The Worst Movies Of 2017 So Far

The movie business isn't perfect.
Every year is always going to have a few cinematic disasters, and 2017 isn't any different.
While the year has produced some truly great films, it's also had its fair share of clunkers,
from malformed horror movies and badly made biopics to overbearing blockbusters that just
might give you a migraine.
Here are the worst movies that have been released in 2017 so far.
The Bye Bye Man
With movies like Split, Get Out, and It Comes at Night, 2017 has been a pretty solid year
for horror.
But on the flip side, we also got The Bye Bye Man.
"Tell me."
"Bye bye man."
Written by Jonathan Penner and directed by Stacey Title, this January fright flick has
been described as an "insult to horror fans" and "one of the emptiest, nonsensical haunted
thrillers ever to fail genre audiences."
And The Bye Bye Man totally deserved the bashing it took from critics.
As a movie, it fails on every level imaginable, from the acting to the directing to the laughably
bloodless kills.
And worst of all, the bad guy's mythology doesn't actually make any sense.
What's up with the coins?
What's up with the train?
What's up with the CGI mess of a hellhound?
"Don't say it, don't think it."
And definitely don't watch it.
Sleepless
Directed by Baran bo Odar, Sleepless is an American remake of a French thriller called
Sleepless Night.
The plot follows a crooked Las Vegas cop named Vincent on a mission to rescue his son from
a gang of local drug dealers.
But while the foreign film has been hailed as a "masterclass," the English-language adaptation
is the worst kind of movie in the world: it isn't good, but it isn't laughably bad either.
Instead, it's amazingly average.
Or as one critic put it, Sleepless is "funny sometimes but not funny enough, exciting sometimes
but never exciting enough," which isn't exactly a ringing endorsement.
The Shack
In 2007, author William P. Young published The Shack, a best-selling novel about grief,
guilt, and God.
Ten years later, it was turned into a movie starring Sam Worthington, Octavia Spencer,
and Tim McGraw, and — spoiler alert — one of those actors literally plays God.
Variety summed it up as "a Hallmark-card therapy session."
If you're looking for deep truths about religion, you'd be better off looking just about anywhere
else.
"Having fun?"
Nope, you won't find any answers to life's big questions here — unless you wanted to
know if God is a Neil Young fan.
Second spoiler alert: yup.
On the other hand, you will get to see Sam Worthington race Jesus across a lake.
So there's that.
Collide
Directed and co-written by Eran Creevy, Collide tells the classic tale of a young crook, played
by Nicholas Hoult, who gives up his life of crime after falling in love with a bartender,
only to get involved in one last heist to pay for his girlfriend's kidney transplant.
Unfortunately, none of the pieces of the film really amount to much.
Hoult just can't hold the movie together, and according to one review, the "script is
so far from great that it's actually diabolical."
IndieWire, on the other hand, puts blame on Creevy not for his writing, but for his incompetence
behind the camera, resulting in a move "with the credibility of a soap opera and the creativity
of a car commercial."
However, almost all the critics agree that if you're going to watch this thing, you'll
at least get a kick out of Anthony Hopkins and Ben Kingsley's performances.
All Eyez on Me
Tupac Shakur was one of the most influential artists of his generation, and he definitely
deserved a better biopic than All Eyez on Me.
The movie glosses heavily over the rapper's career, hitting the highlights instead of
really digging into his life.
As many critics have pointed out, the film plays more like a Wikipedia page than an actual
movie.
Here's hoping one day, some future filmmaker makes a Tupac movie that delves a bit deeper.
Baywatch
Based on the hit TV show starring David Hasselhoff and Pamela Anderson, Baywatch looked pretty
good on paper.
It stars Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron as super-shredded lifeguards who spend their days saving lives,
cracking jokes, and fighting crime.
But aft er Baywatch hit theaters in May 2017, critics immediately slammed the movie for
being...well, bad.
So what's up with the hate?
Maybe it's because the movie focused a little too much on jokes involving body parts and
fluids.
It's not hard to see why critics didn't feel the need to save this movie from drowning
at the box office.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul
Directed by David Bowers, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul is the fourth entry in
a series of miserable kids films.
And if you love your children, you'll never let them watch any of these movies, ever.
The Long Haul finds the Heffley family on a road trip across America.
Along the way, audiences are bombarded with a never-ending parade of projectile vomit,
urine-filled bottles, and more lazy poop jokes than you ever dreamed possible.
As one critic put it, "You'll never know how good the first three Diary of a Wimpy Kid
movies were until you're forced to see the fourth one."
Underworld: Blood Wars
Kate Beckinsale has been playing the character of Selene since 2003.
In other words, she's been making the Underworld movies for a long, long time.
It's a shame they're all so terrible.
Keeping with tradition, Underworld: Blood Wars lives up to the franchise's monstrously
awful reputation.
Only Underworld: Evolution has a worse Rotten Tomatoes score.
As usual, the plot is "vampires fight werewolves, and Selene wears a lot of leather."
The directing in uninspired, the dialogue is stilted, and it may just be the bluest
movie ever made.
In other words, it's probably time to drive a stake through this franchise's heart and
let Kate Beckinsale move on to bigger and better things.
She's killed enough Lycans for one lifetime.
The Space Between Us
This sci-fi story starts with a bunch of astronauts on their way to the red planet.
But evidently, they skipped all their medical tests because it turns out one of the scientist
is pregnant.
She dies giving birth, and her son Gardner, played by Asa Butterfield, spends the next
16 years on Mars.
Eventually, he risks coming to Earth in order to find his long-lost dad and meet up with
a girl he's been chatting with online.
Perhaps the story might've worked better if Butterfield and co-star Britt Robertson made
a convincing couple, but the duo lack any spark whatsoever.
As a result, we're treated to a second-rate love story that The Playlist called "the equivalent
of astronaut ice cream, lacking in substance and crumbling to bits at the slightest pressure."
CHIPs
Ever wish Hollywood would bring back the homophobic humor of the '90s?
No?
Then you might want to pass on CHIPs.
Written and directed by Dax Shepard, the movie focuses on two motorcycle cops, played by
Shepard and Michael Pena, who are trying to bust a dirty cop.
But really, they spend most of their time ogling women, joking about cat poop, and accidentally
touching each other's private parts.
"I coulda sworn I felt your nose or your lips."
Might been a little bit… a little bit of contact."
With a movie this classy, it should come as no surprise that CHIPs crashed and burned
with audiences and critics.
All in all, CHIPs is the kind of comedy that gives the genre a bad name, and it makes you
wonder what these actors were thinking when they joined the film in the first place.
The Mummy
Ever since Iron Man burst onto the scene in 2008, movie studios have desperately been
trying to copy the Marvel model.
Now, we've got the Dark Universe, an attempt by Universal to cash in on the interconnected
movie franchise craze.
But instead of relying on talking raccoons or thunder gods, the Dark Universe is reviving
classic movie monsters like the Bride of Frankenstein, the Invisible Man, and the Mummy.
And the always classic practice of handgun-archaeology.
"Nick!"
Which we can all agree Brendan Frasier did better.
Unfortunately for Universal, they bungled their whole rebooted universe thing right
out of the gate.
The Mummy bombed at the domestic box office, and the film was savaged by critics.
From the opening scene involving Iraqi insurgents to the undead mummy herself, few critics found
anything positive to say about the film.
And if you thought the screenplay was less than original, well, most critics agree, as
plenty of reviews pointed out how The Mummy lifted element from movies like Lifeforce
and An American Werewolf in London.
But worst of all, The Mummy tried to set up a cinematic universe in just two hours, whereas
the MCU unfolded over several movies.
By trying to lay the framework for a future franchise in just one go, the story suffered.
As a result, The Mummy hasn't done much to brighten up the future of Universal's Dark
Universe.
Transformers: The Last Knight
Michael Bay finally did it.
He finally made the worst Transformers movie of all time.
"Mm, genius.
Hi.
I'm Michael Bay."
Not even Anthony Hopkins could salvage this mess from the scrapheap.
Not that he really seemed to care about trying.
"Yes, but you want to know, don't you, dude?"
What can anyone say about The Last Knight to sum up its awfulness?
Rolling Stone called it "2017's most toxic movie," and Empire wrote that it's "overlong,
overstuffed, and soulless."
The plot has something to do with King Arthur and a magical staff, but really, it's all
just an excuse for CGI robots to smash one another, and for a bunch of unnecessary explosions.
"Awesome barbecue!
Awesome pool!"
As if that weren't enough, the plot even drags Harriet Tubman into the mix.
She's an American hero, and this is how we repay her?
The Circle
With some movies, you can tell right away that they're going to be awful.
But when some films bomb, it's a little more surprising.
Take The Circle, for example.
It's based on a novel by award-winning author Dave Eggers, and it features a who's who of
big Hollywood names, including Emma Watson, Tom Hanks, and John Boyega.
The plot centers on a creepy internet corporation known as The Circle, which wants to create
a world where privacy is a thing of the past.
Unfortunately, the film hits you right over the head with its message.
As The Atlantic put it, "It's all like an episode of Black Mirror, if Black Mirror made
no effort whatsoever to be subtle."
Fifty Shades Darker
The sequel to Fifty Shades of Gray, Fifty Shades Darker will leave you writhing in pain…but
then, maybe that's want the movie wants.
Either way, if you're hoping for a cinematic masterpiece here, prepare to be disappointed.
As pointed out by The New York Times, the movie is full of "abrupt swings in tone, dead-end
detours and flatline performances, including from [Dakota] Johnson."
And if you're looking for titillation, you probably won't find it here, either.
Sure, Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson are good-looking, but that can't make up for the
lack of sexual tension.
As Slate put it, "For every inventively choreographed bedroom caper, there are three that are about
as sexy as a Geico ad."
Just keep that in mind when Fifty Shades Freed shows up in 2018.
After all, Geico ads are a whole lot cheaper than a theater ticket.
"I am Groot."
Yea, no no, your line is Geico could save you 15 percent or more."
"I am Groot.
No…
15 percent or more."
Rings
Perhaps more than any other genre, horror movies are notorious for generating so many
sequels that you forget why the first one was good.
That's true for Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Paranormal Activity — and
now The Ring.
Nearly 15 years after the American remake made us all a little nervous about TV static,
we've got a new, watered-down version called Rings.
The plot is basically a carbon copy of the first film.
There's a killer videotape, and someone watches it.
Birth.Movies.Death.
summed up the problem with Rings perfectly, writing that the movie "becomes something
far worse than just bad: boring.
And also bad.
But so, so boring."
In other words, first you watch it, then you...go do something else.
Anything, really.
Because Rings makes no lasting impact whatsoever.
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The Worst Movies Of 2017 So Far

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