The Top 10 Worst Films of 2022

2022 was an average year for films. It was dominated by big movies flopping as it lurched from the end of the pandemic to a cost of living crisis. But the films released were for the most part, pretty average. There weren’t as many stinkers as you usually get, so this list is actually better quality than most years. But when we get to the Top 10 Films of 2022, that quality is worse than usual.

Anyway, let’s talk about the worst movies of the year.

10. Jurassic World: Dominion

Since Jurassic Park was continued in Jurassic World, the thing they have been building to is having dinosaurs in civilization. It took two movies to set it up, but here we had it. So what does a returning Colin Trevorrow do? Have some fairly mediocre scenes in Istanbul and work as hard as possible to return the franchise back into the jungle. Also, have the plot not focus on dinosaurs, but locusts, because that’s why you buy tickets to Jurassic World, to see a film about locusts. Then you have the much anticipated reunion between the original cast which doesn’t amount to much. It was a waste of a blockbuster and a real shame as I still had some high hopes that this might have turned out good.

9. Minions: Rise of Gru

I’m one of the people who used to defend the Minions. People turned on them when the first Minions came out and it wasn’t just because of the movie, it was because of their random inclusion on quasi-comical Facebook memes which middle aged people filled their timelines will. But I’m now pretty sick of them after this film. The first Minions film could be accused of being a sketch show with a barely linked plot, but this one was even worse for it. At least, the first Minions film had good sketches and skits involving the little yellow guys. This one has poor sketches which expose all the worst parts of the Minions and not what made them so popular in the first place. Let’s add some extra negative points for the TikTok trend where teenage boys dressed very smart and trashed cinemas during the screenings, which was not what stressed cinema workers needed to deal with this year.

8. Samaritan

Sylvester Stallone as a retired supehero persuaded to come back into action sounds like a great idea. At least I looked forward to watching this after seeing its adverts dominate my YouTube page for about a month. But then I got a very boring movie where nothing really happens until the last ten minutes. It’s plot ended up being unnervingly close to the Black Adam film which I technically can’t call a rip-off as this film came out first, but no matter what came first, being a second rate version of Black Adam is not good. Stallone seems bored doing the film as it’s obvious this is just a way for him to get a cheque and the colour palette has more shades of grey than a depressed Ikea store. I like the idea of original superhero movies that don’t come from Marvel or DC, but not when it’s as boring as this.

7. Cyrano

Peter Dinklage is a very talented actor and it makes sense for him to play Cyrano. However despite the fact he played this role on stage, and obviously must have done a good enough job to keep the role for the movie, he can’t sing well in this. It’s the use of live singing, not dubbed like most musicals, which fails the movie. It exposes the weakness of every singer involved in the movie and makes the song sequences a drag when they should be the highlight of the musical. This is a film that is trying to copy Les Miserables, when despite the fact both contain romances in old time France, the two source materials are very different and should be dealt with in different ways. What you get is a mistake of a musical with plenty of bum notes.

6. Hellraiser

Even if you are a big fan of the Hellraiser franchise, you have to admit, Pinhead has always been a B-Tier horror villain compared to the likes of Jason Vorhees and Freddy Krueger. Films like this aren’t going to elevate Pinhead either, though we’ll probably get a whole new breed of cosplay because of it. The main theme of the movie is being lured by your worst temptation but while the original films at least made that something sexual so the film was properly nasty, which has its own people, this is far more bland with a far less interesting story to go with it. Yes, the film has plenty of good gore, but you can have good gore with good scares and a good story. This doesn’t have any of the latter two, so it ends up being Hell to watch than a Hell of a good time.

5. Luck

This film is already on a bad footing because it was only made because Apple TV hired John Lasseter, the man who was fired from Pixar for being a massive pervert. It was a deal with the devil and in the end, they sold their soul for a piece of crap. This film was obviously rushed because the script feels as basic as Asda’s yellow SmartPrice range, except at least that has some use to society. I think even if the scriptwriters were rushing this to get the easy paycheque, and limit time in Lasseter’s company in case his hands go wandering again, they’d be embarrassed with some of the lines left in this film which would be humiliating to have in your GCSE English Language exam, never mind a big animated movie. Combine that with a boring plot which really thinks it’s up there with Pixar’s best, you have the worst animated film of the year.

4. Ambulance

Ah, it’s been a while since Michael Bay has been on this list. Not sure how he’s been missing out, but let me explain why Ambulance is on this list with what happens in one scene. A police officer is dying in the back of the ambulance which is being controlled by outlaws. The hostage paramedic is trying to operate, but she has ran out of anaesthetic. One of the sympathetic outlaws helps by punching the police offer, thus knocking him out. This turns out to be an adequate replacement to the anaesthetic. It is one of the most idiotic scenes I have seen for the last few years. Add onto this the film some how managing to last four two and a half hours when all it needed to be was a 90 minute blast, more idiotic scenes of this nature and it just generally being frustrating to watch, then you have a film you’ll wish was on strike alongside the British paramedics.

3. Moonfall

So first, I get to put a film from Michael Bay on this list. Then, I get to follow it up with a film from Roland Emmerich? God, we just need some controversial elections and for me to graduate from university and it’s going to feel like 2016 again. After Emmerich tried his best to appeal to the critics with films like Stonewall, which people who know better than me says was more misjudged than Kwasi Kwarteng’s budget choices, he’s back with what made him famous. Big stupid movies where lots of things blow up. And they are just as terrible as they ever were. If you’ve seen 2012, you’ve seen this movie, except this is even more tired and the CGI probably worse as this looks like a cut rate PS3 game. This film would have been dated in the 90s, never mind 2022. Hopefully this will finally be the end for Emmerich’s blockbuster career.

2. The 355

The first 2022 film I saw this year was The 355. I felt quite happy after it because I knew that it would be very difficult to see anything worse than that this year. Well it’s second, so it’s obvious I saw something worse, but this was still incredibly bad. Never mind that the film shares the name with a West Yorkshire bus route, it’s just the worst portrayal of every spy cliché you can have. Lots of great actors are completely wasted as they are the most boring versions of the type of characters they could be. Seriously, Jessica Chastain is brilliant, how do you make her into the worst spy possible when her first scene is her missing more shots than a stormtrooper. Simon Kinberg, the man who made X-Men: Dark Phoenix, is on directing duties and the incomprehensible actions scenes prove why he should be kept out of the director’s chair from now on, ideally by force if necessary. One of the worst spy movies ever made and I have 355 reasons you shouldn’t watch it.

Anyway, onto the worst film of the year.

1. Blonde

Marilyn Monroe is an icon but even though she has been dead for longer than she was alive by now, she’s had a pretty bad year. Kim Kardashian bought one of her most iconic dresses, wore it to the Met Gala and damaged it with the power of her bottom, thoug angering the fashion community. Then this film was released, which is an insult to her legend. It’s honestly quite a nasty film which decides to glamourise the sexual assaults and rapes committed against her for reasons that I don’t want to know, because to be frank I don’t want to know that much about a disturbed mind.

If you can move on from the moral failings of the movie, you are left with a movie that is completely ineptly made as if it was a film student’s first attempt at making a movie. To make the botched editing and pacing even worse, the film obviously thinks it’s very good and is begging to be analysed by the same film student who botched making this movie in the first place. It’s as pretentious as well, that film student again lecturing you on how revolutionary Battleship Potemkin was and maybe the Soviets weren’t so bad after all if they could make that. The film doesn’t even have the good grace to be over as soon as it starts, this film lasts nearly three hours. I’m pretty sure only Avatar: The Way of Water outlasts this film which is at least a spectacle.

Blonde is honestly a disgusting movie which I feel could kill the careers of most of the people involved. Ana de Armas might be saved by the fact her trajectory was so sharply going up that nothing could stop it, but I still wouldn’t be shocked if even her career was stopped with how horrendously offensive this whole thing is. She doesn’t deserve it, but read what happened to Michael Chiklis after his similarly ill-fated portrayal of John Belushi in Wired. That may well be heading in de Armas’ future.

But for all these reasons, Blonde is not only the worst movie of 2022, but the worst biopic ever made.