stuck in our Brooklyn apartment — only venturing out for groceries or to look at dogs from a distance in Prospect Park. The rest of our days were spent inhaling content to please our media overlords.
One night, as we're browsing the Prime Video library in search of another movie to watch, we stumble upon "Vivarium." At first, it looks to be an atmospheric thriller from 2019 starring Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots. My partner loves horror movies. I love thrillers. So, it seemed like a fitting match for us. We put it on, and I lose 97 minutes of my life I'll never, ever get back.
If you've ever had one of those nightmares where you can't move your body and everything feels fuzzy, you know what it's like to watch "Vivarium" — a film that asks the question, "What if the dentist's office was a total vibe?" This is not a movie that builds a compelling sensation of discomfort and unease. This is a movie that's so inherently grating in every respect — set design, writing, acting, music, and cinematic aesthetic — you'll be checking your watch 10 minutes in and every five minutes after that.
At least, that was my experience. My partner thought it was fine, thus kicking off one of the biggest arguments we've ever had. So unless you think brown noise would make a cool movie or you love domestic unrest, avoid "Vivarium" at all costs. Please. I'm begging you.
- Rick Stevenson
Fool's Paradise
I was rooting for "Fool's Paradise" to succeed. I think we all were. Aside from boasting an all-star ensemble cast and a visually impressive trailer, the film was the ambitious directorial debut from Charlie Day — one of the scrappiest and most beloved comedic talents in the entertainment industry. I was so excited that I bought tickets to the earliest showing at my local theater the day they went on sale — which was also the day before I found out I would need to get eye surgery.
Suddenly, finding out my vision was starting to fail in my early 20s made me extremely self-conscious about what I was consuming visually. Not in a pretentious way like: "Is this worthy of my critically discerning eyes?" More like a panicked version of: "Oh god, my face eggs are totally scrambled and I still haven't seen 'The Wizard of Oz.'"
As I watched "Fool's Paradise" — which ultimately turned out to be a well-shot but slow and reductive look at Hollywood — I felt an anxiety I've never felt in a theater. Maybe it was the film, the disappointment I felt compared to my admittedly unfair expectations, or the sobering realization that you can work really hard on something and still miss the mark, but I had the distracting, distressing urge to walk out of the theater. I haven't walked out of a theater in over 10 years. (Seeing those animals get eaten in "Life of Pi" was really rough for me as a 12-year-old.) I chose to finish "Fool's Paradise," but I didn't feel better for doing so. If I lose my vision before seeing the Emerald City, blame Charlie Day — not the 14 times I rewatched Marvel movies in high school.
- Russell Murray