Black Ribbon's Worst Films of 2015

Worst Films of 2015

Within all the greatness of movies across the year, there inevitably is set to be a wide range of turkeys, movies that set themselves aside from the rest from being something utterly worse than mediocre and plain boring but in fact, loathsome, hateful and at the end of the day, utterly pointless. Before unleashing the best 2015 has had to offer in the world of cinema therefore, I thought it was only reasonable to highlight film's that probably should have been missed this year, those flicks that are guaranteed to swiftly be buried under the proverbial carpet and those that highlight the ways in which films should not be constructed. Here we go...

10. Hitman: Agent 47

It's not that hard to understand why films that are based upon the premise of a video game always seem to get a negative amount of spin before they are even announced, particularly in regards to the rafter of films that have been simply awful after making such a leap in format such as Doom, Max Payne, and most of the Resident Evil series. Carrying on that formula is Hitman: Agent 47, a staggeringly dull and wholly unoriginal take on the popular video game franchise which aside from being an overblown Audi commercial, is also an overblown, extended video game cut-scene hell bent on tarnishing the good nature of the video game business once and for all.

9. Sinister 2

All hail the remarkable workmanship at Blumhouse Productions, the raging antipathy of death, hell bent on destroying the entire horror genre, who frustratingly, when try to get it right, can in fact make some brilliant movies with The Gift and Whiplash being key examples, yet when resort to making trashy, cash-eyed horror sequels only resort in my hatred ever-growing. It's a love/hate relationship, one that isn't proved upon with Sinister 2, a pointless, hopeless sequel which abandons all sense of horror and scares for a quick buck instead. One of two on this list produced by those at Blumhouse. 

8. Jupiter Ascending

Unintentional camp sci-fi is as painful as a throbbing nail through the hand and the highly comical Jupiter Ascending reasserts that sometimes too much over-acting can result in one of the most cringe-worthy performances of all time. That's right Eddie Redmayne, I am talking to you. Put down your Oscar, sweep away your plaudits and bow your head in shame for your simply dire performance as a 21st century dodgy update of Flash Gordon's Emperor Ming in The Wachowski siblings' simply stinker of a sci-fi movie, stealing riffs from Star Wars, Star Trek and Terry Gilliam's Brazil whilst using the greatest array of tacky wardrobes I think I have ever seen. It's really bad. 

7. Poltergeist

When is a remake not a remake? When crafty producers decide to proclaim it as a "re-imagining", a word that essentially means they are saying, "hey, you know that really classic and interesting film that was made all those years ago and was really quite important? Well, why don't we remake it and grab a few extra million?" Oh dear. In the case of Poltergeist, a film that I really do cherish and one that made up part of my early horror movie experience as a child, why did it really need to be remade if not for a slight financial gain on the producers part? It's not that I hate it, it's just I find it slightly unnecessary and a complete waste of time. It's a film which makes the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre look good.  

6. Fantastic Four

And here we are, the biggest blockbuster let-down of the year in the form of Fantastic Four, a film so mixed in its' tone, setting and well, everything, it wouldn't be surprising if 20th Century Fox suddenly confessed to releasing it without actually putting it through the editing stage or even as a late April fools joke. With young acting talents such as Miles Teller, Kate Mara and Michael B. Jordan, Fantastic Four is let down by one of the most preposterous plots I have ever scene and a final act which is simply mind-blowing in terms of its' sheer incompetence. I suggest you try again lads and lasses. 

5. The Interview

Oh how the genre of comedy has fallen into the hands of pubescent, immature teenagers where the funniest thing on earth is seeing a man reveal his most intimate of parts and swing it mercifully around in front of corrupt North Korean soldiers. Hardy flippin ha... The Interview is so bad it is not even worthy of respite. It's a comedy so low on the intelligence scale it hurts my brain to think about it. So I won't. And neither will many others. 

4. Fifty Shades of Grey

You want to do what to her? You said what? That room is full of what? Do you really want this dialogue in the movie? These are the sort of questions any right-minded producer, director, actor, whatever, should have been saying on the set of Fifty Shades of Grey, a template example of un-sexy sexiness where eroticism and romance is replaced with sniggers and raspberries due to its' simply awful dialogue and acting so wooden it began to spurt woodworm. AWFUL. 

3. The Cobbler

The bravura acting talent that is Adam Sandler continues his excruciating form of cinematic rubbish with The Cobbler, the creepiest and most sadistic stalker film that isn't actually based around a stalker but instead is meant to be a life-assuring comedy drama about a man who finds magical powers within his role as, you guessed it, a cobbler. Featuring the longest 90 minutes of film I can remember, The Cobbler is a tragic example of an actor well and truly scraping the barrel. 

2. The Bad Education Movie

Why hate on Cornwall? It's a lovely place and features more spectacular entertainment than The Bad Education Movie provides in it's overlong attempt to make us laugh. Well guess what, you didn't, and instead you managed to make us cringe in despair at the sheer wastefulness of time spent watching such trash. Not only is it another example of movies failing when moving from the small screen to the big, but it just reasserts the notion that comedy is slowly becoming a dying art, with intelligence and gusto being replaced with immaturity and vulgarity. Please dismiss. 

1. The Gallows

And here we are at last, my least favourite film of the year and alas, it is a horror, a genre that continues to be tarnished by the ridiculous amount of mediocre examples that continue to plague our cinemas each and every year. This year however, the one taking all the plaudits for sheer awfulness is The Gallows, one gigantic rip-off of genre classics such as The Blair Witch Project and Halloween whilst featuring the stupidest use of shaky-cam I can remember and a final act in which I can barely keep track of the amount of sheer movie-making mis-steps over it's startling lack of threat and, or scares. Please, if 2016 brings anything with it, please don't let it bring any more creaky, crappy horror movies. I think it would force me to abandon hope for the genre to return from the seemingly dead end films like The Gallows are driving it into. 

Film Review: Poltergeist

They're Here!

I really have no idea why film producers, directors, executives etc. in the 21st century feel the need to constantly regurgitate, remake and ultimately ruin classic horror movies of the century previous aside from the notion that hopefully it will make them a quick buck. Not only is it annoying that every-time you speak to someone about films such as Halloween, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and even The Wicker Man (Not the bees!) you have to prepare yourself to constantly remind them you are speaking about the original, not the remake, but that the quality of such is so terrifyingly bad it begs the question whether they will ever stop murdering films of a classic nature that mean so much to the horror fans in the world, me included. For the time being, it seems like the answer is no, with the latest entry into such an unwanted genre of movies is Poltergeist, a "terrifying new vision" of the 1982 classic, which back then had Spielberg on screenplay and production duties whilst Tobe Hooper, of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre fame, was on board as director. Replacing them is Sam Raimi, who I am a massive fan of, and Gil Kenan of Monster House respectively, but even with the mastermind of Evil Dead behind it, the 2015 version of Poltergeist is everything I feared it to be; turgid. 

Haunted house? Check. Creepy child? Check. Bad script? Check. Unnecessary from the outset? Check. If you need a plot synopsis, I implore you to please go and watch the original Poltergeist which although may seem rather dated in terms of effects and dodgy haircuts, is the Citizen Kane of horror movies in comparison to this turkey of a movie. Half way through the film I actually decided to have a little sleep, with the film not attempting in the slightest to come across as a "new vision" of the Poltergeist franchise, but instead being an almost uncanny, shot-for-shot remake of the original except with much more boring characters, a much more boring and limp script, a badly CGI'd scene in which a child's drone is flown into the "other side", which obviously was shafted in to make the use of 3D retrofitting seem acceptable, and Sam Rockwell seemingly looking like he has just walked off a set in which he was portraying Brad Pitt's stoner character from True Romance. His decision to act with as little acting ability as possible was actually quite startling to see, with the choice to embrace the character of a beleaguered father seemingly caught in the crossfire with the cheque he picked up on his way out the set. 

As you can tell, I am pretty peeved with Poltergeist. It is just so sad to see a supposed horror-movie lover such as Sam Raimi just seemingly not give a care in the world in trashing one of the 20th century's greatest horror movies. Please, save your money, go and watch A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night instead and gaze at a proper horror movie, one that doesn't blatantly copy every scene and line from a much better film and one that will live long in the memory of those who watch it, unlike Poltergeist, which should be forgotten and denied it ever even existed as soon as humanly possible. It takes a really bad film to get a score of zero, and Poltergeist isn't that, its' a film that begs the question of its' own existence. Did we really need it? Of course not. Will it be left alone forever more from this day on? I really, really hope so. 

Overall Score: 3/10