The truth is not all movies can be good. Some are bad, really, really bad. Bad movies can be the result of many things. Poor direction, bad choice of actors, and poor screenwriting can all contribute to a terrible movie in unique ways. However, there’s a wide gap between garden variety bad movies and movies that are considered the worst.
Many movies receive an abundance of negative reviews. So, it takes a special type of bad movie to receive the worst possible reviews. Even cult classics known for being bad such as The Room (2003) and Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010) received some positivity from critics. Let’s examine the 20 worst movies of all time, according to critics.
Determining which movies are truly the worst is pretty easy with aggregator websites such as Rotten Tomatoes. Very few movies manage to score a true 0% on the Tomatometer. Additionally, many movies that are critically quite bad have decent audience scores. An audience isn’t watching a movie to critique and people find enjoyment in movies that bad because, unlike critics, the general audience isn’t forced to take the movie seriously. If you watch every bad movie as a comedy… a lot of them are really hilarious. (On the other hand, these are the best movies you can stream for free right now.)
20. “3 Strikes” (2000)
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA - OCTOBER 29: Brian Hooks attends EBONY Power 100 at Milk Studios Los Angeles on October 29, 2022 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Leon Bennett/Getty Images for EBONY MEDIA GROUP)
3 Strikes was released in theaters in 2000 and has a 0% score on the Tomatometer. It takes place in a world where the government has adopted a “three strikes” system for people who commit crimes, involving serious penalties for people who reach the third strike.
The main character, Rob, has two strikes and is trying to improve his life. He and his friend are pulled over for a traffic infraction, and his friend fires shots at the police. Rob escapes from the altercation. However, he’s now a wanted man and he must clear his name as being associated with the shooting or he’ll receive his third strike.
19. “Cabin Fever” (2016)
“Cabin Fever” was released in 2016, and it is unique in that it has a terrible score for both the Tomatometer and the audience rating. It has a 0% score on the Tomatometer and just a 12% audience score, cementing it as one of the worst movies of all time.
The movie follows a group of young adults who face an outbreak of a flesh-eating virus while staying in a cabin in the woods. It is a little over an hour and a half long and almost no one enjoyed their time watching it. It is one of the worst movies of all time according to critics.
18. “Problem Child” (1990)
It follows a young couple who are struggling to have children. They adopt a young boy who seems to bring problems with him wherever he goes. However, critics found the movie’s humor to be mean-spirited, damaging its ability to be funny at best and being genuinely unpleasant to watch at worst. As the main character’s family outright tells him to get rid of the boy he and his wife adopted, we can’t help but agree that the comedy isn’t black, it’s just tone-deaf.
17. “Wagons East” (1994)
Unfortunately, it wasn’t that great of a movie and has a 0% Tomatometer score. Even audiences weren’t taken with it, as it has a mere 32% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.
16. “Return to the Blue Lagoon” (1991)
Ultimately, the movie falls into the same trap as the first one: it’s just kind of weird since it essentially revolves around barely clothed teenagers. Thus, it can be alienating regardless of your age bracket. No one was asking for another film about barely clothed teenagers!
“Return to the Blue Lagoon” has a 0% Tomatometer score and a 41% audience score, making it easily one of the worst films of all time regardless of your intention when watching it.
15. “The Nutcracker” (2010)
“The Nutcracker” from 2010 is yet another take on the classic ballet. However, this one just stinks! The story follows Mary, a young girl from Vienna, Austria who finds Christmas to be a boring affair. Her uncle brings her an enchanted nutcracker named NC.
NC comes to life on Christmas night and whisks Mary away to his magical land of fairies and talking toys. The kingdom that NC is from is under threat by the devious Rat King and Mary must unite with her newfound companions to save NC when he is kidnapped. If you thought “That’s just The Nutcracker!”, yeah it is. It’s meant to be a children’s movie, but critics hated it and, based on its 27% audience score, so did the children.
14. “London Fields” (2018)
While the book was well-received and acclaimed, the movie misses the mark. It has a 0% Tomatometer score, with critics finding it hard to follow and a severe and irretrievable deviation from the source material. Audiences found it slightly more acceptable, giving it a total 32% audience score. However, typically anything below 60% is regarded as pretty terrible by the Rotten Tomatoes metric.
13. “Stratton” (2017)
Critics hated this movie, earning it a 0% Tomatometer score and giving it a spot as one of the worst movies of all time. They criticized the poor casting choices, bad acting, and uninspired screenwriting. Some critics mentioned that the actor for the main character failed to hit the mark of bringing the loneliness that must follow the loss of a professional partner in such a field to life.
12. “Dark Crimes” (2016)
The 2016 film “Dark Crimes” enjoys a flat 0% Tomatometer score and a disappointing 30% audience score, cementing it as one of the worst movies of all time. The story follows a detective who becomes suspicious of an author when he realizes the books the author is writing closely resemble the details of an unsolved murder case.
Unfortunately, while the premise of the film is quite interesting, the execution leaves a lot to be desired. Even the prime casting choices like Jim Carrey weren’t enough to carry the middling screenplay choices. The film fluctuates between being depraved and confusing, staying forever in the stage of anticipation and never reaching its true potential, according to critics. These factors make it one of the worst movies of all time.
11. “The Ridiculous 6” (2015)
If you like Adam Sandler and whatever it is that he creates, “The Ridiculous 6” is for you! If you do not like Adam Sandler, you will not have a good time watching this movie. Adam Sandler is a divisive creator for many reasons: his movies often rely on offensive humor and the characters in his movies tend to feel outdated and overplayed. This movie is an Adam Sandler take on the Western formula.
Like most Adam Sandler movies, the humor is offensive, punches down, and the characters are one-dimensional and grating, especially the female ones. It has a 0% Tomatometer score and a 36% audience score, indicating that not even fans of bad movies found this one palatable.
10. “Jaws The Revenge” (1987)
Just as a personal opinion, I hated “Jaws.” Not because it was a bad movie, but because I like sharks and “Jaws” was responsible for mass shark hunting. “Jaws The Revenge” is such a strange movie that it’s almost unthinkable that it’s related to the original “Jaws” film. It is the fourth and final movie in the series and it’s hard to explain how genuinely terrible it is. It follows a widow, Ellen Brody, whose family is just cursed with shark attacks.
At the beginning of the film, Ellen’s son is killed by a massive great white shark. She goes to visit her other son in the Bahamas where she meets a guy named Hoagie Newcombe. Ellen and Hoagie start their little love affair and then a giant shark appears off the coastline and there’s more disjointed shark attack-related stuff.
The 0% Tomatometer score isn’t for nothing. This movie doesn’t make any sense and certainly won’t be responsible for any mass shark hunting because it’s not really scary due to the disjointed story and poor screenwriting.
9. “The Last Days of American Crime” (2020)
Critics describe “The Last Days of American Crime” as a punishment in and of itself. It has a 0% Tomatometer score and just 22% in its audience score, indicating that no one liked it.
The movie is set in a world where the government is set to broadcast a signal that will end crime. The story’s main characters use this to plan a massive heist before the government broadcasts the signal. However, the thing that really made this movie unpopular was that its release was around the same time as the George Floyd protests and the movie is quite violent and depicts police brutality.
Overall, its release was at a bad time, making the film appear tone-deaf. Ultimately, these factors along with its poor writing and weak characters influenced its reception as one of the worst movies of all time.
8. “Gold Diggers” (2003)
LOS ANGELES - SEPTEMBER 13: Actress Nikki Ziering, director Gary Preisler and actors Will Friedle and Chris Owen attend the premiere of National Lampoon's Gold Diggers on September 13, 2004 at the Grove in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Vince Bucci/Getty Images)
The 2003 film “Gold Diggers” is a tactless attempt at the age-old comedy trope of inheritance/insurance scams. One of the worst movies of all time, it follows two broke men, Calvin and Leonard, who get arrested after trying to rob two rich old women. However, the women have a change of heart after the boys are arrested and drop the charges, inviting the boys to their mansion.
Calvin comes up with a plan for him and Leonard to marry the women and live off the inheritance they’ll receive when they die. The plan runs into a snag when it’s revealed that the women have come into their own financial troubles and are planning to murder Calvin and Leonard for insurance money.
Critics hated it for being mean-spirited, unfunny, and played out. Audiences didn’t like it much better as the movie has just a 21% audience score.
7. “Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2” (2004)
A sequel to the 1999 film, “Baby Geniuses,” “Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2” is just as bad if not worse than the first film. It is truly a film that nobody asked for. No one, and we mean no one, liked “Baby Geniuses.” The fact that “Superbabies” even exists is its own kind of human sin. It is proof that you can force a joke to be funny and that even attaching a cute face to a bad joke won’t make it land better.
The movie follows a group of babies with superpowers as they try to stop a media mogul from using television to alter children’s minds. It is every bit as vapid and grating as it sounds. It was meant to be a children’s movie, but we would consider it a parenting imperative to protect your children from this terrible creation.
6. “Pinocchio” (2002)
Disney wasn’t the only studio to make a “Pinocchio” adaptation. Roberto Benigni made one in 2002 that just wasn’t good in any measure. On the surface, it’s a pretty cut-and-dry Pinocchio adaptation that follows the source material very faithfully. That can be a positive for people who are looking for that. However, it’s all downhill from there.
A large part of the criticism of Benigni’s “Pinnochio” is that it casts Roberto Benigni as Pinocchio, which many critics found distasteful as he’s… perhaps a bit too old for that role. Also, the English dub of the movie is horrendous. If you’re going to watch it, we recommend watching it in Italian with English subtitles. Horrible dubs and casting choices aside, the movie is relatively unremarkable. It’s “Pinocchio.” Not much more to say about it than that.
5. “Gotti” (2018)
The 2018 film “Gotti” follows a young man named John Gotti. Raised on the streets of New York City, John finds himself on the wrong side of the law, working for the Gambino crime family. Eventually, he rises through the ranks and becomes the head of the family. However, his wife makes him promise that he will never expose their children to his profession, wanting their children to grow up normally. John breaks that promise when his son becomes his Capo.
Critics found the movie hard to watch, noting that the costume design for John Travolta’s character, John Gotti, is terrible. It doesn’t look like a character. It just looks like John Travolta. In some cases, this might be a positive, but in this case, it just looks out of place.
4. “A Thousand Words” (2012)
In “A Thousand Words”, Eddie Murphy plays Jack McCall, a literary agent whose silver tongue allows him to quickly and easily close deals with clients. However, when he seeks out Dr. Sinja, played by Cliff Curtis, the doctor sees through his schemes. Following the encounter, a mysterious tree appears in McCall’s yard. Dr. Sinja explains that the tree is connected to him; every time McCall says a word, a leaf falls off the tree and when the final leaf falls, Jack will die. With only one thousand leaves left on the tree, McCall needs to learn to communicate without speaking or the worst will come to pass.
Critics found the choice to cast Eddie Murphy, a notoriously loud-mouthed comedian, as a tongue-tied, quiet protagonist as a terrible option. Eddie Murphy’s voice is one of his primary comedic tools. His ability to manipulate it is part of what makes him stand out. So, to have him in a role where he can’t speak freely is a waste of his talent.
3. “Left Behind” (2014)
Rapture movies are pretty hit or miss. Some people love the whole rapture thing. Others think it’s boring, overdone, and uninteresting. The movie “Left Behind” follows a world where everything and everyone is thrown for a loop when hundreds of thousands of people vanish without a trace, leaving behind only their clothing. The sudden rapture causes car crashes, planes dropping out of the sky, and other major tragedies as people disappear into thin air.
It’s a Nicolas Cage movie. So, go into this one with the appropriate expectations. Critics didn’t like the corny music, poor screenwriting, and terrible VFX. They also made fun of the fact that the whole movie is essentially just a man trying to land a plane. That’s it. It’s not very titillating, to say the least.
2. “One Missed Call” (2008)
Another movie loved by neither critics nor audiences. “One Missed Call” follows a woman who witnesses two friends die in tragic accidents. However, days before the incidents, the two victims received phone calls in which they heard their final moments. The police don’t believe it, but one detective decides to work with the main character to unravel the incidents.
Critics found the movie boring. What could have been an excellent American J-horror remake movie ended up being cliche and over-played. It also had very little in the department of scares.
1. “Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever” (2002)
If you want a movie that’s just action 24/7, “Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever” is for you. Unfortunately, if you want literally anything else besides action as far as the eye can see, you’ll need to find a different movie. It really is just explosions, bullets, and fighting for an entire hour and a half. There is nothing of substance in this movie. There is so little to this movie that it is almost impossible to even write a mini-review of it because there’s nothing to say about it. It’s truly one of the worst movies of all time.