Terrible Movies Stranger Things Actors Hope Fans Forget About

With the fifth and final season of "Stranger Things" on its way, Netflix's mega-hit has almost reached its conclusion. We've watched the "Stranger Things" kids grow up into teenagers and seen the teens turn to full-fledged adults. Actors like Joe Keery and Millie Bobby Brown (to only name a couple) have turned the show's success into Hollywood careers.

Now that we've seen so much of the "Stranger Things" cast elsewhere, we can't lie and say they've all chosen the best projects every time. Many of the young adult actors have already been in some critically panned movies. Plus, let's not forget about the awesome adults that lead the show. Winona Ryder and David Harbour are great as Joyce and Hopper respectively, but in their long and storied careers they've been in their fair share of stinkers. Between all the "Stranger Things" actors, these are the most terrible movies they probably wish you would just forget already.

The first season of "Stranger Things" originally set up Mike (Finn Wolfhard) as its protagonist. In the recent seasons, though, Wolfhard's character has done a lot of sitting on the sidelines. Thankfully the teenage actor is doing plenty of work elsewhere, in blockbusters such as "Ghostbusters: Afterlife." And while the new "Ghostbusters" wasn't universally loved, it's far from the worst project Wolfhard has been involved with. One look at the critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes proves that (dis)honor has to go to "The Goldfinch," a misguided adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize winning Donna Tartt novel.

The film stars Ansel Elgort, Nicole Kidman, Jeffrey Wright, and Sarah Paulson in a coming of age story about a boy, Theo Decker, who loses his mother in a museum bombing. Theo (Oakes Fergley/Elgort) escapes with the painting The Goldfinch, and both of these significant moments from the tragedy shape his life forever. Wolfhard plays the young version of Theo's friend Boris, a young wealthy Ukrainian boy. If a teenage Canadian actor putting on an Eastern European accent while trying to play an extremely serious role sounds like a formula for disaster to you, well, you'd be correct.

You may not even remember that David Harbour was in the universally panned "Suicide Squad," and we don't blame you. Frankly, there's not much worth remembering at all about the movie. This outing that birthed Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn is a messy film full of characters that get half-introduced, a nonsense plot, and some generally questionable filmmaking. On top of all that, Jared Leto's Joker made the man an edgelord meme long before "Morbius" came out.

The man famous for being everyone's favorite cop dad on "Stranger Things" had a small role in the 2016 DC flop. Harbour played Dexter Tolliver, a National Security Advisor for the U.S. President. He acts as a right hand man to Amanda Waller and helps her convince the government to go through with the Task Force X (aka Suicide Squad) project. Technically inspired by a comic character who eventually betrayed Waller, Tolliver was still alive at the end of the 2016 "Suicide Squad." However, since he didn't show up in James Gunn's "The Suicide Squad," it's likely Harbour's time in the DC Universe has come to a close.

Okay, it's not their fault that David Harbour's agent (or whoever is booking auditions for the actor) can't seem to tell which superhero movies are going to flop. Nobody is claiming to tell the future, but we could have told you that trying to fill Ron Perlman's shoes was going to be a nigh impossible task. Even without having Guillermo del Toro's movies to compare it to, David Harbour's "Hellboy" was a disappointing outing for the character and the actor.

The 2019 "Hellboy" tried and failed to reboot the series into a more adult (read: way more blood and guts) version of the comic. As the half-demon Hellboy, Harbour takes on the recently resurrected Nimue the Blood Queen (Mila Jovovich) in a gore-fueled quest to prevent the apocalypse. Everything that was magical about the characters and visuals of Del Toro's "Hellboy" is absent in Neil Marshall's 2019 version. The nuance and political allegory of 2004's "Hellboy" is tossed aside for an over-the-top intensity that doesn't quite work.

The debut season of "Stranger Things" was a huge comeback moment for Winona Ryder. To understand what exactly the actress was coming back from, you'll have to see the 2002 comedy "Mr. Deeds." Actually, scratch that — please don't see it. One of the worst movies of Ryder's career, "Mr. Deeds" caused the talented actress to retire from acting for nearly a decade.

Coming off the height of her career in the '90s, Ryder starred alongside Adam Sandler in this buffoonish remake of Frank Capra's classic "Mr. Deeds Goes To Town." The reviled comedy follows Sandler as Mr. Deeds, a naïve young man who suddenly comes into a great inheritance. This remake takes all the nuances of the original comedy and boils it down to lazy jokes and tantrums. Oh, and Ryder's character is literally named Babe Bennet. A conniving journalist who lies to Deeds to get a story, it's beyond inevitable that the two end up falling in love — but only after the woman sees the error of her ways. Ugh.

Sean Astin's career has been an absolute roller coaster, to say the least. In the years between "Lord of the Rings" and "Stranger Things," Astin was no stranger to acting in terrible movies. The strangest of these would have to be "Cabin Fever: Patient Zero," a cheesy horror threequel that you wouldn't expect to see any big name actors in. And yet, there Sean Astin was.

A prequel to Eli Roth's "Cabin Fever," this piece of low budget shlock stars Astin as Porter, a quarantined patient who has been infected with a flesh-eating virus. Porter is "Patient Zero," as it were. From the start, you know exactly how this one is going to end, but to get there, you have to endure 90 minutes of choppy dialogue and an unnecessary amount of visceral gore. Brian Tellerico of RogerEbert.com wrote, "The first act of 'Cabin Fever: Patient Zero' is so defiantly stupid that I imagine most who rent it or struggle through it in a theater won't care that there's actually some material in the final act that clicks." If you enjoy dark, cynical horror we recommend you stick to the Roth original. Watching "Patient Zero" is asking for disappointment.

Some critics might have given Ang Lee a pass on "Hulk" based on the merits of the director's previous work, but fans weren't as foolhardy (see the dichotomy on Rotten Tomatoes). Eric Bana played Bruce Banner in this superhero effort co-starring Jennifer Connelly, Sam Elliot, and Nick Nolte. Ultimately, "Hulk" takes too many liberties with the character and doesn't go anywhere with the themes it admittedly at least touches on. Lee's efforts to make the movie a more personal character-driven journey compared to its contemporaries ended up weighing the action of the movie down.

Cara Buono, known as Mike and Nancy's mother on "Stranger Things," plays another mother in "Hulk." The core of 2003's "Hulk" focuses on Bruce's origin, which this time goes all the way back to his parents. Buono plays Edith Banner in flashbacks that show how she died saving a young Bruce from his father's (Nolte) wrath. Her voice is heard throughout the film as Bruce taps into his true Hulk and uncovers the repressed memories of his past.

If you have already forgotten that they released a "Power Rangers" movie a few years back, that's understandable. The disappointing reboot of the "Power Rangers" franchise was a box office bomb that lacked any heart or ambition. Its most ambitious choice was casting relatively unknown actors as the rangers, but ultimately this was part of its failure. Even Elizabeth Banks as Rita Repulsa and Bryan Cranston as Zordon couldn't get butts in seats. Before Dacre Montgomery joined "Stranger Things" Season 3 as Billy Hargrove, Max's bully of a brother who eventually goes full evil, he was this movie's Red Ranger.

The movie begins in the small town of Angel Grove with high school student Jason Scott (Montgomery) meeting the friends that will eventually become his fellow Power Rangers. There are some attempts at LGBTQ and neurodivergent representation, but they feel like pandering more than important elements of the characters. And while Montgomery does a fine job as Jason Scott, "Power Rangers" never quite hits the right tone that the more fun parts of the franchise are known for.