With every year bringing a whole slew of brilliant new movies to the big screen, there are of course those that fail to light a fire in the bellies of those watching. Here, we take a look at the worst five movie releases of this year, with the entries coming from a whole range of different genres! Read on, so you know what not to watch when the January sales start!
5) ‘The Dark Tower’
Idris Elba took to the screen as the Gunslinger in ‘The Dark Tower’
This science-fiction Western movie was the product of a whole lot of waiting from fans of Stephen King’s ‘Dark Tower’ set of novels. In pre-production, the movie had already been through a lot, with a slew of big names attached to it before being removed and replaced by others. Rights changed hands more times than we could count, and so when the film finally settled and we got Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey in the movie’s leading roles, with Nikolaj Arcel as director, we thought we were on to a winner! The deviation from the stories in the books however was the wrong choice to make on this occasion. A dreary and boring picture was presented to fans, and any chance of a sequel seemed to go up in flames.
4) ‘Rings’
The franchise that returns to die out came back for another instalment, with F. Javier Gutiérrez sitting in the director’s chair, but failing to make a good impression with audiences across the globe. The usual story was in place; a young woman found herself cursed with just seven days left to live after watching an unsettling videotape. Samara Morgan is of course the demon that’s out to get anybody who watches just a slice of her story, but now rather than being the terrifying entity she once was for audiences, she’s turned into a bit of parody for herself. In a year that saw the release of ‘IT’; a record-breaking horror movie, this just wasn’t up to par.
3) ‘Fifty Shades Darker’
Jamie Dornan and Dakota Fanning returned to their ‘Fifty Shades’ roles earlier this year
The ‘Fifty Shades’ series continued this year with the release of ‘Fifty Shades Freed’, taking Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) and Christian Grey’s (Jamie Dornan) story to the next level, bringing in big names such as Rita Ora, Kim Basinger and Eric Johnson. When your subject isn’t the greatest story to begin with – in this case the ‘Fifty Shades’ trilogy of novels – then not much can be done by filmmakers to turn the narrative into a compelling must-see. We imagine E. L. James making her way onto production to oversee her fan-fiction-turned-novel-series-turned-movie-series may have something to do with no major changes being made to the story to make it a better one…
2) ‘Flatliners’
Rebooting the 1990 movie of the same name, director Niels Arden Oplev got some big names together in the form of Ellen Page, Diego Luna, Nina Dobrev, James Norton and Kiersey Clemons to take on the roles of five medical students, obsessed with whatever may come after death. Though the premise is a hugely interesting one, and the opportunities are limitless when you’re putting on the big screen something that isn’t based in any sort of reality, ‘Flatliners’ really did fall flat with audiences. Instead of taking the original film and turning it into something wholly different for fans, those involved here did the exact same thing, but managed to make it more boring. Not worth the time, or effort.
1) ‘The Emoji Movie’
Both critics and wider audiences hated ‘The Emoji Movie’
Bringing the tiny little pictures we all use in messaging to the big screen for a whole movie was never really a good idea, was it? Whether it was because he thought he had a genuinely good opportunity to make a great movie here, or whether it was a complete cash grab, director Tony Leondis did absolutely nothing to prove those with doubts about the film wrong. An all-star cast included T. J. Miller, James Corden, Anna Faris, Christina Aguilera and even Patrick Stewart (as the poop emoji, no less) did their best with the script they were given, but by the time all was said and done, viewers were left wondering just what amount of money would make them tarnish their reputation in such a way. A wholly unneccessary release, but one that took in $217 million worldwide.
