Top 10 Worst Films of 2008

by Brian Eggert
01/07/2009

Looking over the last year’s wealth of disappointments and appalling disasters, there’s little that can be said beyond a resigned sigh, coupled by the desperate hope that 2009’s bad movies will be better. Perhaps I shouldn’t complain, but rather be grateful that I made the decision to boycott Beverly Hills Chihuahua and The House Bunny. As Ratatouille’s food critic Anton Ego said of the critical profession, “We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.” Usually I would agree, with the exceptions of the below Top 10 Worst Films of 2008 list. None of these movies are worth a damn.

 

10. Repo! The Genetic Opera

Not only did Repo! The Genetic Opera fail to rouse the intended cult attention the movie was clearly desperate to attain with its Gothic rock opera stylings, it also fell short of achieving any entertainment value whatsoever. Frequent Saw series director Darren Lynn Bousman helmed the picture for an emo demographic that by definition avoids leaving the dungeons of their parents’ basements, so it’s no surprise they refused to flock to theaters for this muddled musical. Making the worst of its otherwise intriguing setup—a future world where financed organs and plastic surgeries are repossessed by a maniacal corporation—the dreadful songs are wholly unmemorable and suspiciously awful, inciting speculation as to whether we’re supposed to be singing along or gouging our eardrums out.

 

9. The Love Guru

The Love Guru challenges viewers unlike any other film in 2008, by asking just how much scatology we can tolerate. If you feel there aren’t enough penis jokes and poop-centric hilarity in movies today, this is the movie for you. And not only are audiences treated with grotesqueries beyond compare, we’re also served a helping of Mike Myers’ worn brand of humor, which reached its peak somewhere around Wayne’s World 2 and has coasted his career ever since. Compare his output to that of Eddie Murphy’s: same style of humor based on wacky characters that get less and less funny as the comedian tries desperately to think of new ones. Here Myers has infused tired pop-culture references, base humor, and mild racism into one of the most unfunny screenings I’ve ever attended.

 

8. Chapter 27

As fun as waiting for paint to dry. Like watching the grass grow. There’s a reason these similes are used sarcastically—the actions themselves are boring. I’m recommending people now start saying, “As tedious as Chapter 27,” since this film was one of the most tiresome films in recent memory. Why would anyone choose to spend their time attempting to deconstruct the nutty ramblings of a clinically insane Mark David Chapman? This film proposes to answer that question, albeit badly. Jared Leto piled on 60 lbs. of chubby to play the role, but Mike Myers received better notices for his portrayal as the Guru Pitka than Leto did here—the performance was terrible. But when the majority of the movie involves nothing more than a crazy person waiting around to shoot John Lennon, how many different ways could Leto have taken that?

 

7. Doomsday

It’s impossible to talk about Doomsday without referencing other, better movies, as every plot point, character, and silly sequence of horror-action was pilfered from other sources. Specifically drawing from the films of John Carpenter (The Thing), writer-director Neil Marshall might as well have used tracing paper instead of film stock to sketch out his reproduction-of-a-film. Indeed, the end result is simply embarrassing and artistically Marshall should be ashamed. He modeled his hero after Snake Plissken, his plot’s setup after Escape from New York and Ghosts of Mars, and he even went so far as to use Carpenter’s standard title font. Why not just sign Carpenter’s name on the end and see how far his thievery can go?

 

6. One Missed Call

From silly lines like “What about the hard candy? There’s gotta be a connection here!” to  a cell phone exorcism, One Missed Call, the first film released in 2008, also happened to be one the worst. One of many based-on-an-Asian-horror-flick releases of this year (others include The Eye and Shutter), this ridiculously stupid movie proved to be an entertaining theatergoing experience, as the audience couldn’t stop laughing. Movies tend to have that effect on audiences when small electronics start killing people. If only someone had had the bright idea to market the film as a comedy, it might have been the laugh-riot of the year. Alas, the laughs were unintentional. This one began what became a fruitful year for Deep Focus Review’s “MST3K Award”.

5. 88 Minutes & Righteous Kill

There were harsher-rated entries earlier on this list of 2008’s worst movies, but looking back, 88 Minutes and Righteous Kill outweigh the other selections with the presence of their stars Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. Those two names should be synonymous with great filmmaking, but they’ve been on the slow decline for years, and now the death of their careers is complete. How far these powerhouse actors have fallen—and what muck they’ve fallen into! Unconscionably bad, unbelievably forced performances headline both pictures: both are lame murder-mystery duds; both are directed by hack Jon Avnet; both contain ridiculously uninvolving “twist” endings; both proceed without a surprise or thrill or exciting moment between them. Playing caricatures of roles they played in better movies from twenty years ago, De Niro and Pacino have lowered themselves to tired acting performed without the slightest effort. The roles are sleepy and pathetic; the scripts are silly and contrived. For two icons of crime cinema, these films couldn’t be more disappointing.

4. The Spirit

Nothing invites embarrassment more than high aspirations falling incredibly short. That’s exactly what Frank Miller’s The Spirit does. Offering a pathetically similar product to Sin City, Miller’s directorial debut comic yarn features well-known actors giving the worst performances of their lives, as they were no doubt as baffled by the tone of Miller’s script as audiences. From outright sexism to just plain idiocy, this otherwise colorful film scrambles to compensate for its lack of cohesion with bright costumes and over-the-top acting. The outcome might have resulted in campy goodness, except Miller so clearly takes himself serious, expecting audiences to find art in his shoddy presentation. Without a single character or line of dialogue that feels genuine, his film is a disaster. Perhaps Miller will now return to the comic page where he belongs, and leave filmmaking to the professionals.

2. College

Never have I hated characters so much, despised their every word, loathed their every motivation, and recoiled at their very presence onscreen. But for the trio of high school jerks in College, my hatred is immeasurably strong and willed by my certainty that this angry, sexist, homophobic, mean-spirited comedy shouldn’t be dismissed as “just another teen movie about getting drunk and having sex.” Remove the abundantly beating heart from the chest of Superbad and you have detestable little pigs in this movie, another one of those gross-out fests that just doesn’t know when to quit. Purveying the worst clichés about college life among the most overused clichés in college sex movies, it’s devoid of any heart—often the sole redeeming factor for this type of film. Without that last-minute rescue element, we’re left with trashy people doing trashy things and learning nothing from their experience. And for all this nasty movie puts us through, it’s not funny in the least.  

 

2. In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Seige Tale

What’s worse than an Uwe Boll film? An epic Uwe Boll film. Specifically one where he pisses away $60 million on a videogame-to-film adaptation barely worthy of a Sci-Fi Channel Original. Usually reserved for direct-to-DVD fodder on the shelves of your local video store, Boll’s trademark awfulness as a director achieved this anti-masterpiece starring Jason Statham. In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale not only blatantly steals from The Lord of the Rings films, but it features Ray Liotta in sequins and Burt Reynolds failing to be kingly. Strange that such names were even involved in the project; hasn’t Hollywood learned about Boll yet? (Someone should tell them before it’s too late.) Insisting upon its own greatness for over two hours, this staggeringly bad filmic enema gurgles up a sewer of static acting, sloppy direction, and the deluded notion that it’s any good. Pretty much all we’ve come to expect from a Uwe Boll effort.

 

1. House

Advertised as a “Christian horror movie” and accompanied by all the second-rate-ness such a label implies, House supposedly contains a religious message stuffed somewhere between the psycho killer, horny hillbillies, and ghostly apparitions. Even if such a message existed, it wouldn’t matter—this nonsensical movie contains some of the most unintelligible storytelling I’ve ever had the displeasure of scratching my head over. Jumping genres and scaling logic, every horror subgenre out there is employed, if only for a moment or so before moving onto the next. Following the plot requires steadfast endurance, that is, if you can convince yourself to watch all the way through. As I wrote in my review, “No manner of cutting, starvation, boiling, denailing, castration, Chinese water torture, stretching, sleep deprivation, tooth extraction, or tickle torture could break me now, because I’ve endured this movie.” Indeed, getting through House was one of my greatest accomplishments as a film critic in 2008. Now let’s never speak of this film again…  

 

Dishonorable Mentions:
Babylon A.D., Day of the Dead, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Death Race, Igor, The Midnight Meat Train, Over Her Dead Body, Prom Night, Saw V, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Strange Wilderness, and 10,000 B.C.