By Seth Lukas Hynes
It’s finally happened – after eleven years of running this column, I didn’t see enough bad movies this year.
2024 still had a decent crop of bad movies, but I mercifully avoided most of them, and the majority of films I saw this year were too enjoyable and/or basically competent to fill a top ten worst list.
Before we get to the four worst films of 2024, let me address the year’s worst trend.
Four of the year’s best films (spoilers for next week) used generative AI in some capacity.
Here used extensive age-changing AI effects, Alien: Romulus ghoulishly resurrected Ian Holm using deepfake technology over an animatronic, Late Night With The Devil used AI for three brief title cards (when they could have just hired a freelance artist), and Civil War used AI for some of its posters.
AI is a Pandora’s box of plagiarized content, stripping the soul and effort from real work, robbing jobs from real people and glutinous energy demands.
We must be vigilant that these small but disappointing examples don’t normalize heavier uses of AI with more and more cut corners and less and less humanity.
I have two sad dishonourable mentions: Empire Queen: The Age of Magic and The Beast.
Empire Queen is an earnest, endearing fantasy romp, but proves that camp becomes tedium when it outstays its welcome.
The Beast, an Alphaville-like film about the suppressive effect of fear across multiple lifetimes, isn’t bad at all – it has beautiful art direction, many neat parallels across its three time periods and a tense subplot in 2014 – but I just can’t vibe with these staid, extremely talky sci-fi dramas with barely-there world-building.
4. Megalopolis.
A decades-long passion project by Francis Ford Coppola, Megalopolis is a pompous, disjointed, waffling mess with hardly any tension and a flaky sense of irony.
Not only does Megalopolis have little worthwhile to say about utopia through its awkward dialogue, but shows clear disdain for working-class protest and activism, with its privileged protagonist Cesar Catalini and easily-swayed masses.
3. Borderlands.
With a squandered ensemble cast, awful action and terrible pacing, Borderlands is a pale imitation of the source video games.
2. The Crow.
A morose, redundant reboot with none of the heart of the original.
The action is cool, but not worth slogging through the tepid romantic chemistry and slack pacing.
Alex Proyas, director of the original The Crow, commented that the reboot was a ‘cynical cash-grab’, but there was ‘not much cash to grab, it seems.’
1. Madame Web.
While I liked the unsettling vision effects, and Cassie running the villain over with her car after two visions in which she fails to stop him was genuinely and intentionally funny, Madame Web is flat, dull and incredibly contrived, with an unlikeable heroine and an unmemorable villain.
However, Madame Web is not, contrary to popular belief, worse than Morbius: we’re talking a 4/10 vs a 2/10, but Madame Web at least has some life to the performances and the action is bland and scarce rather than incoherent.
Not having enough bad films to fill a top ten is a very good problem to have, but check back next week for my ten best films of 2024.
This best list was also difficult to fill, but rather because there were so many great movies vying for spots.
