The Worst Movies Of 2020

There's always going to be a ton of movies out there vying for our entertainment dollars (yes, even in 2020), but sometimes, you just have to wonder if the filmmakers behind them really want those dollars at all. Not everybody gets to make motion pictures for a living, and one would think that everybody who actually gets a shot at a film career would do their level best to bring all of the heart, wit, and energy to the screen that they possibly could. Unfortunately, one would be wrong.

Every year, we here at Looper round up all of the absolute crappiest efforts to hit theaters, and every year, we're still surprised at just how many of them there are. Sure, it would be unrealistic to expect every film to be a masterpiece — but if you find yourself lucky enough to have a major studio shelling out a bunch of actual money for your screenplay, or to be sitting in the director's chair for a production with a whopping budget and a slot on the schedule for wide release, you'd do well to at least try to make sure that you're not fielding a big old stinker like one of these.

These are the films that arrived in theaters to the sound of a sad trombone, stunk up the joint for awhile, and then slunk away in shame. They're the very worst films of 2020, and the next time you're having an off day on the job, just be glad your job doesn't get released to thousands of screens worldwide.

Like a Boss was another film that utterly failed to capitalize on the talent of its cast, which included Rose Byrne, Salma Hayek, Billy Porter, and Tiffany Haddish (who seemingly cannot catch a break). The story of a pair of friends (Byrne and Haddish) whose friendship is put to the test when their small cosmetics company is bought up by a corporation, the flick made feeble stabs at both subversive laughs and a "you go, girl" female empowerment vibe — neither of which worked.

"How do you make a movie with [this cast], and have it be so devoid of joy?" wondered Vulture's Alison Willmore. "It's hard to guess whether the story was mangled by studio reedits or just didn't have much to say to begin with — both seem possible. The bigger question is why so many strong actors signed on for this misfire... it feels like a film whose point is clumsily misunderstood by the very people who created it." That innate clumsiness was pointed out by nearly every observer ("It's a film that so desperately wants to be funny, but isn't sure how," wrote Karen Krizanovich of The List), while plenty of sympathy was reserved for that amazing cast — and the audience. "Everyone in this movie deserves better than this movie," wrote Tara Brady of Irish Times, "and so do you."

The Turning seemed like a good idea on paper: an adaptation of the classic Henry James novel The Turn of the Screw directed by visionary filmmaker Floria Sigismondi (The Handmaid's Tale, American Gods, dozens of music videos) starring Mackenzie Davis (Terminator: Dark Fate), Finn Wolfhard (Stranger Things), and Joely Richardson (Red Sparrow) and produced by none other than Steven Spielberg was bound to be nothing if not visually stylish. Most critics agreed that it was; they also agreed that it was "meandering," "pedestrian," and "incomprehensible."

Those obviously weren't the descriptors Sigismondi and company were going for, and they got worse. David Nusair of Reel Film Reviews called The Turning "an absolutely abhorrent ghost story... an excessively deliberate drama that's almost entirely devoid of dread and atmosphere... an almost uncommonly intolerable contemporary horror flick." There was plenty of praise for the cast, with more than one observer noting the project's wasted potential — but quite a few others simply deemed the film a waste. Wrote Jamie East of The Sun, "That the man who gave us Jaws and Poltergeist had even a smidgen of a hand in this relentlessly dull barrage of cheap tricks is beyond me... [the] intentionally ambiguous but unintentionally hilarious ending had me screaming at the screen... Utterly ridiculous and not worth your time." Spielberg has plenty of projects in the pipeline as a producer, including Indiana Jones 5; let's hope The Turning isn't a sign of things to come.

Recycling the premise of the classic '70s television series Fantasy Island (in which guests to a mysterious resort run by an enigmatic figure have their wildest dreams come true) into a Blumhouse horror thriller wasn't the worst idea in the world — even if, as Looper's own Christopher Gates points out, the series ended long before most of the movie's target audience was even born. The setup could certainly lend itself to scares, and casting Michael Peña in the Mr. Roarke role was nothing short of inspired. Unfortunately, the flick from writer-director Jeff Wadlow (Truth or Dare) didn't just botch the adaptation — he somehow, in the words of ReelViews' James Berardinelli, "[made] the original seem smart and fresh by comparison."

Fantasy Island was one of the most brutally reviewed movies of the year, earning such descriptors as "gallingly stupid," "distinctly subpar," and "preposterous and convoluted" — and these were the kinder reviews. Wrote Jason Shawhan of Nashville Scene, "This film is such a haphazard stack of nested fantasies it could be a Cinemax After Dark film if it took any joy in anything... Is this a twisty morality tale in which the selfish get punished? Is this a series of exaggerated tableaux meant to put flawed people through it and have them emerge on the other side as better human beings? Is this a tropical cash-grab? Blumhouse's Fantasy Island is all of those things at the same time. It is an incoherent mess, and it is f***ing exhausting." Tomris Laffly of Time Out was a bit more succinct: "'This place doesn't suck,' someone observes early on," she wrote. "If only."

The political drama The Last Thing He Wanted had a lot going for it, including a jaw-dropping cast that included Anne Hathaway, Ben Affleck, Rosie Perez, Toby Jones, and the great Willem Dafoe. It adapted a well-regarded 1996 novel by Joan Didion, and it was released to Netflix, which literally everyone has, so it didn't even need to get butts in theater seats. Unfortunately, its list of positives ends right there.

Absolutely everything went wrong with the picture, starting with the screenplay, which got roasted like a marshmallow by virtually every critic tasked with sitting through the film. "The Last Thing He Wanted... is almost impressively bad," wrote Fortune's Isaac Feldberg. "[It] begins in a state of near-total incoherence and somehow meanders further from there, plunging into almost experimental territory with its choppily edited mess of ridiculous dialogue and hyper-dense plotting." FlixChatter's Ruth Maramis pointed out that it didn't need to be so complicated: "The plot is actually not that convoluted on paper," she wrote, "but somehow the muddled script and haphazard direction makes it feel that way." The undeniably talented cast seemed to all be phoning it in at once, failing to prop up a flick that seemed like it must have shown an active resistance to being made. Matthew Turner of The List summed it up by taking the obvious shot: "Lacking a single moment that rings true, forget the last thing he wanted, this is the last thing anybody wanted."

The Valiant Comics property Bloodshot, about an ex-Marine who is raised from the dead to become a nanotech-infused super soldier, seemed like a pretty good choice for a mid-budget film adaptation — and with Vin Diesel in the title role, it felt like a no-brainer. Unfortunately, two things went wrong for Bloodshot on the way to box office glory. For one thing, it was released on March 13, right as theaters everywhere began to close down. Secondly, it wasn't very good.

While most critics agreed that the cast — which included Iron Man 3's Guy Pearce and Baby Driver's Eiza Gonzalez — made the flick borderline watchable, virtually all agreed that watching a superhero action movie shouldn't feel like such a chore. The Chicago Sun-Times' Richard Roeper certainly knew where to place the blame: with writers Eric Heisserer (Arrival) and Jeff Wadlow (Fantasy Island). "There might be only one thing on this Earth that can stop Bloodshot — and that's the screenplay for Bloodshot. Yep, that did the trick," he wrote. "[The film is] frantically overcooked, bursting with headache-inducing, rapid-cut action sequences and only half as clever as it fancies itself." Joshua Rivera of The Verge wished that the flick had either been a little better, or a little worse: "Bloodshot is the worst kind of uninspiring," he wrote. "Not bad enough to circle back around toward fun, not good enough at action to be even momentarily impressed by a fight scene."

Observers also bemoaned the film's reliance on tired action movie tropes and its lack of an emotional center, but even those who were simply along for a thrill ride left disappointed. Jeff Mitchell of Phoenix Film Festival struck the killing blow with six words: "Boreshot feels like a better title."

There's no denying that "a horror movie called Behind You" is a great elevator pitch, but after that pitch is made and the film greenlit, there's the small matter of execution. This might have slipped the minds of first-time feature writers and directors Andrew Mecham and Matthew Whedon (yes, he's Joss' brother), because from its generically attractive young cast to its over-reliance on jump scares to its premise (a demon living inside a haunted mirror) cribbed from a much better film in Oculus, everything about Behind You was up for a lashing by reviewers.

The flick's lack of originality was what got most critics' blood boiling. "Behind You features little that horror film fans haven't seen endless times before," wrote The Hollywood Reporter's Frank Scheck. "There's no compensating... for the contrived plotting... and hokey situations on display." ScreenRant's Hannah Hoolihan bemoaned the flick's "generic story and uninspired performances," going on to trash its "bland color palette [and] generic script," not to mention the fact that "the actors' lack of enthusiasm for the production itself can be felt pretty heavily while watching." While many critics reserved a little praise for the film's atmosphere and practical effects, those redeeming qualities couldn't make up for the film as a whole being a lazy slog. "Derivative, lacking in scares, monotonous, and just overall disappointing, it's a real chore," wrote Joey Magidson of Hollywood News. "Unless you're absolutely starved for a genre entry, you can do way better than this."

You may be asking for it when you put the word lazy right there in the title of the movie, and if the critics are to be believed, Lazy Susan — a comedy from first-time feature director Nick Peet — is guilty of that self-own. Its simplistic plot follows the titular middle-aged sad-sack, who one day decides to stop skating through life and make something of herself. The fact that the character is played by a man (Sean Hayes, Will and Grace) should begin to give you an idea of its many problems.

Despite the presence of such talents as Matthew Broderick and character actress Margo Martindale, Lazy Susan couldn't overcome stiff pacing, a resolute unwillingness to go for big laughs, and the weird stunt casting of Hayes. Wrote The Hollywood Reporter's Frank Scheck, "It's hard to imagine exactly what Sean Hayes was thinking with his new comedy about a middle-aged woman slacker... his casting... seems an utterly tone-deaf choice... despite its talented, overqualified cast, Lazy Susan simply feels like a mistake." Virtually every critic agreed, with Spectrum Culture's Dominic Griffin succinctly summing up the film as "[watching] an insufferably selfish person be irritating for an hour and a half with little to no dramatic progression or catharsis" — but the biggest diss came from Glenn Kenny of the New York Times, who hammered home the on-the-nose quality of the flick's title. "It's as if the filmmakers tossed a bunch of fish into a barrel," he wrote, "and didn't bother to shoot them."

Endings, Beginnings starts with the tired premise of a newly-single woman torn between two new loves, and ends without having done anything original or interesting with that premise. Despite a talented cast that includes Shailene Woodley, Jamie Dornan, and Sebastian Stan as the three principals, the flick — from Zoe director Drake Dortemus — is a slog that never establishes any kind of favorable personality traits for the characters at its center.

Sheila O'Malley of RogerEbert.com lambasted the film in the fine tradition of her website's namesake. "The most unique thing about [Woodley's character] is her love of pinball," she wrote. "Endings, Beginnings is not even a proper character study... The main problem is: It's not actually clear what is appealing and/or interesting about any of these people." The phrase "navel-gazing" or variations thereof was employed by many a critic ("Endings, Beginnings is staring so intensely at its own navel that its head is embedded in its own abdomen," offered Witney Seibold of Critically Acclaimed Podcast) when they weren't simply finding new and creative ways to rip the film to bits, like A.V. Club's Ignatiy Vishnevetsky. "It's a bad film that's bad for the simplest reasons: It's trite, repetitive, and boring, and it looks like a commercial, but not in a good way," he wrote. "Its concluding sentiment... sounds like something from an Instagrammable self-care tip: 'Everything might not be okay, but that's okay.' Somehow, it takes most of 110 minutes to reach this point."

Bruce Willis is a national treasure, but nobody — likely including Willis himself — could disagree that he's been in some pretty terrible movies (we're looking at you, Death Wish). His latest actioner, Survive the Night, sees him portraying a retired cop called in to assist when his family, one of whom is a trauma surgeon, finds themselves held hostage at their farmhouse by a petty crook whose partner has been wounded in a robbery. It's a perfectly fine premise — one which most critics agreed was fumbled super-hard by first-time scribe Doug Wolfe.

Jeffrey M. Anderson of Common Sense Media took everyone involved with Survive the Night to task with a review which was probably more entertaining than the movie itself. "This movie looks and sounds like a real thriller, but the premise and the characters' behaviors and interactions are so stunningly absurd that it's nearly impossible to turn your brain off and enjoy," he wrote. "Characters are stuck in one place for long periods of time or else spend long periods of time stumbling around, bleeding all over the place, looking for each other, and shooting at (and missing) each other... This movie is so bad it will leave you gobsmacked." 

Steven Schaefer of the Boston Herald was left shaking his head at how the movie actually seems to deflate as it goes on: "As the farmhouse becomes a battleground, shouldn't Survive ramp up tension? Instead... pacing and suspense evaporate," he wrote. "[The] predictable plot abandons realism — along with any unexpected character revelations."

The critical burns came fast and furious for the flick, but perhaps none was so devastating as the one laid down by Ben Kenigsberg of the New York Times. "Survive the Night," he wrote, "is a flabby hunk of meat that the director... hasn't bothered to season."

Artemis Fowl became a pretty big deal for one reason: the movie, based on a series of YA novels by Eoin Colfer, was to be a major summer tentpole effort for Disney. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the Mouse House changed those plans — and instead decided to release it straight to Disney+, which should have been a welcome move for those seeking big-budget family entertainment in the comfort of their homes. And it would have been most welcome, if Artemis Fowl were any good.

Unfortunately, the flick arrived on the streamer as one of the worst-reviewed films of the year, with critics lambasting the muddled script and lack of emotional punch in a film that most perceived to be all style and no substance — a rare misfire for director Kenneth Branagh (Thor). RogerEbert.com's Christy Lemire called it "a glossy and empty exercise in world-building," lamenting that "there's always another fearsome creature, another giant set piece or fight scene, with a frantic score urging the action along. There's a great deal of exertion on display but very little magic." The film's ridiculously breakneck pace came under fire from nearly everyone who watched it, with Rich Cline of Shadows on the Wall noting that "it's basically a three-hour script crammed into 90 minutes, so nothing quite lands." Most ominous for its young star Ferdia Shaw — the grandson of late, legendary actor Robert Shaw — was the assessment of Charles Koplinski of Illinois Times: "Artemis Fowl," he wrote, "is the sort of movie that kills careers."

The erotic thriller 365 Days made an immediate impact when it was released to Netflix, near-instantly appearing on the streamer's Top Ten list. This likely had a great deal to do with all of the publicity given to the movie's lengthy, borderline explicit sex scenes. It certainly wasn't because the film itself was any good. The story of a woman who falls in love with her kidnapper over the course of a year was slammed by critics up one side and down the other for its perceived glamorization of Stockholm Syndrome, becoming one of those rare films to notch a "perfect" 0 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes.

"[365 Days] romanticizes an extremely toxic relationship, which is never okay," wrote Taylor Andrews of Cosmopolitan. "For a movie that has multiple young viewers, it's extremely harmful to show... sex scenes without highlighting the proper precautions to ensure a safe, healthy, and consensual environment in the bedroom... I'd encourage Netflix to publish a disclaimer to this movie as for 'what not to do in a healthy relationship.'"

It wasn't just the icky premise critics objected to. "It's the kind of movie you fast forward to get to all the good parts, only to realize that there are no good parts," wrote Pajiba's Dustin Rowles. "It's a profoundly disturbing premise, but the movie itself... is excruciatingly tedious, toxic as hell, and laughably acted." Critics universally agreed, as summed up most succinctly by Kevin Maher of The Times: "Up there with the disappearance of Amelia Earhart and contents of Area 51 is the mystery of why this execrable piece of Polish soft porn is the No. 1 film on Netflix... there haven't been line readings this poor since the third act of The Room."

The indie mystery Darkness Falls has an interesting enough setup: police detective Jeff Anderson (Shawn Ashmore, best known as Iceman in the X-Men film series) comes to suspect that his wife's suicide was, in fact, murder. Digging for answers, he finds himself on the trail of a father-and-son serial killer team driven by their hatred of women — and it's here, in its attempt to be something more than a cliché-ridden thriller, that the movie falls flat.

Sheila O'Malley of RogerEbert.com pointed out the obvious problem with the preachy aspirations of Darkness Falls in her blistering one-star review. "The evil duo's target is successful women, women who have risen above sexism and made it to the highest echelons of their chosen careers," she wrote. "The attempt to create a 'serious' anti-misogyny message through this shallow, improbable material — directed and written by two men, with no complex female characters onscreen — is maybe the worst part of it." 

Rich Cline of Shadows on the Wall was perhaps even more offended by the flick's failure to even generate thrills: "The over-serious tone and lack of subtlety give the film an unintentionally comical slant," he opined. "Wrenching emotional moments become camp... The actors do what they can with the corny dialog, which continually states the blindingly obvious." It was Gary M. Kramer of Cinema 76, though, who really dropped the curtain on Darkness Falls. "The killers' motives, when revealed," he wrote, "are as flimsy as the screenplay of this forgettable film."

The Netflix original flick Desperados seemed to have all of the elements for a successful rom-com. Its talented cast includes the likes of Saturday Night Live alum Nasim Pedrad, New Girl's Lamorne Morris, and Code 8's Robbie Amell; it was helmed by up-and-coming director LP (formerly known as Lauren Palmigiano), who has also been behind episodes of Tacoma FD and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia; and it sports a premise (a woman leaves an embarrassing, drunken message on her new boyfriend's phone, and must go to extreme lengths to erase it) tailor made for hilarious hijinks. Unfortunately, those elements inexplicably came together to form a whole that was more pandering, far-fetched, and borderline offensive than hilarious.

Tomris Laffly of RogerEbert.com was among many critics who called the flick out for its disappointing over-reliance on lowbrow humor. "Yes, this critic always craves stories centered on females in meaty roles being unapologetically messy and problematic," she wrote. "But maybe there is a way to not make it look and feel this much like an insult to women." Detroit News' Adam Graham simply wanted a little more effort from the screenplay, writing that "[Desperados is] a series of painful set pieces and strained life lessons... [the film] can count neither on the flat chemistry of its cast nor any sense of relatability to carry it over its minefield of friendship and relationship clichés." For a film ostensibly celebrating the power of female friendship, though, the most towering insult came from FilmWeek's Amy Nicholson: "This movie," she wrote, "made me embarrassed to be a woman."

The French actress Jean Seberg had a fascinating life and career. Always the iconoclast, she was targeted by the FBI in the '60s for her involvement in the civil rights movement, and the harassment and constant surveillance was likely a factor in her 1979 death, which was ruled a suicide. She deserves the biopic treatment, and you could do a lot worse than hiring Kristen Stewart — a ridiculously underrated actress — to bring her to life onscreen. Unfortunately, even though critics largely agreed that Stewart acquitted herself very well in the Amazon original film Seberg, the filmmakers failed to dive deep enough into their subject, producing a frustratingly shallow work.

"There's about one-third of a good movie in Seberg," wrote Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times. "The increasingly versatile and admirably risk-taking Stewart continues to turn in strong performances... and she does fine and fierce work here once again, even when the screenplay puts her in some ludicrous circumstances." ReelViews' James Berardinelli agreed, writing, "The chief problem with Seberg, as is often the case with biopics, is that the filmmakers never really find the character underlying the historical figure... The movie taps into some fascinating issues, such as the power of a movie star for propaganda, but never explores them satisfactorily." 

Stewart's performance was virtually all that the majority of critics found to recommend about Seberg. Wrote Phillip Martin of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, "There is a reason to see Seberg — it's a nervous and tender performance from Kristen Stewart that's probably the best thing anyone's done for Seberg since [famed French director Jean] Luc-Godard made her immortal. I just wish it had been in a better film."

Everyone loves Jenny Slate; the comedian has become a regular presence on screens large and small in the last decade or so, with appearances in features like Venom and Hotel Artemis and on shows like Lady Dynamite and her own excellent Netflix standup special, Stage Fright. The indie drama The Sunlit Night, which follows a young painter as she finds unlikely love while on a trip to the Arctic Circle, seems tailor-made for her brand of quirk, and it surrounds her with a great supporting cast including the likes of Alex Sharp, Zack Galifianakis, and Gillian Anderson. Unfortunately, most critics found the film to be so insubstantial that it threatened to float right off the screen.

"This movie about artistic inspiration is meandering and slight," wrote Teo Bugbee of the New York Times. "It eschews philosophical observations about art for quick, somewhat hacky references... Despite Slate's capable performance, the movie is only postcard-friendly, not an artistic awakening." Besides praise for Slate, the flick's narrative formlessness was a strong thread running through its notices. "Slate is characteristically delightful but she can only do so much with the material," wrote Arizona Republic's Shaena Montanari. "The plot meanders on a road to nowhere. You'll probably be more interested in looking up Norwegian vacations online after (or during) the movie than pondering its ending." The movie's ability to bore while still featuring great performances and looking fantastic seemed to bring out the loquaciousness in most critics — but not all. Deadpanned Kristy Puchco of Crooked Marquee, "The Sunlit Night is a ponderous, pretentious dud."

Netflix original The Wrong Missy was a significant hit for the streamer, and we can totally get behind both its star Lauren Lapkus and the whole "raunchy rom-com" aesthetic in general. Heck, we also love David Spade, who co-stars here as a guy who tries to invite his crush, Missy, to come with him on a corporate retreat, only to find he's been texting... well, it's right there in the title. The majority of critics agreed, though, that despite Lapkus' game performance, The Wrong Missy bore all of the wrong signs that it was produced through Adam Sandler's Happy Madison imprint — those signs being lazy plotting, half-baked gags, and ham-fisted direction from Father of the Year helmer Tyler Spindel.

Spade, seemingly having forgotten how to play a straight man, was singled out early and often for his lack of enthusiasm. "One can't shake the impression that Spade has been handed [Sandler's] unwanted leftovers," wrote AV Club's Vishnevetsky. "It doesn't help that he has the screen presence of an unenthused real estate agent." Jonathan Wilson of Ready Steady Cut likewise slammed Spade's work, but was equally unimpressed with his co-star: "[In] The Wrong Missy, Lauren Lapkus pulls off what might be 2020's most impressive cinematic feat: She's somehow more annoying than David Spade," he wrote. "No right-minded agent would present a client with a script as diabolical as [this] one... except apparently whoever mismanages Lapkus's career." 

Of course, it's easy to argue that viewers knew what they were signing up for, and for anyone who was disappointed in the flick, David Bradley of Adelaide Review had a few questions. "What did you expect?" he wrote. "Originality? Wit? Narrative sense? Emotional resonance? Complex roles for women that reflect progressive contemporary feminist attitudes? Come on! This is a Happy Madison movie."

The New Mutants was supposed to be a lot of things: released in 2018, part of an ongoing franchise, and a watchable picture, to name a few. Unfortunately, the oft-delayed, trouble-plagued flick — the last in the Fox-produced X-Men series — ended up fitting none of those criteria, with even its positive notices conceding that it's a jumbled mess that could have used a big injection of personality.

Movie Nation's Roger Moore dismissed The New Mutants as a "disastrously dull pilot to a TV series only comic book diehards would watch," referring to the film's young cast of institutionalized mutants as "Anya Taylor-Joy and a bunch of young players who can't get away from her shadow, or out of their own way." Sandra Hall of the Sydney Morning Herald called out the movie's curious flatness, writing, "The thrills are few despite the grimness of the decor, the crowd of lurid creatures jostling for your attention and the mystery surrounding the identity of the corporation running the place... it adds up to an old-fashioned B-picture bereft of the rousing jolt of bad taste that gave the genre its energy." 

It's unfortunate that The New Mutants took such a long, bumpy road to the screen only to be greeted with all the enthusiasm of a root canal, but here we are. Perhaps the biggest bomb lobbed at the flick came courtesy of The Times' Ed Potton, who wrote, "You could call it One Flew Over the Mutant's Nest if it had an ounce of wit or personality."

The Vanished is a thriller stocked with stars who have seen better days; its main cast includes Thomas Jane, Anne Heche, and Jason Patric, and they all give off the distinct vibe that all things considered, they'd rather be getting a car wash. Critics called out the flick's acting, writing, and direction, sparing only the caterer — but most crucially, The Vanished is a film that relies solely on a third-act twist that nearly every observer found to be completely absurd.

Jane and Heche star as a couple whose daughter disappears on a camping trip, but director Peter Facinelli (also an actor who you may have recently caught as Maxwell Lord on Supergirl) fails to wring convincingly distressed performances from them en route to that twist. "Facinelli has the actors playing for the big reveal, not for the plot as we see it," wrote critic Mark Dujsik on his website. "The Vanished is wildly and weirdly incompetent, featuring one miscalculation after another, after another, and after another. It's an embarrassment of a movie." 

Carla Hay of Culture Mix concurred, writing, "It's as if... Facinelli made the assumption that viewers wouldn't notice certain glaring omissions from the story that were deliberately left out in order for the plot twist to look like it should be compatible with the rest of the movie. The plot twist is meant to elevate the story, but it just ends up sinking the movie, which was already drowning in a swamp of implausibility." Virtually every review blew a big raspberry at that confounded twist, but none were more succinct than that penned by Austin Chronicle's Richard Whittaker. "The Vanished," he wrote, "should live up to its name."

The thriller The Silencing was seen by critics more as a missed opportunity than a straight-up misfire. Plenty of praise could be found for its cinematography and its cast, which included Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Game of Thrones) as an alcoholic hunter tracking a serial killer who may be responsible for the disappearance of his daughter, and Annabelle Wallis (Peaky Blinders) as the small-town sheriff who comes into conflict with him. Unfortunately, the flick had terminal problems at the screenplay stage, thanks to a lackluster effort by first-time feature scribe Micah Ranum.

"[Coster-Waldau] goes the extra mile in The Silencing... which is more than you can say for the pedestrian work of director Robin Pront and screenwriter Micah Ranum," wrote Rolling Stone's Peter Travers. "[The leads] do their best to promote a rooting interest in characters the script never bothers to develop... You can see this kind of slow-burn thriller done much better in movies like Wind River and shows like HBO's True Detective." Glenn Kenny of RogerEbert.com agreed, writing, "You start wondering if this movie's going to put ANYTHING new on the table... Pront shoots and stages all this stuff with slick facility... but one does feel one's seen all this before." Cinemalogue's Todd Jorgenson nailed the general consensus pretty nicely: "Far-fetched contrivances overshadow much of the suspense in this formulaic thriller," he wrote, "[but it] at least features some pleasant forest scenery."

The dopey actioner Money Plane is not, believe it or not, a belated sequel to the 1995 Wesley Snipes flick Money Train, which wasn't exactly a fantastic film itself. Perhaps the filmmakers were somehow hoping to cash in on name recognition by titling their film similarly to a little-remembered, quarter-century old movie; that would make about as much sense as casting Frasier star Kelsey Grammer as a sinister crime boss called "The Rumble," which they did. Money Plane also snared Thomas Jane (who has not had a good year), Denise Richards, and Joey Lawrence — yes, that Joey Lawrence — for its ludicrous tale of a heist involving a flying high-stakes casino.

Nick Schager of The Daily Beast simply couldn't wrap his head around the flick's premise. "To consider the Money Plane for even a second is to realize not only the logistical ease with which such an operation could be thwarted but the bedrock inanity of setting it up in the first place," he wrote. "The fact that the criminals responsible for the Money Plane couldn't come up with a better moniker for their aerial gambling lair is emblematic of the business' absurdity, as well as the film's lack of imagination." 

Peter Sobczyinski of eFilm Critic was simply disappointed that Money Plane didn't lean into that absurdity. "Look, I do not object to the fact that Money Plane is trying to be the most self-consciously dopey movie of recent memory," we wrote. "What I object to is that the whole thing is too stupid and lazy to accomplish even that not-exactly-lofty goal." Common Sense Media's Jeffrey Anderson really had the flick's number, though, writing, "It's almost a guilty pleasure, but is ultimately too ridiculous and awful to qualify."

Ghosts of War is a period supernatural horror flick in which a band of American soldiers during the dog days of World War II encounter mysterious, creepy goings-on while occupying a Nazi fortress in the French countryside. If this sounds a bit familiar, it might be because the premise is quite a bit similar to 2018's Overlord — but while that flick was lauded as a goofy, gory good time, Ghosts of War was smacked down for biting off more than it could chew, despite the efforts of a solid cast which included Titans' Brenton Thwaites and Luke Cage's Theo Rossi.

More than a few critics felt that the flick, which might have settled for simply being a solid B-picture, tried too hard to add layers of thematic relevance. "When Ghosts of War finally pulls back the curtain on its preposterous Black Mirror twist, it confirms that [director Eric] Bress' feature is no mere work of tedious, cross-genre hackery," wrote Andrew Wyatt of Cinema St. Louis. "It's a very stupid film with some very questionable intentions [regarding] the topics of guilt, trauma, and American neo-imperialism." Angie Han of FilmWeek agreed, saying during the site's AirTalk podcast, "[Ghosts of War] thinks it's imparting some profound lesson, but I walked away from it only 50 percent sure of what it was trying to say. The only satisfaction I felt at the end was 'Thank God it's over.'" 

While a handful of critics appreciated the late-film twist, most agreed with the opinion of The Only Critic's Nate Adams, who wrote, "Maybe one day in the future, you'll be strolling through the boroughs of late night cable or streaming and come across Ghosts of War and think maybe it's worth the watch. I cannot stress enough that it is not."

Nobody ever accused the self-help book The Secret (itself an adaptation of an Australian documentary film) of being ripe for a rom-com adaptation, but that didn't prevent veteran genre director Andy Tennant (Sweet Home Alabama) from giving it a shot with The Secret: Dare to Dream. Assembling a surprisingly appealing cast which includes Katie Holmes, Jerry O' Connell, and Josh Lucas, Tennant shoehorned the book's message of... well, achieving your heart's desires by wishing really hard into a maudlin romance that wouldn't have worked even absent its connection to its questionable source material.

"The Secret: Dare to Dream is a gauze-covered, soft-peddled, vaguely spiritual tale of cosmic happenstance," wrote Adam Graham of Detroit News in what amounts to a critical napalming. "[The film] is innocent and innocuous enough to make Nicholas Sparks look like David Lynch." Jade Budowski of Decider acknowledged the excellent casting while likewise destroying the movie: "For a movie intended to be inspiring, there is so little about this that feels genuinely uplifting that it's almost comical," she wrote. "The cast does their best with what they're given, but that isn't very much. Holmes and Lucas have little to no chemistry, and every dramatic development feels totally unearned." 

Christy Lemire of RogerEbert.com at least found a silver lining in all of this hokum: "We could all use a little hope these days," she wrote. "But you won't derive much inspiration from The Secret: Dare to Dream besides some unintentional laughter to briefly brighten your day."

Melissa McCarthy and her husband and co-writer, Ben Falcone, have brought a number of hilarious comedies with a through line of warmth to the big screen, including Tammy, The Boss, and Life of the Party. In 2020, they teamed up again for the HBO Max high-concept sci-fi comedy Superintelligence. It's not nearly as funny as their other works, and the difference is that McCarthy doesn't play a brash, crude, or totally over the top character with a number of impressive feats of physical comedy. Instead, she plays a normal person, a former tech executive turned full-time charity volunteer named Carol who is still in love with her ex-boyfriend George (Bobby Cannavale). 

She's just a sad, vulnerable person, which doesn't make for a very fun Melissa McCarthy movie, nor does it add much support to the film's premise: an AI becomes sentient, and, with the voice of James Corden, decides to destroy the world if it can't persuade Carol to get back together with George. It's something about computers learning the true nature of humanity, and selflessness — the moral is a little unclear and half-baked, and Superintelligence is a missed opportunity to say anything about the dangers of encroaching technology. (Far from it — the film is full of product placement from tech companies made out to look like heroes.)

"If nothing else," writes Rob Hunter of Film School Rejects, "it takes real guts to unironically name your fairly stupid comedy Superintelligence."

A big-budget historical action comedy starring two of the biggest movie stars on the planet should have been a can't-miss, surefire blockbuster. Unfortunately for all those involved with Iron Mask, the film's two stars are Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jackie Chan, and it was released in 2020, years after both were big box office draws and their style of macho, violent action movie faded in popularity and relevance. Fortunately, and bafflingly, they're barely even part of Iron Mask, which is actually a sequel to a Russian movie called Viy (or The Forbidden Empire) — like its predecessor, the main character is actually an English explorer named Jonathan Green (Jason Flemyng), who is seen on a mission to China with prisoner Cheng Lan as his assistant, who is actually a royal with power over an ancient dragon. Meanwhile, back in England, Cheng Len's father, the Master (Chan), is imprisoned in the Tower of London, looked after by warden James Hook (Schwarzenegger), and they have a low-energy fight scene together. Deborah Ross of The Spectator says that Iron Mask is "the sort of the film that, in fact, makes the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise look like a series of elegant, coherent masterworks."

There are a few things about The War with Grandpa that are more than a little unsettling. The film suggests that family bonds are extremely fragile and liable to collapse under the weight of a petty squabble which makes it hard for the audience to root for anyone — tween Peter has to give up his bedroom in favor of the attic when his supposedly beloved grandfather moves in after the death of his wife. Peter (Oakes Fegley) is so entitled that he completely lacks any sympathy or empathy whatsoever for Grandpa Ed, and decides to start a prank war with the old guy, despite the fact that he's a grieving, increasingly frail widower simply because he's sleeping in a slightly nicer place. Grandpa Ed is a veteran and not one to back down, and he escalates the prank war, which isn't so funny because the tables have now turned so that a sad elderly man is conspiring against a child. The other unlikeable thing about The War with Grandpa is that Robert De Niro plays Grandpa Ed — which should be beneath his stature as one of America's greatest living actors. Peter Travers of Good Morning America calls The War with Grandpa "barely passable piffle," but Bilge Ebiri of New York says that at least the movie "seems to vanish from the mind even as you're watching it."

The career trajectory of Guy Pearce is pretty inexplicable. He was an exciting and idiosyncratic actor when he first emerged in indies like The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, the neo-noir classic L.A. Confidential, and Christopher Nolan's mind-bending Memento. In 2020, he starred in Disturbing the Peace, a generic and forgettable modern-day Western about a taciturn Texas Ranger who, after a tragic accidental death, winds up the lawman in a sleepy small town forced to do battle with a group of bikers who are so bad that it's unintentionally hilarious. Pearce isn't nearly grizzled enough to play the suitably Western-named character of Jim Dillon, but then he just goes through the motions of being the strong and silent type anyway, the outcome of Disturbing the Peace never in doubt. Todd Jorgenson of Cinemalogue calls the film "a tedious and predictable series of Wild West-style conformations that never generates much consistent suspense within its confined setting."

The COVID-19 pandemic led to some monumental changes in the film industry, shutting down productions and delaying the theatrical runs of many potential blockbusters for a year or more. And then there's Songbird, a movie made during the COVID-19 pandemic that's also inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic. Obviously put together very quickly, Songbird is a haphazardly produced movie that might make viewers proclaim "too soon" or maybe "no thanks," what with it trying to turn a still-raging disease that's killed millions into entertainment. 

Not quite palatable for viewers stuck in quarantine or under lockdown orders, Songbird takes place in the year 2024, at which point life has turned into a hopeless slog in the face of COVID-19 mutating into COVID-23, the original pandemic now four years old. Temperature checks on smartphones are legally required, and those who test positive are forced into concentration camps called "Q-Zones." A motorcycle courier and immune virus survivor named Nico (K.J. Apa, Archie on TV's Riverdale) is desperate to save his true love Sara (Sofia Carson) from certain death in one of those camps. "Even if one sets aside all potential moral arguments about the very existence of Songbird, it's still just really bad," writes Brian Tellerico of RogerEbert.com. Rachel West of That Shelf posits that Songbird is "one of the most misguided" films of 2020.