While it cannot be said 2017 was the single worst year for films released, there was a significant drop-off in tickets sold in the US which was much reported in trade bibles such as THR and Variety.
As well as counting superhero and franchise fatigue as one factor, there's also the fact there was a lot of crap released this year. Let's make it clear from the very beginning of this feature, friends, that if there's a Hell below us, any one of these films could happily play there on repeat as divine judgement for a life of sin.
Read on and be damned.
10. THE BYE BYE MAN
A film so laughably forgettable, so terribly redundant that we're only including it primarily because the titular star - Doug Jones - also stars in one of the best films to come in 2018, The Shape Of Water. This, however? So bad we can't actually muster the energy to criticise it any further. How bad was it? So bad we're not even including a trailer and we're instead going to include this video of Powers Boothe - who sadly departed this mortal coil this year - saying "Well....bye" in Tombstone.
9. SMURFS: THE LOST VILLAGE
As we discussed in our Worst Films Of 2017 So Far piece, Smurfs: The Lost Village had some of the worst animation we've seen in a widely-released film and - most heinously of all - featured Gordon Ramsay as a baking Smurf. Gordon Ramsay's whole thing is that he is a chef, not a baker. Why would you do that? Also, why is Julia Roberts voicing characters in low-quality animated films? Is Julia Roberts hard up for cash or something? Sure, Notting Hill was a long time ago and so on, but Erin Brockovich was a great film and there's also Ocean's Eleven too. Is she in some kind of trouble?
8. CHIPS
The best thing we can possibly say about CHiPs is that it didn't make any kind of money at the box office and that possibly upset its executive producer, Trump Treasury Secretary and Possible Witness For The Impending Impeachment Steve Mnuchin, for a day or two before he went back to actively aiding and abetting that useless f*ck behind the desk of the Oval Office.
7. RINGS
Rings opens with a plane crashing into a crowded city. There are moments in Rings that a fiery, destructive plane crash that results in hundreds of deaths is more preferable than watching Big Bang Theory star Johnny Galecki hurl his way through some of the most bland dialogue you've ever heard. Also, the film looks like it was filmed through the bottom of a dirty fish tank. Everything looked washed out and green. Oh, it's meant to be like the video itself? Whatever.
6. FLATLINERS
Diego Luna. Ellen Page. The female lead from The Vampire Diaries. A supporting character from Transparent and a guy who was in War & Peace. In a remake nobody ever asked for. Directed by a guy whose last English-language film was co-financed by WWE Studios and bombed so hard he had to go back to Denmark. Insert flat-lining pun here and move on.
5. MOTHER!
As a nod to how divisive this film was, we've also included it on our 10 Best Movies Of 2017 list also. Gavin Burke, one of the site's longest-serving reviewers, gave the film five stars out of a possible five. That's his opinion, of course, and we respect it. We also thought that this film lacked any kind of subtlety, hammered down so hard on its themes and motifs to the point of it being stupidly obvious, so poorly acted by Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem that you'd be forgiven for thinking it was their first time on screen, and featured one of the most gratuitously violent scenes in modern movie history and done so purely for shock value - and all of it under the guise of an art movie. Wrong. This was a vanity project by Darren Aronofsky that went too far. But, y'know, it was divisive and it got people talking. Because the world needs more division, apparently.
4. FIFTY SHADES DARKER
Ever the reliable punching bag, Fifty Shades Darker offered itself up for another pounding this year. Featuring a completely pointless scene that involves a crashing helicopter - from which Jamie Dornan emerges unscathed and proceeds straight to his impeccably pristine apartment in New York - the sequel had all the finesse and grace of a gigantic steel dildo.
3. A BAD MOMS CHRISTMAS
There's probably a joke in here somewhere about the narrative surrounding Susan Sarandon being blamed in part for Donald Trump's victory and starring in A Bad Moms Christmas in the same year, but we're nowhere near skilled enough to craft it. So we'll leave it at this film should have be buried alive, have concrete poured on top of it and then have a motorway built over it to ensure nobody ever finds it ever again.
2. GEOSTORM
A film so terrible that it had to be reshot by the guy who did Judge Dredd, arrived in Irish cinemas during one of the worst storms in the history of the state, and managed to make Andy Garcia look like he was out of place. How can you make Andy Garcia look out of place? He's Andy Garcia. He was in Black Rain and The Untouchables. You did that, Geostorm. You did all of that. Also, Gerard Butler needs to either fire his agent or jack in the whole acting thing because this is two years on the hop that he's featured in our end-of-year shit-list.
1. THE EMOJI MOVIE
I need to get personal for a moment here, and if you'll permit me, I want to explain exactly why I have so much hatred for The Emoji Movie with a little bit of confessional writing.
I specifically avoided seeing this film because, well, I just really didn't like the look of it. Through a series of circumstances, it turned out that I had to go see it for a work thing and, well, I saw it. This film made me question my choice of career. I know you're reading this and you're probably thinking, "Here, I've got to work fifty hours a week just to make a living and I'm doing something far more difficult than watching TJ Miller and Patrick Stewart make fools of themselves." You're absolutely right.
Watching movies and writing reviews for them for a living is a handy number. No question about it. But the fact is that finding paid work in this profession for doing that is extremely difficult and often takes a lot of sacrifices in order for it to come into being. I've had to make a few sacrifices in order to pursue this as a career, and I never once doubted my choices until I saw The Emoji Movie.
This film made me question what I was doing with my life in a really profound way that I wasn't ready for and haven't been able to fully process. It gave me an existential crisis on a scale that I wasn't even close to being able to fully engage with. More to the point, I walked out and I felt nothing. I didn't feel angry, I didn't feel sad, I didn't feel frustrated - I felt absolutely nothing and it was terrifying to me. There wasn't any Emoji that could describe my experience with this film, other than maybe a bottomless black void.
I'm thinking back now on The Emoji Movie and I've been wondering if I was just in a negative headspace when I went to see it, or if it was just something going on elsewhere in my life that I wasn't acknowledging that maybe played a role in why I so intensely hated this film. I examined my situation, took stock and found that I actually had it pretty good at the time and have had since. It's just this film was so bad, it made me question my career and life choices that led to me sitting in a darkened room, watching it. So, yeah, The Emoji Movie is the worst film of 2017.
Thanks for reading all that, and sorry for rambling.
