Hall of (Not So) Awesome: The Worst Films of 2008

I'd like to say I did a fairly good job of weeding out the bad movies beforehand, thanks to sites like The A.V. Club and Rotten Tomatoes. But I still found myself subjected to some truly horrible movies this year, and though I was thankfully spared from dreck like The Happening and Witless Protection (the A.V. Club's top two worst movies of the year), I was still able to find five films unworthy of the celluloid they were printed on...

5. Hancock (dir. Peter Berg)

Let me begin by saying that Hancock itself was not a bad movie. Rather, the second half of Hancock is a bad movie. For the first hour, we are presented with a wildly funny, wholly unpredictable look at a reluctant superhero being molded into something more presentable by a struggling PR man. That PR man is played by Jason Bateman, who needs to be in more movies, the opposite of which can be said about Charlize Theron, who is practically invisible throughout the first half, but sadly dominates all of the second, going so far as pushing star Will Smith out of the spotlight. While more of the blame needs to go to the screenwriters for making Theron spout all this unnecessary back story and superhero mythology, claiming that (SPOILER) she and Smith are immortal alien lovers, even though nothing resembling chemistry occurs between the two actors. Bottom line is Hancock was one or two rewrites away from being a solid superhero movie. Close, but no cigar.

4. Saw V (dir. David Hackl)

I got to hand it to the Saw guys; they keep finding imaginative ways for Tobin Bell to reappear in films, even though he was killed off in the third one. His demise came too early, anyway; he always seems to be the only good actor to appear in these new installments. Saw V certainly didn't do anything to change that theory, with Costas Mandylor taking over Bell's role as the new Jigsaw killer, making Shawnee Smith the 2nd Most Boring Person to Replace Jigsaw (there have only been two). It doesn't help that the killer and the protagonist (Scott Peterson) look a lot alike, and are both equally flat actors. The film does a nice job revisiting the haunted house motif that made Saw II tolerable, but it's simply a case of too little, too late. Just reanimate Bell's corpse already!

3. Mamma Mia! The Movie (dir. Phyllida Lloyd)

Yes, I somehow found myself in a screening of Mamma Mia!, which brought the average age of the audience I was with down about 20 years. It was a clear mistake, too, as a film in which Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan walking to the bank to deposit their paycheck for working on this film would've been much more entertaining. They would've retained their dignity, anyway, as Mamma Mia! required most of the cast to flail around like idiots (and not just during the dance numbers), scream incessantly whenever meeting someone, and in the end credits, donning the most misguided costumes ever conceived:


I know I wasn't the target audience for this film, but then again, I wasn't the target audience for Hairspray either and I loved it.

2. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (dir. Steven Spielburg)

I almost feel sorry for including this movie on the list; haven't Spielburg and Lucas suffered enough for their crimes?

No, no they haven't. As long as this film contains CGI prairie dogs, nuclear bomb-proof fridges, sword-wielding Russian psychics, a failed attempt at a sidekick franchise, and the award for Worst Use of John Hurt in a Movie, no punishment will be too harsh for this disaster of a film, not even South Park's scathing attack on Lucas and Spielburg in the episode "The China Problem":



1. Deadgirl (dir. Marcel Sarmiento and Gadi Harel)

If I had seen this film during my time as a programmer for Cucalorus, I would've given it a bad mark and that would've been that. But somehow this film went through our screening process unscathed and was given a prime midnight slot at this year's festival. Anticipation was high and everyone was excited about seeing the next word in American horror movies. Well, we're still waiting for the next word, because all we saw were two guys having their way with a female zombie in an abandoned insane asylum. That's the entire movie.

The guys stumble across the titular character, one of them decides to keep her as his sex toy, and mayhem ensues. At no point does the audience sympathize with anybody (except maybe the poor actress playing the dead girl), and directors Sarmiento and Harel keep creativity and originality to a bare minimum as they bombard the screen with all manner of sex and violence, ultimately signifying nothing. Some of the women in the audience were enjoying themselves, apparently finding some misguided sense of empowerment from scenes in which the dead girl gets her revenge on the male protagonists, but by that point, I simply wasn't up to watching the rest of this bloody train wreck, so I ended up leaving the theater, ashamed that the people I worked for and trusted had decided to screen this horrible excuse for a movie.