Top 10 Worst Movies of 2021
2021 is no different than the year before: a mostly gloomy 12 months with the never-ending pandemic remains at large. In the midst of everything that has been going on over the course of 365 days including months-long nationwide lockdown and personal health issues, I managed to watch as many movies as humanly possible. From cinema-only to made-for-streaming features, here are my Top 10 Worst Movies of 2021.
10. Fast & Furious 9
Words like “far-fetched” and “preposterous” are often synonymous with the Fast & Furious franchise and for the past eight movies, I was able to tolerate the franchise’s over-the-top silliness. But in Fast & Furious 9, returning director Justin Lin has lost his edge this time around — easily the franchise’s worst entry since Fast & Furious 4 back in 2009. And ironically enough, Lin was responsible for the disappointing fourth instalment. While Fast & Furious 9 has a few well-staged action sequences, most of them are strangely lacking visceral flair and energy. It doesn’t help either when Lin tries to get serious with the protracted storyline involving Dom’s (Vin Diesel) past and even introduced an abrupt addition of introducing Dom’s long-lost brother played by John Cena. If that’s not enough, Fast & Furious 9 is also painfully overlong at 142 minutes (!) and the decision of resurrecting a supposedly dead fan-favourite character (Sung Kang’s Han) clearly shows how desperate this franchise has become at this point. (Read my full review here)
9. The Reckoning
It’s nice to see Neil Marshall returns to his familiar genre territory in The Reckoning, a period horror drama about a young widow (Charlotte Kirk’s Grace Haverstock) being accused of witchcraft. Besides, Marshall previously gave us two of among best horror movies of 2000 including Dog Soldiers (2002) and The Descent (2005). But The Reckoning turns out to be Marshall’s surprisingly worst movie to date, even though it does contain some effective gore and violence. And yet, there aren’t enough to overcome most of the movie’s shortcomings, notably the way Charlotte Kirk’s main character is portrayed like she’s a sexed-up cosplayer or a fashion model. Don’t get me started with the makeup, costume and hairstyle that looks out of place for a movie set during the bleak era of the Great Plague and witch trials. The Reckoning also suffered from repetitive scenes of Grace getting humiliated and tortured to the point it becomes tedious.
8. Cherry
Anthony and Joe Russo had a great run with Marvel Studios, notably Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) and Avengers: Endgame (2019). But their latest directorial effort in Cherry is shockingly a letdown. The Russos cram as many different visual styles as possible ranging from aspect ratios to colour gradings and camera placements. It’s almost like watching them trying to emulate Oliver Stone’s trippy filmmaking style in Natural Born Killers (1994). The overall style-over-substance direction doesn’t really help much. And so does the emotionally detached storyline that stretches way too long at over 140 minutes. Not even Tom Holland’s go-for-broke performance as the title character is enough to compensate for this bloated dud. (Read my full review here)
7. Old
I have to admit M. Night Shyamalan’s Old boasts an interesting setup: A group of two families find themselves ageing rapidly under mysterious circumstances while vacationing on a remote beach. But despite some of Shyamalan’s engaging camerawork and a potential buildup during the earlier part of the movie, Old grows (no pun intended) progressively sillier even before its 108-minute runtime is coming to its end. The movie also suffered from one tedious exposition after another as well as some questionable and bad acting. Then, there’s the twist ending that feels like Shyamalan gives us a middle finger with his ludicrous, what-the-heck-am-I-watching third-act reveal.
6. Spiral: From the Book of Saw
Some horror franchises should stay dead. And that certainly rings true for Spiral: From the Book of Saw. This time, the latest movie in the neverending Saw franchise is neither a direct sequel nor a prequel of any kind but more of a spin-off. Darren Lynn Bousman, who directed Saw II–IV, tries hard to keep the franchise fresh by incorporating a more mystery-driven plot and police procedural. And yet, it all reeks of poor writing. He doesn’t forget the usual torture porn that has been synonymous with the Saw franchise since the first movie. But the gore and violence are hardly shocking. The acting is just as bad, particularly Chris Rock (yes, that Chris Rock), whose attempt to play a rare-serious role as a hard-boiled police detective is ironically… laughable.
5. Demonic
On paper, Neill Blomkamp’s mix of sci-fi and supernatural horror that incorporates virtual reality and demonic possession sounds like an intriguing idea. But the execution is shockingly his worst movie to date. Frankly, it’s hard to believe that Blomkamp is actually responsible for Demonic — a far cry from what he used to impress both critics and audiences in District 9 (2009). Even his subsequent movies including Elysium (2013) and Chappie (2015) that received mixed results has their few notable moments. Not so for Demonic, where Carly Pope’s hollow lead performance while Blomkamp’s sluggish screenplay is plagued with cheap visuals and devoid of effective scares.
4. Home Sweet Home Alone
Here’s a reboot that nobody asked for in the first place. And yet, the Disney-owned 20th Century Studios still think it’s a good idea to piss us off with this dreadful wreck of a holiday comedy. The premise is more or less the same, with a boy (played by obnoxious and annoying Archie Yates as Max Mercer) is left behind at home by his family. Long story short, he has to defend himself against a pair of burglars trying to break into his home. Unfortunately, the so-called “burglars” in question aren’t actually burglars similar to Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern’s characters in the beloved 1990 original. Instead, the “burglars” in Home Sweet Home Alone turn out to be a financially troubled married couple (Rob Delaney and Ellie Kemper) who desperately wanted to get back their valuable possession (an old doll with an upside-down face). This, in turn, made me hard to enjoy watching them undeservingly get tortured in every imaginable (kiddie-) way possible by Max. As a result, it’s all hardly funny and not even the amount of nods to the original Home Alone can save this drivel that I have wasted over 90 minutes of my time streaming it on Disney+.
3. Coming 2 America
Given the huge generational and cultural gap between the 1980s (John Landis’ 1988 original) and the current era, it would be interesting to see how Craig Brewer depicts Eddie Murphy’s prince-turned-king Akeem and Arsenio Hall’s Semmi from their outsiders’ point of view in Coming 2 America. But Brewer fails to capitalise on the sequel’s potential that could have explored another Akeem and Semmi’s fish-out-of-water experience in today’s America. The nearly two-hour length is a chore to sit through, coupled with the sequel’s mostly unfunny plot and its ill-fated decision of diluting the original’s R-rating in favour of PG-13 instead. (Read my full review here)
2. G Storm
The ICAC-themed Storm franchise has always been erratic in terms of quality. But the previous instalment — the fourth one, to be exact — sees franchise director David Lam manage to come up with a fairly entertaining mix of prison genre and undercover drama in P Storm (2019). But G Storm, which marks the fifth and final instalment in the franchise, is a huge disappointment. Lam’s direction is as amateurish as he gets, complete with poor camera placements and jittery shooting style regardless of action or verbal moments. The story is so hastily written to the point it feels like everything is rushed to end the movie as quickly as possible. Louis Koo, who made such a lasting impression delivering solid support in Anita last month, is wasted in his recurring role as the ICAC principal investigator William Luk.
1. Chaos Walking
Poor Tom Holland. He may have a terrific run with Spider-Man: No Way Home but he also happens to end up with not one (see Cherry in No. 8) but two worst movies in this 2021 list. It’s hard to believe Chaos Walking is actually a big-budget YA sci-fi action film, which reportedly cost US$100 million to make. Director Doug Liman, who gave us The Bourne Identity (2002) and Edge of Tomorrow (2014), seems to be in autopilot mode here. The movie lacks a high-stakes scenario and the fact that Liman depicts the “noise” in the form of a colourful haze, where the characters literally thinking out loud (imagine one of David Lynch’s most annoying parts in 1984’s Dune being placed into a major focus) is both odd and frustrating. The latter is particularly evident since the movie requires us to pay attention to both of the characters’ spoken dialogue and inner thoughts. The story — adapted from Patrick Ness’ bestselling YA novel, The Knife of Never Letting Go — is a yawn-fest of shallow storytelling and mediocre acting that wasted the combined talents of Tom Holland, Daisy Ridley and others like Mads Mikkelsen and Demian Bichir.
