The Worst Films of 2023

               Happy new year again! Let’s talk about the utter crap that came out in 2023!

               The ground rules are the same as for the list of my favorite movies of the year. I want to emphasize that a movie must receive a theatrical release in order to qualify for this list. If it wasn’t for this rule, this list would probably be at least half filled with direct-to-streaming garbage. So while Winnie the Pooh: Blood & Honey has (probably deservedly) topped many such lists, I don’t have it here. People making such movies know that they are making the film equivalent of click bait and I don’t care to reward their efforts with recognition.

               Looking back on it, 2023 was a terrible year for horror movies, super heroes, and Jason Statham. Megan and The Flash just barely avoided inclusion on this list and I would have been mighty depressed last January if I knew that Megan wouldn’t even make my bottom ten for the year. Without further ado, here are the ten worst movies of 2023:

10. The Boogeyman: Generic, safe, forgettable PG-13 garbage that embodies everything that has sucked about the horror genre for the last decade. The Stephen King short story only serves as the starting point for, well, not very much. Featuring lame jump scares, a generic villain and forgettable characters, I forgot that The Boogeyman even existed until I went to write this list.

9. Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom: It’s Aquaman vs. fossil fuels in the grand finale of the DC Cinematic Universe! Even for a series of garbage films, this feels like an anticlimactic conclusion. Preachy, lame and inconsequential, this incarnation of Aquaman limps off to sleep with the fishes. Water puns!

8. The Marvels: I have no idea what’s happening in this movie because I didn’t watch the 18 television shows that are required pre-requisites. I do know that the villain is nondescript, the heroes are bland and the rules governing their interactions are vague-to-nonexistent. This feels like an episode of a streaming service show that was stretched to feature length and dumped into theaters.

7. Blue Beetle: I didn’t see Blue Beetle in a theater because my local theater refused to schedule it between 6pm and 10pm, but I did watch it over the holiday break and it really made me shuffle this list around. Blue Beetle feels like crap that would have come out in the mid-90s, like Steel, more than it does a modern piece of crap. Every single thing about this movie is generic; every plot point and every character has been done a hundred times. The humor is godawful, the family-as-superhero-team bullshit is cringe-inducing and I almost got a migraine from George Lopez constantly screaming like a jackass.

6. The Exorcist: Believer: A generic possession movie that mocks one of the greatest horror films of all time, I just hope that Believer is terrible enough to be the final nail in the coffin for the legacy sequel trend. I’ll remember this movie for two lines: Ellen Burstyn saying that she couldn’t be in the room for the original movie’s exorcism because “she’s not a member of the patriarchy” and a character saying “I get it, it takes all of us” when surveying the different kinds of people in the room to perform the exorcism. Good job to the college freshman that wrote the script for this movie. Your insights are delightful and really make me think.

5. Fast X: I really don’t remember this movie except that it is about twelve hours long and has the balls to end on a cliffhanger even though the series abandoned any pretense about story or character a few movies ago. I’ve never liked these movies, but they aren’t even trying anymore. Speaking of not even trying anymore, note that this is Jason Statham’s first appearance on this list.

4. Meg 2: The Trench: Statham is coming in hot with his second entry in a row! The first Meg was a wasted opportunity that took a potentially cool concept for a horror film and turned it into a generic action movie made specifically for China. Somehow, the sequel lowers that bar. Meg 2 has the writing and production values of a SciFi channel movie, which would be fine if I wasn’t watching it in a movie theater.

3. Five Nights at Freddy’s: Coming in to break up the Statham domination, Five Nights at Freddy’s feels like an after-school Halloween special on PBS. I don’t care if I don’t know the lore of the series. That doesn’t change the fact that this is a horror film for skittish infants. This was the most bored that I have been in a theater this year and that is really saying something.

2. The Expendables 4: Meg 2 looks like a SciFi channel movie, sure, but it looks like fucking Avatar compared to The Expendables 4. This film is an absolute embarrassment and I’m still stunned that Lionsgate has so little shame that they actually released this in theaters. This movie looks cheap for a streaming movie, let alone a major release, and everyone involved should hang their head in disgrace, then lift their head and be kicked in the face by Chuck Norris.

1. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem: Didn’t see this one coming, did you? I didn’t review this movie because August is my busiest time of the year and I couldn’t make time for a couple of reviews. But, oh boy, did I want to unload on this fucking thing. I can’t even begin to fathom why this movie is receiving nearly universal acclaim. I hated every single moment of sitting through this goofy, irritating, sanitized horseshit. I grew up with TMNT and I get it, things change. But this movie is the epitome of just how terribly things have changed. Mutant Mayhem is gratingly cutesy and stupid, abandoning any edge that the franchise has ever had in favor of constant terrible jokes and forced messages. I don’t need this to be as violent as the comic books, but this makes the original TMNT movie (from 1990) look like fucking Platoon in comparison. Hell, this makes Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III look edgy and that’s when most fans gave up on the franchise the first time around. I don’t know what movie everyone else watched, but this was the most irritating viewing experience of the year for me.