It’s always a bit unpleasant calling out the worst anything of the year.
For starters, there are people behind these projects that presumably put their heart and soul into them and, I’m sure, produced the best final product they were capable of. For another point, there are undoubtedly folks out there who enjoy some, if not all, of the movies I am about to start calling out here. And I certainly take no joy in besmirching the things that others like. If you find yourself passionately disagreeing with anything I have listed here, just know that I see you, and I respect you for liking what you like! This isn’t an attack; it’s just my preferences.
But still: there were some bad movies this year. And most notably, there were some DISAPPOINTING movies this year! Two of the movies on this list were in my top most anticipated movies of the year before 2025 started, and I’m crestfallen that those two pictures find themselves on this list. And they need to know what they’ve done!
Before we start, let’s set one standard for the list straight: I’m only counting movies that meet one of two qualifications: they had a theatrical window, or they were released on a major streaming service and star a big name, well-known actor or two. So are these ten movies the straight ten worst flicks I watched in 2025? They are not. But I just can’t bring myself to call out lower budget independent films that can’t compete on a financial or professional level with “the big boys”. So, for example, the worst movie I saw all year was a Shudder presentation called Wake. But no one expected that to be on the level of some of these others, so why denigrate it?
I mean… I guess I kind of just did. Oops.
Anyway, let’s get right into it here and start off with the best of the worst…
10. A Working Man
The problem with A Working Man is in just how boring it is. A Jason Statham action joint should at least be enjoyable, even if it’s poorly made. But unfortunately, David Ayers’ newest collaboration with Statham is far too long and not particularly fun. The action set pieces are just so bland, and nothing about the movie is memorable. I should be sitting here and thinking “Well, at least there was the time where Statham [verb]ed that one bad guy!”. But… nope. Nothing.
The movie also has the audacity to cast Michael Pena and David Harbour, but it then does nothing with them. They are placed in absolutely thankless nothing roles, and they are off-screen before you ever have a chance to appreciate them. If you are going to cast noteworthy actors, give them something to do and let them be impressive and lift up your picture.
After the relative joy that was The Bee Keeper, I think we all expected at least SOMETHING out of A Working Man. Just a dumb, action-packed romp. But unfortunately, it couldn’t even deliver that much.
9. The Woman In The Yard
Stop me if you have heard this one before, but in The Woman In The Yard, the monster haunting the terrorized family is actually a metaphor for grief and depression!
I’m sorry… it’s just SUCH a tired concept in horror. It’s been done repeatedly in the last decade, and if I never see this allegory again, I’ll be perfectly fine.
Adding onto the tedious trope, you have some seriously unlikable characters in the mom and her son Taylor. They were awful to each other, and they were awful in general. If the woman in their yard had killed either one of them, I’d have been fine with it, frankly.
The only horror movies that get away with having such terrible characters are Slashers because you can end up cheering for Jason or Chucky or Art to off them in memorable ways. In this movie, where we should sympathize with a grieving family; I don’t want to be hating them instead.
Yeah, this one was just kind of a mess all over the place.
8. Flight Risk
Have you ever seen a movie where the actors can’t seem to agree on what kind of film they are making? Well if you haven’t, have I got the film for you!
I’m genuinely not sure if this is an example of the performers going rogue or a director who just had no idea how to make this a congruent picture, but you’ve got Michelle Dockery treating the movie as drama piece, Mark Wahlberg acting as though he is in a scary thriller, and Topher Grace seeming to believe he has found his way into a comedy. It results in tonal whiplash every time someone opens his or her mouth.
Now whether all of that is on them or on director Mel Gibson, I can’t say. But it’s wildly distracting when you are trying to get into a movie.
There is also a mid-flick whodunnit that is established to add in a little extra tension to the proceedings. Which is good! But the answer is resolved before you get to care too much about it. That one is squarely on the shoulders of the screenwriters, though, so at least I know where to assign the blame.
The basics of it all is that Flight Risk is just a mess on every level.
7. Fear Street: Prom Queen
Before we get into the next two entries–the pair or films that were among my most anticipated movies of 2025–let’s talk about a picture that honestly should have been more sought after by me.
I adored Netflix’s initial Fear Street trilogy from a few years ago, and I thought the every week release schedule for a trilogy was a lot of fun. And aside from that, the outings were well-told and pretty thrilling. So even though Fear Street: Prom Queen didn’t have a release gimmick, it still had a pedigree that should have lead to it being a brutal and fun horror offering.
Instead, we got a generic movie with rotten acting all over it. The performances are extremely weak here from top to bottom. The movie is full of unknowns, and I’d love to see them all come out of this one having honed their craft and gotten better in their next roles, but they aren’t particularly good here. And the plot itself is just a standard 1980’s high school prom themed horror story. There’s really no great shocks or turns you won’t see coming.
Hopefully this doesn’t sour Netflix on producing more of these Fear Street films, but this was a rough one.
6. Until Dawn
Well, here we are at what I declared my most anticipated horror movie of 2025. I really should have known better. Without bringing in the cast of actors who played the characters from the popular video game, what was I expecting to happen?
Well what I DIDN’T expect was that this flick would completely crap on the concept of the game itself. Any resemblance to the video game this is named after from this movie is purely coincidental. The plot is different. The nemeses are different. The characters are different. It’s an entirely different story! Why even call this movie “Until Dawn“? You could have called this anything in the world and it wouldn’t have infuriated an entire fanbase by doing so. It’s a modern day Halloween III: Season Of The Witch.
Except whereas Season Of The Witch had enough behind it to become a cult classic decades later, that is unlikely to happen to Until Dawn. It somehow simultaneously has too much exposition, but also not enough explanation for why anything here is happening. I just didn’t care about what was happening.
5. 28 Years Later
Ooh, controversy!
This will be a debated one because some people definitely ended up liking this one. But a lot of folks came out not enjoying it, too. I was obviously among the latter in regards to this. And that’s a shame, because I was eagerly awaiting this movie at the start of the year, too.
I think a lot of people’s thoughts on 28 Years Later come down to what they thought about 28 Weeks Later. Years seems to go out of its way to crap all over its predecessor, from its entire premise, down to its ending. If you liked Weeks, what Years does is frustrating, and I was a big fan of Weeks.
In addition to that, I just thought Years was a mess at a foundational level. There are flash cuts to old timey archers for virtually no reason. And there are weird choices like that all over the movie. And then you have the story beats that are befuddling. How does the virus NOT spread through pregnancy with as infectious as it is from person to person? Why are the infected somehow acting more human at weird intervals? What is up with Samson, and why hasn’t he killed the doctor? This whole movie just frustrated me.
My desire for this new trilogy has gone from 60 to 0. I am not sure I’ll even bother with The Bone Temple, and if I do, it will almost certainly be when it is cheap or free on streaming. The end of Years was as silly as everything else that happened across the flick, and I’m sure I don’t care much about Team Teletubbies in two more flicks going forward.
4. I Know What You Did Last Summer
Here’s how you know the new I Know What You Did Last Summer is a poor movie: when I review a picture, I give every one two Ups and two Downs in the interest of objectivity. The two Ups that I gave this one are two of the ones I absolutely hate to give or will only give to movies with little else going for them. The first was that the cast is attractive and easy on the eyes for the runtime; the second was that the movie looks professionally made and didn’t have any directorial flaws or short-comings.
When “your movie looks like a movie” is an Up, things have gone desperately awry. But IKWYDLS is a straight-up tedious watch that has no aspect that grips you or makes a viewer interested. It’s completely by-the-numbers and uneventful.
Add to that a downright insulting killer unveiling, and yeah… I kind of hated this one.
3. Borderline
Whereas I Know What You Did Last Summer is a snooze, Borderline can at least stake its claim as almost anything but. Things happen here, they are somewhat unpredictable, and there are some solid performances that make the outing a little fun to behold.
Why is this lower on the list than Last Summer then? Because Borderline is tonal whiplash all over the place. It makes Flight Risk look tempered and measured. It can’t decide if it is a tense thriller or a bizarre, goofy comedy. It’s more than acceptable to blend comedy and other genres like horror or thriller, but you have to be able to do it effectively. And Borderline simply does not. Also, the silly stuff is more obnoxious and unfunny than anything else.
I did consider not counting this one based on my judging principles. But it debuted on Peacock and stars Ray Nicholson and Samara Weaving, who I decided were big enough stars to keep this one on the list.
2. After The Hunt
After The Hunt had everything going for it to be at least a perfectly good movie. It’s got a knockout cast, led by Julia Roberts, Andrew Garfield, Ayo Edebiri, and Michael Stuhlbarg. It has a respected director in Luca Guadagnino. And it covers a topical hot-button issue in sexual assault on campus.
So where did it all fall apart? Unfortunately, most of it comes from the technical aspect of things. Guadagnino makes baffling choice after baffling choice in this one. To say the score and the sound design are distracting in After The Hunt would be complimentary to them; they are actively detrimental to the picture and draw way too much attention to themselves. You are stuck wondering why the movie sounds the way it does.
In addition to that, the actual direction is bizarre, as well. There are long, lingering shots of people’s hands for no discernible reason. There are moments where characters are talking, and the shooting is straight-ahead, leaving characters staring awkwardly into the camera as they deliver their lines.
So all told, After The Hunt is a film that is uncomfortable to watch, but not in anything resembling a thematic way. It’s just a curious example of a quality director losing their touch.
1. The Surfer
I tended to dislike The Surfer more than a lot of other folks did, but boy… I sure disliked it!
The biggest sin of The Surfer is that it does not seem to be based in any version of reality. Nicholas Cage makes choice after choice that no living human being would make. He ultimately causes all of his own problems because the screenplay wrote him as an absolutely unrealistic idiot rather than as a normal person. To that end, his plight is wildly unsympathetic because he could have avoided all of his troubles by just… not doing anything he does. It’s really halfway through the movie before he’s locked in to his choices and can’t escape the ramifications.
And then… and then, we get the third act. And the resolution to Cage’s issues is as wildly unbelievable as the steps he took to get himself into them. I was convinced–CONVINCED–that what ends up being his salvation was a fever dream that was going on too long because it was all so absurd. But nope… it’s all exactly what the flick was showing it to be.
I don’t know; I just actively hated this movie. To its credit, it is a haunting effort that stuck with me after I watched it. But that’s about as nice as I can be.
Those are my worst movies of the year, but… what are yours? Let me know in the comments! Meanwhile, I asked some of our social media followers what their worst movies of the year were, so let’s see what they think!
Joey from the So Wizard Podcast (@SoWizardPodcast on Twitter) left me a GIF from The Strangers: Chapter 2. Which: fair. It’s my #11 on the year as it was the next movie that would have made the cut had I opted to not include Borderline.
Arthur from the Two Cent Critic podcast (@arthur_ant18 on Twitter) said: Control Freak, G20, and A House Of Dynamite, adding to the last one, “good lord, what a nothingburger of neoliberal American politics”.
Tommy from the Haven’t Scene It podcast (@sceneitpod on Twitter) said: “Cleaner was awful! Such a fumble of a simple die hard riff. Daisy Ridley should be in better things”.
Matt from the Stand N’ Watch podcast (@realmfresh on BlueSky) said: Minecraft, Back In Action, and Havoc.
@sunnysidedice on BlueSky responded with: Love Hurts, Den Of Thieves 2: Pantera, and A Working Man.
John from The Pint: A Pop Culture Podcast (@thepintpop on Threads) said: Into The Deep, Star Trek Section 31, and A Working Man.
And finally before I wrote this article and quit taking responses, @themisanthroperunner on Threads said: New Smurfs film, Lilo & Stitch, and A Working Man.
Until next time… take care!
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