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: The Gallows

School's Out

Adding to this years' already terribly mediocre lineup of horror movies this week is The Gallows, another entry into the overblown horror filmography of the murderers of contemporary horror that is Blumhouse Productions, a company famous for their work with the Paranormal Activity series, the Insidious series, The Purge, and of course the Sinister series. Aside from all being produced by the same company, these particular films all share a particular trait in seemingly being the blueprint and and DNA for the way in which modern horror flicks are made, with the age-old use of the quiet, quiet band technique being the cornerstone of each films' genetic makeup. Sure, there are few good entries within the back catalogue of Blumhouse, particularly the first Paranormal Activity and Sinister, whilst the also have the proud honour of producing Whiplash which still holds its' own as film of the year so far in my opinion, but a huge chunk of their films are either too similar in tone to be extinguished from any other around them or just being actually plain terrible. In terms of The Gallows therefore, Blumhouse's new addition to the horror genre hopelessly falls into the latter category with it being a painful experience from start to finish, and not in a good horror movie way. 

After a tragic accident during a school production of The Gallows in 1993 where pupil Charlie freakishly died by that of hanging, the same school once again after 20 or so years sets out to perform the play once more, much to the displeasure of Reese who is set to perform in the leading role with an aim to win the heart of his leading lady. When Reese's friend Ryan comes up with the idea to destroy the set before the day of the show in order to prevent any potential failings on Reese's part, along with girlfriend Cassidy, they somehow become locked in the school and being to wonder if the evil spirit of the dead Charlie is with them once again. So, where are the problems with The Gallows I hear you ask? Everywhere. Firstly, the shaky, tedious option of the found-footage genre is as generic as it comes within this particular film with it not expanding its' horizons in any form whatsoever and instead relies on annoying moments of long, boring and ultimately pointless shots of either darkness, a room, or someones' emotionless face in a failed attempt to mimic or take heed from that of the classic that is The Blair Witch Project. The addition of the ever-infuriating camera shake to enable our protagonists to run away in complete darkness just results in making the film incredibly hard to watch and achieves nothing except making me regret the fact that I could have possibly paid for this film if it was not for the beauty of my Cineworld Unlimited card. 

As for the protagonists, this brings me to my second point which is that any good horror movie creates and leaves you with a sense of threat or danger towards characters that you really care about and are meant to worry for during their duration of whatever horrific act their particular horror movie has placed them in. Within The Gallows however, the filmmakers have decided to not abide by this notion at all and instead placed us with the most hateful, annoying, cringe-inducing protagonists I have seen in a long time, especially that of high-school bully Ryan who's role in the first twenty minutes of the film is to behave like a total ass and act like the kind of person you are just waiting to be murdered horrifically in a film like this in order to wipe his non-nonsensical life from existence. With hateful characters such as this, all The Gallows does is leave you rooting for the supposed evil presence of Charlie to swiftly knock off his victims and get the film over and done with, something of which I sense was not entirely the filmmakers goal. Finally, the film succeeds in bringing one jump to the table and I haven't decided, or really cared about deciding, whether this was due to the scene being actually quite scary or whether the volume of the showing was fundamentally going to make me jump, yet with this being under the production values of Blumhouse, I am going to go for the latter. Hand your head in shame The Gallows, you are a stinker of a horror movie. 

Overall Score: 2/10