The Most Boring Movies (So Far) This Year

Unfortunately, not every movie that comes out each year can be a blockbuster hit. Some of the movies released each year must fall into the category of "worst movies of the year." The reasoning behind the poor outlook for a movie can range from being boring to containing offensive content and some strategies that worked for movies in the past may not work for movies in the present and future. The taste of the public is an evolving animal and the public perception of certain tactics can shift even over just a few weeks. That said, as we move into quarter four of the year 2024, let's look at the worst-rated movies that have come out so far this year.

To populate this list, we started by going onto IMDB and pulling up a list of all the movies released in 2024. Once we had a comprehensive list of movies released in 2024, we sorted the list by rating and set it to display the list in ascending order to put the worst movies at the top of the list. This allowed us to see the movies that were rated the lowest by critics and viewers.

We've seen a lot of cautionary tales about artificial intelligence in media lately and "AfrAId" is just one of the more recent installments in this genre. Tales like these are especially poignant in the modern day as artificial intelligence models gain more traction and humans implement AI models into more applications. The story of "AfrAId" follows a family that has been selected to test out a new AI smart home assistant. The model, AIA, is designed to handle high-volume information and requires sensors and cameras to be installed in the users' homes.

Once the accoutrements for AIA are installed into the Curtis family's home, they're greeted with the height of smart home technology. Anything they can do, AIA can do better, including learning the family's habits and needs, able to anticipate their needs and wants before they can even identify them. AIA also starts assisting the family in going about their daily lives, making their jobs and work easier, and helping them excel at things they never anticipated. However, what they don't anticipate is just how far AIA will go to help them, making sure that nothing "gets in their way."

Starring Adam Driver, "Megalopolis" is a science fiction epic with a side of drama. The script of "Megalopolis" was written by the director, Francis Ford Coppola, back in the 1980s. However, its production was placed on the back burner due to Coppola's outstanding debts at the time. Now, in 2024, Coppola was able to finance the entirety of the film's budget out of pocket to bring the dream of "Megalopolis" into the real world. This movie isn't the first one that Coppola financed out of pocket. He previously financed both "Apocalypse Now" (1979) and "Heart: Reprise" (1981). The failure of "Heart: Reprise" caused Coppola to declare bankruptcy and future films were made almost exclusively to pay off his debts.

Unfortunately, it seems that "Megalopolis" isn't the hit that Coppola hoped to produce. It has remained in the bottom ten of the movies released in 2024 all year and is currently sitting at the ninth worst of the year. It follows the city of New Rome as it undergoes a power struggle between the artist, Cesar Catilina, an artist who is working towards a Utopian future, and Franklyn Cicero, a greedy mayor. Julia Cicero, Franklyn's daughter and Cesar's beloved is caught in the middle of the feud between them.

This horror movie follows a group of friends who have found a set of old, cursed Tarot cards. They perform a séance during which they break the sacred rules of Tarot and unleash the curses and demons that are trapped within the deck of cards they used, setting them into a race against death as they try to survive the vengeful spirits they've uncovered. After their reckless exploration into the unknown, the spirits of the deck start to hunt the college students who freed them from their binds. The participants try to make it through to the next morning as they come to increasingly gruesome fates one by one.

Unfortunately, what sets itself up as a pretty scary ride doesn't really deliver on the promise of a deep, psychological horror. It's a lot of jump scares and gore without much substance that would have turned the visceral scenes into a truly horrific experience. There is also the fact that it plays strongly on outdated principles and that might have prevented it from landing as strongly with the younger horror crowd who might find the stigmatisation of tarot insensitive or upsetting.

Another horror movie in the list of corniest and least enjoyable movies of the year is "Night Swim." In this movie, a baseballer forced into early retirement by degenerative disease, Ray Waller, moves into a new home with his family, unaware of the malevolent forces that lurk inside the home's swimming pool. The home seems too good to be true, ticking too many boxes for not enough investment. After all, Ray's doctor has suggested water therapy to improve his condition and prevent his disease from degenerating as quickly. However, the family quickly learns that the house's swimming pool contains something evil and unknown.

The Waller family's strange experiences start to mount as Ray's health continues to improve, leaving them stumped, uncomfortable, and scared. As their experiences start becoming more and more frightening, the family tries to come up with ways to quell the scary existences that seem to haunt their swimming pool. However, the movie just didn't land with modern audiences who must have found the haunted swimming pool angle just a little overdone and silly. After all, the whole thing sort of lacks the depth and psychological elements that many audiences have come to expect from their horror movies.

Starring Bill Skarsgård, the 2024 re-imagining of the 1994 cult classic "The Crow" was already a tenuous release. Many people rightfully feel anxious about re-imaginings of classic films. After all, many parts that simply can't be replicated in a modern film with a new crew, new sets, and a new cast. The movie follows Skarsgård as Eric who is murdered alongside his lover Shelly when Shelly's dark past catches up with the young lovers. Eric then embarks on a quest to exact revenge and sacrifice himself to revive Shelly using mystical powers granted to him in blood.

The original movie was plagued with issues in production. However, it found a cult following of people who hail it as one of the best movies of all time. The production issues led to unique choices that gave the original movie character beyond the standard cuts and angles. Unfortunately, the re-imagining in 2024 didn't hit the same way and deeply disappointed the fans of the original, leading to poor box office reviews and landing it in the 6th worst spot for 2024 so far.

Yet another horror movie that just didn't find the audience it was looking for in the box office, "The Strangers: Chapter 1" is the fifth worst movie in 2024 so far. The story follows two young lovers who are celebrating their 5th anniversary with a cross-country road trip while one-half of the relationship searches for a job in Portland, Oregon. The couple gets lost and their car breaks down in a small, out-of-the-way town. Unable to fix their car, the two are forced to spend the night in a creepy cabin in the woods near the town they broke down in. However, their idyllic vacation becomes a night of terror when their cabin is terrorized by three masked strangers who don't appear to have any motive or reason for attacking them.

The movie is a pretty standard horror film, which, like some of the other horror films on the list, might contribute to its poor reception. It preys on the fear of senseless violence, but modern horror films that do well typically have a bit more depth than that.

This movie is based on a video game and follows the trend of video game movies doing relatively poorly at the box office. The "Borderlands" movie follows a famous bounty hunter, Lilith, whose mysterious past precedes her. Lilith reluctantly returns to her home planet, Pandora, which is famous for being the most chaotic planet in the galaxy. Her mission? Find the daughter of Atlas, one of the most powerful creatures in the universe at the moment. Lilith forms an unexpected alliance with a group of ragtag misfits as she searches for Atlas' daughter. The group takes on alien species and dangerous bandits, and then uncover the secrets of Pandora as they search for Atlas' daughter, learning the importance of friendship along the way.

While the "Borderlands" video game is widely hailed as one of the best classic video games of all time, the movie did not fare so well with audiences. It scored fourth lowest all year so far, making it one of the worst-received movies so far this year. Unfortunately, this fate wasn't difficult to predict. No matter what they do, video game movies have a tendency to flop, and most video game movies operate at a loss. There are many reasons for this, but the medium change didn't seem to treat the "Borderlands" story with the glow-up that producers were aiming for.

Deviating from the usual Marvel movie formula, "Madame Web" is a standalone film telling the origin story of one of the most elusive heroes in the Marvel universe. The story follows Cassandra Webb, a paramedic in New York City. When Webb develops the power to see the future, she realizes that she can use this newfound power to help people. She starts using her insight into the future to change it and runs into several other women who have special powers as they try to navigate a world that is out to get them. Webb is forced to confront the skeletons in her closet as she tries to help her new compatriots survive the present to claim their destinies.

Critical reviews from critics and viewers called the film boring, lazy, messy, and poorly written. It struggled to capture an audience and ultimately bombed the box office with the most impassioned viewers regarding it as one of the worst superhero movies ever made. One repeated criticism of the film was the aggressive product placements which could make the film feel more like a glorified ad than a standalone art piece.

The second worst-rated film of 2024 so far is "The American Society of Magical Negroes" which is a satire film that riffs on the idea of the "magical negro." "Magical Negro" characters are a consistent trope in American films, books, and television where a Black character is introduced solely for the purpose of providing substance to a white character's story rather than as a unique character of their own. These characters typically have special insight, wisdom, or even outright magical powers that they use exclusively for the benefit of the work's white characters. Of course, the "Magical Negro" characters never address uncomfortable topics like race relations or racism because they only exist to uplift white characters.

"The American Society of Magical Negroes" is a group of Black folks in America who dedicate their lives to making white people's lives easier through little acts of "magic" that bring smiles to the faces of white people. It's a scathing satirical representation of Black people's marginalization in American media. It didn't do well at the box office though, rating second lowest for the year 2024.

The spoof comedy "Not Another Church Movie" features the talk-show host, Hoprah Windfall, who uses her direct connection to God, played by Jamie Foxx, to send a hero to plummeting ratings. Windfall threatens to cancel God if he doesn't obey her. This leads God to task the hardest working man in the world, Taylor Pherry, with writing a hit box office movie about his dysfunctional family. However, the Devil, played by Mickey Rourke, has his own plans to disrupt this deal between God, Windfall, and Pherry.