5 Worst Western Movies Of All Time, According To Letterboxd Users

Giddy on up, y'all, it's time to explore the Western movie genre. Thanks to early landmark movies like "The Great Train Robbery," the Western is forever intertwined into the very DNA of motion pictures. The 55 best Western movies of all time have further amplified the bond between Western storytelling and cinema. Whether one is thinking about classical Westerns that littered movie theaters in the '30s and '40s or grimier, postmodern takes on the genre that began cropping up in the late 20th century, Western movies are impossible to evade. Just because this genre is omnipresent in cinematic storytelling, though, doesn't mean it's necessarily only providing masterpieces to moviegoers.

Anyone whose had the misfortune of sitting through titles like "Cowboys & Aliens" or "A Million Ways to Die in the West" knows that the Western can house subpar artistry, just like any other genre. For proof of how low the Western movie can go, just gaze upon the five lowest rated Western films on Letterboxd (ranked below from "highest" average user rating to lowest). These five features are total misfires that inspire the worst kinds of emotions (namely tedium) in audiences. To boot, they abandoned the visual majesty and creativity that often underpinned classic Western movies.

Granted, the individual flaws in these features range heavily depending on what went wrong in each movie. However, all five of these cursed motion pictures reflect the horrible reality that not all Western movies are created equally. They're not worthy of a hearty yee-haw, to say the least.

Recently, a crowdfunding effort has been initiated from the folks behind "Primitive War" to get a TV series entitled "Dinosaurs of the Old West" off the ground. If this collision of gunslingers and prehistoric beasts gets realized, it wouldn't be the first time dinosaurs and cowboys shared the screen together. In 2015, director Ari Novak delivered the movie "Cowboys vs. Dinosaurs." This project concerned unearthed dinosaurs threatening to wipe out a Western town. The proceedings also involved Eric Roberts as a character named Trent Walker, because of course the "Stalked by My Doctor" franchise veteran would be involved in "Cowboys vs. Dinosaurs."

Hearing the title of this project, one's imagination reels conjuring up visions of pterodactyl's screeching at gun-toting Western archetypes played by modern equivalents to Walter Brennan. Unfortunately, "Cowboys vs. Dinosaurs" was a mid-2010s cheapie B-movie that had more in common with "Atlantic Rim" than anything else. This film's 1.9 average user rating on Letterboxd was informed by a deluge of negative reviews lambasting the lifeless performances and equally dreary pacing. A movie titled "Cowboys vs. Dinosaurs" shouldn't inspire so many Letterboxd reviews complaining about tediousness.

Granted, a few of these takedowns did acknowledge fun experiences laughing at "Cowboys vs. Dinosaurs" in group watch settings. More than anything else, though, "Cowboys vs. Dinosaurs" produced frustrated Letterboxd reviews lamenting how such a fun premise had gone to waste through such tepid execution. There's nowhere to go but up with "Dinosaurs of the Old West."

Did you like when Wesley Snipes fought vampires in the "Blade" movies? For those moviegoers, 2012's "Gallowwalkers" offers up the sight of Snipes contending with another famous movie monster: zombies. Unfortunately, this Andrew Goth directorial effort was a far cry from the 50 best zombie movies of all time. This product saw Snipes playing Aman, an Old West gunman who has the unfortunate curse of turning anyone he kills into zombies. From there, the plot gets more than a tad incoherent. "Gallowwalkers" was shooting while Wesley Snipes was having trouble with the IRS. These legal issues prolonged filming and left the film scrambling to work around the actor's hectic schedule.

Inevitably, the negative reviews informing the 1.9 average Letterboxd user rating for "Gallowwalkers" bring up how the film feels cobbled together. Unfortunately, all the behind the scenes turmoil couldn't even produce a transfixing trainwreck. Most of the Letterboxd "Gallowwalkers" bemoan how boring the feature is, a problem that shouldn't remotely exist in a production where Wesley Snipes contends with zombies. Other reviewers expressed befuddlement over how impenetrable the plot was as well as how the conceptually goofy premise didn't result in anything entertaining.

When ranking every Wesley Snipes movie from worst to best, "Gallowwalkers" inevitably crumbles to the bottom of that list. It just doesn't work on any level, whether you approach it as a Wesley Snipes star vehicle, a zombie movie, or just a straightforward Western. Just watch one of the "Blade" installments instead.

At the dawn of the 2020s, Nicolas Cage saddled up for his first Western in "The Old Way." It's insane how Cage hadn't encountered this genre (beyond neo-Westerns like the terrific "Red Rock West") in his lengthy career, but he'd quickly return to it a few years later with "Gunslingers," which hailed from writer-director Brian Skiba. This Kentucky-set yarn focused on Thomas Keller (Stephen Dorff), whose past catches up to him while he tries settling down in the town of Redemption. Cage is also around in this production as the character Ben, while Heather Graham, Joshua Kent Jackson, Tzi Ma, and Scarlet Rose Stallone make up the supporting cast.

On its Letterboxd page, "Gunslingers" has both a 1.8 average rating and a bunch of reviews noting that they'd only absorbed this movie as part of daunting quests to consume as much of Nicolas Cage's filmography as possible. While some of the reviews commending Cage for committing to a distinctively gravelly voice for "Gunslingers," every other aspect of the feature was torn to shreds in its Letterboxd responses. Especially reviled "Gunslingers" elements included its hideous looking generative AI shots, the repellently drab filmmaking, and largely wooden performances seemingly designed in a lab to send audiences into a snooze.

If it weren't for Cage's work, the "Gunslingers" Letterboxd reviews would be nothing but contempt. It's great that this "Moonstruck" leading man is getting to explore Westerns more, but surely there's better entries in the genre to appear in.

Long before Josh Brolin anchored multiple hit comic book movies, like "Avengers: Infinity War" and "Deadpool 2," his biggest comic book movie excursion was a doomed voyage to the Old West. In 2010, Brolin played the titular lead of "Jonah Hex," with major actors like Megan Fox, John Malkovich, Michael Shannon, Will Arnett, Lance Reddick, and Michael Fassbender also being along for the tormented ride. Hailing from director Jimmy Hayward, the rootin'-tootin' "Jonah Hex" has constantly been chastised by Brolin as being a terrible movie in retrospective interviews. His disdain for the production is fervently shared by many Letterboxd reviewers.

On this site, "Jonah Hex" has a rating of just 1.8, a dire sentiment backed up by a bunch of Letterboxd reviews expressing astonishment over how bad this project is. "The kind of movie john ford would have made if mountain dew code red had been around back then," user video lover remarks in their review. Other write-ups getting into specifics of what went wrong here tend to emphasize "Jonah Hex" being a grueling slog to sit through. Despite all the actors and Western mayhem assembled, the jumbled storytelling and dreary atmosphere ensured there was no fun to be had with "Jonah Hex."

A total disaster, especially in its lighting and chopped-up screenplay, "Jonah Hex" is a Western nobody's stampeding to watch. Surely Josh Brolin's feelings will keep prospective viewers away if those Letterboxd reviews don't do the trick.

Infamous director Uwe Boll is one of those filmmakers who entire filmography is rotten. Responsible for some of the worst video game adaptations ever, Boll's career spans from misguided comedies to 2020s disasters like "Citizen Vigilante" as incompetently produced as they are aesthetically rancid. Watching Uwe Boll movies doesn't just expose viewers to poor filmmaking. It's like entering a topsy-turvy cinematic world where shoddy artistry rules over everything. How fitting that Boll would be the man responsible for "BloodRayne II: Deliverance," the lowest rated Western movie on Letterboxd.

With an abysmal 1.6 average rating on the site, "BloodRayne II: Deliverance" secured Letterboxd reviews covering the usual criticisms befalling Uwe Boll's dismal features. Reviews like one from Justin Decloux bemoaned how the film was filtered through "nauseating handheld" camerawork that was bound to leave viewers reaching for a barf bag more than anything else. Other terrible fixtures of Boll's work, like torturously bad dialogue and acting also abounded in this miserable production. Nothing went right here, least of all delivering fun for those craving a trashy vampire Western mash-up.

"Impossible to watch...A film that is hostile to the idea of pacing, dialogue and shots," Letterboxd user snowboiiii astutely declared. For many directors, making a film that registers like that with viewers would be the nadir of their respective careers. For Uwe Boll, though, making something like "BloodRayne II: Deliverance," the worst reviewed Western on Letterboxd, is par for the course in his wretched cinematic exploits.