Worst movies of 2019, according to critics
A lot of times, movie critics are harsh just for the sake of tearing something down. In other cases, however, filmmakers work hard to earn the scathing reviews they receive—and 2019 was no exception. Despite an exciting year of big superhero movies, spooky horror flicks, strong dramas, and comedies to remember, each of those genres and more also produced plenty of films that will be left on the trash heap of cinematic history. This article focuses on the latter: the movies released in 2019 that you'd likely be wise to skip.
In some cases, big-name stars seemed to be in it only for the check. Other movies suffered from a pure lack of talent in front of the camera, behind it, or both. Other times, it felt like sequels were made purely on the strength of the original and not because the franchise called for another installment. No matter the reason, 2019's flops include comedies that forgot to include laughs, horror movies that left out the scares, convoluted dramas, contrived rom-coms, confusing sci-fi, and big, sweeping productions that attempted to tackle tough social issues, but instead fell flat. But since art and taste are subjective, who's to say which movies were good and which ones were bad?
Stacker ranked the 50 worst movies of the year in descending order from best (least terrible, in this case) to worst. To do so, the team compiled November 2019 data from Metacritic on the 2019 films that received the worst reviews from critics and then ranked them according to their Metascore. In the case of even matchups, ties were broken by the number of reviews the movie received. To make it onto the list, each film had to be released in theaters or online between January 1, 2019, and December 31, 2019. Also, each film had to have at least seven reviews to qualify for a spot.
#50. Miss Bala
- Director: Catherine Hardwicke
- Metascore: 41
- Number of reviews: 30
- Runtime: 104 min
On Feb. 1, 2019, Richard Roeper of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, “Anyone thinking about plunking down the bucks to check out ‘Miss Bala’ this weekend: You DEFINITELY deserve better than this.” Although Gina Rodriguez was widely hailed as showing the potential for legit lead action roles, many of those same critics also fumed about how heavily this Tijuana-set cross-border crime thriller relies on hokey, fabricated feminism and slick Hollywood stylings.
#49. An Acceptable Loss
- Director: Joe Chappelle
- Metascore: 40
- Number of reviews: 11
- Runtime: 102 min
Critic after critic praised the efforts of the cast, particularly Jamie Lee Curtis, in "An Acceptable Loss;" but they also conceded that those efforts fell short of redeeming the movie. In today’s whistleblower times, a tale about an isolated truth-teller struggling to expose a nefarious government plot should be relevant, but it rings hollow as a political thriller. “It's all pretty muddled and murky while not particularly interesting or well-directed," wrote Peter Rainer from Film Week,
#48. Anna
- Director: Luc Besson
- Metascore: 40
- Number of reviews: 14
- Runtime: 119 min
The kindest words most critics could muster about “Anna” was that the director managed to throw some red meat to his loyalists. In the words of Allison Rose from FlickDirect, “...if you are a Besson fan, you won't be disappointed.” Many others, however, fixated on the film’s exhaustive use of flashbacks and stock footage gunfights. According to a review from indieWire, “The gunplay in Anna grows repetitive before long, and the heroine's invincibility feels like a cheap substitute for the power that Besson wields over her.”
#47. Domino
- Director: Brian De Palma
- Metascore: 40
- Number of reviews: 20
- Runtime: 89 min
It’s a tough break for Brian De Palma fans to have to see his name attached to a movie like “Domino,” or, in the words of Sara Stewart from the New York Post, “It's sad to see a director at the bottom of his game.” Mercifully short but jumbled all the way, it’s an international terrorist hunt thriller that ultimately fails to thrill.
#46. Shaft
- Director: Tim Story
- Metascore: 40
- Number of reviews: 31
- Runtime: 111 min
If critical consensus is to be believed, "Shaft" managed to repel devotees of the original blaxploitation classic while also failing to introduce the material to a younger audience in any meaningful way. It's more regressive than throwback; and it's hard to find a critic who appreciated the movie's multigenerational approach to the "Shaft" character. David Edelstein from New York Magazine pulled no punches in writing, "It stinks to heaven."
#45. The Goldfinch
- Director: John Crowley
- Metascore: 40
- Number of reviews: 41
- Runtime: 149 min
If someone saw “The Goldfinch” without having heard of the book of the same name, they would probably never guess that the movie’s source material is a 2014 Pulitzer Prize winner that spent 30 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. An aesthetically beautiful but deflated drama, its characters don’t ring true as human. “The Goldfinch is the kind of movie that you want to pick up and cuddle, and stroke its befuddled head, and say: ‘There, there, it's all right, you did your best,'" wrote Kevin Maher from Times (UK),
#43. Tyler Perry's A Madea Family Funeral (tie)
- Director: Tyler Perry
- Metascore: 39
- Number of reviews: 11
- Runtime: 109 min
Fittingly, the Madea franchise limped across the finish line with a finale that defines the series. Tyler Perry’s “A Madea Family Funeral” is more proof that Perry’s matriarchal “Madea” character should have been put out to pasture eight or 10 “Madeas” ago. Dominic Griffin of the Armchair Auteur griped, “Basically, I watched all 11 Madea movies for no reason…”
#43. Jexi (tie)
- Directors: Jon Lucas and Scott Moore
- Metascore: 39
- Number of reviews: 11
- Runtime: 84 min
Although it succeeds in scolding its audience about being too connected to their devices, “Jexi” fails in its foundational mission as a comedy—to get laughs. Adam DeVine spends an impossible amount of time hamming it up for the camera out of pure necessity—the co-star he’s bouncing his lines off of is a smartphone. Tim Stevens from Comicsverse advises, “If you want to make a movie with some regressive, oft-repeated views on technology, at least commit to the bit.”
#42. The Dirt
- Director: Jeff Tremaine
- Metascore: 39
- Number of reviews: 17
- Runtime: 107 min
An ode to Mötley Crüe’s notorious rockstar excesses, “The Dirt” tries for an unflinching portrait of shocking debauchery in the days of glam metal, but it winds up being just another bad biopic. Ω“This is rock bad-boy lore as a rocking bore, an endless parade of recreated afterparty ecstasy and emptiness that robs ‘The Dirt’ of the vicarious thrill it had on the page," wrote Kevin Maher from Times (UK),
#41. UglyDolls
- Director: Kelly Asbury
- Metascore: 39
- Number of reviews: 20
- Runtime: 87 min
The woke messaging is contrived and inauthentic, but at least the songs are terrible. So goes the critical consensus on "Ugly Dolls," a thinly disguised advertisement for Hasbro plush toys that fails to deliver on its important message of self-love. One 3AW critic summed it up in writing, "Even undemanding kids in need of distraction might find it hard not to get restless during this word-heavy, woke animation."
#40. The Intruder
- Director: Deon Taylor
- Metascore: 39
- Number of reviews: 25
- Runtime: 102 min
Cookie-cutter thriller fare at its worst, critics panned “The Intruder” mostly just because it’s been done so many countless times before—and audiences know that Dennis Quaid is capable of much, much more. A predictable plot is muddied by gratuitous violence that seems more fit for a slasher flick than a stalker/suspense movie. Dennis Schwartz of Ozus’ World Movie Reviews called it simply “an inert thriller.”
#39. Ode to Joy
- Director: Jason Winer
- Metascore: 38
- Number of reviews: 7
- Runtime: 97 min
“The movie was inspired by a real person but nearly everything that happens here plays as phony,” Los Angeles Times Critic Noel Murray wrote of “Ode to Joy.” Based on the story of a man who loses control of his muscles when dealing with intense emotions, it’s hard to even tell if the wannabe feel-good flick is supposed to be a drama or a rom-com.
#38. The Golden Glove
- Director: Fatih Akin
- Metascore: 38
- Number of reviews: 15
- Runtime: 115 min
The crowded serial killer drama genre simply didn’t have room for yet another tepid attempt at bringing a real-life monster to life on the big screen. Based on the 1970s murder spree of German killer Fritz Honka, “The Golden Glove” made audiences squirm, but offered little beyond forced cringing. A Time magazine critic wrote, “Even hardcore Akin devotees should proceed with caution, and be ready for disillusionment.”
#37. Murder Mystery
- Director: Kyle Newacheck
- Metascore: 38
- Number of reviews: 19
- Runtime: 97 min
There was a time when Adam Sandler could slap his name on any movie, call it a comedy, and sell out theaters—convince Jennifer Aniston to come along for the ride and the formula can’t lose. But the late ’90s were a long time ago and this half-hearted effort at middle-brow comedy made audiences feel like Aniston, Sandler, and Netflix took for granted their willingness to give two old pros the benefit of the doubt. A RogerEbert.com critic called “Murder Mystery,” “Just entertaining enough to make you wish it was actually good.”
#36. Gemini Man
- Director: Ang Lee
- Metascore: 38
- Number of reviews: 49
- Runtime: 117 min
"Gemini Man" is supposed to pit Will Smith against a younger, more diabolical Will Smith—but it actually pits Will Smith against a flimsy script, stale dialogue, and high-frame-rate visual effects that come off as mechanical, intrusive, and distracting. In the words of the Tennessee Daily Times, "Twice the Will Smith equals one 'meh' movie with Gemini Man."
#35. Men in Black: International
- Director: F. Gary Gray
- Metascore: 38
- Number of reviews: 51
- Runtime: 114 min
Although he allowed himself to be roped into “Gemini Man,” Will Smith was wise enough to avoid a role in “Men in Black: International”—an unnecessary extension of a franchise he had built from scratch. Chris Hemsworth was not so lucky. Uninspired summer popcorn at its worst, the latest “MIB” incarnation has neither the character chemistry, comedy, nor the inventive writing that made the series famous. A Detroit News critic spoke for audiences everywhere when writing, “One of those memory-erasing flashes would be nice right about now, please.”
#34. Point Blank
- Director: Joe Lynch
- Metascore: 37
- Number of reviews: 7
- Runtime: 86 min
Underwhelming storytelling and shallow character development were boat anchors around the neck of “Point Blank” from the very beginning. Although the French thriller remake strives for high-octane, it’s just a frantically paced tangle of a movie that will soon be relegated to wherever it is that bad action movies go to die. Jake Tropila from Film Inquiry used some carefully chosen stovetop/kitchen references in writing, “The remake of Point Blank has the ingredients for success, but the film never delivers, consistently fizzling out instead of coming to a boil.”
#33. The Professor
- Director: Wayne Roberts
- Metascore: 37
- Number of reviews: 12
- Runtime: 90 min
Johnny Depp’s yearslong cage match of a divorce with Amber Heard crashed into the headlines in 2019 with sordid two-way accusations of drug abuse, betrayal, and violence—then everything got worse with the release of “The Professor.” A sloppy, thinly written character study that chronicles a man in his final days, it didn’t feel like a good fit for the Depp and the rest of the cast just struggled to keep up. A RogerEbert.com critic griped that it was “more subservient to feel-good cliches than its too-cool-for-school veneer indicates.”
#32. Serenity
- Director: Steven Knight
- Metascore: 37
- Number of reviews: 38
- Runtime: 106 min
A powerful cast led by Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jason Clarke, and Diane Lane—not to mention its Academy Award-nominated director—dropped the ball in “Serenity.” McConaughey intermittently switches between sweaty, naked, and sweaty and naked—but even that’s not enough to save this nonsensical neo-noir mystery gone wrong. Asia Frey of the Lagniappe calls it simply, “Bad in a special way.”
#31. Perfect
- Director: Eddie Alcazar
- Metascore: 36
- Number of reviews: 7
- Runtime: 88 min
What could have been a defining cautionary tale on the dangers of genetic engineering instead turned out to be "Perfect," an incoherent and pretentious sci-fi nightmare that audiences and critics were sure they'd seen before. A Slant Magazine critic used adjectives as weapons in writing, "Eddie Alcazar's film is a purposefully inscrutable, wandering, disconnected, symbolic, and highly precious mood bath."
#30. Poms
- Director: Zara Hayes
- Metascore: 36
- Number of reviews: 17
- Runtime: 90 min
What was supposed to be an inspiring tale of never-too-late gal/senior power instead settled for stereotypes and well-worn formulas. Punching well below the potential of its cast—Rhea Pearlman, Pam Grier, and Diane Keaton, for starters—“Poms” is a well-intentioned soup of hack social commentary that felt like it was shoehorned into the script. FilmWeek’s Claudia Puig sums up the casting director’s overachievement in writing, “These women deserve so much better.”
#29. Lucy in the Sky
- Director: Noah Hawley
- Metascore: 36
- Number of reviews: 35
- Runtime: 124 min
Although an ambitious-woman-makes-it-to-space movie deserves to be made, “‘Lucy in the Sky’ seems at first glance to be a female answer to ‘Ad Astra,’ but it steadily devolves into something worthy of the Lifetime channel,” according to a critic from the Washington Post. Deep, contemplative, and way too long, the whole thing feels like a waste of a perfectly good Natalie Portman.
#28. The Hustle
- Director: Chris Addison
- Metascore: 35
- Number of reviews: 28
- Runtime: 93 min
To make “The Hustle” work, Chris Addison would have had to put a relevant spin on a dated comedy, otherwise, it would be nothing more than an easy and pointless gender-flip remake. Addison wound up with the latter. In the words of Richard Roeper, “Even with a running time of 93 minutes, ‘The Hustle’ felt about an hour too long.”
#27. The Kitchen
- Director: Andrea Berloff
- Metascore: 35
- Number of reviews: 42
- Runtime: 102 min
Talented as they are, Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Hadish, and Elisabeth Moss seem to be out of their element in “The Kitchen.” The film centers around gangster wives who learn to run the rackets while their husbands stew in prison. The women-can-do-it-too theme is noble, but never fully fleshed out: The movie fails to explain how, exactly, the trio can rise so easily to the occasion. “I half-expected every scene to end with a freeze-frame high five or the women yelling ‘girl power,’” wrote Angelica Jade Bastién of New York Magazine.
#26. Berlin, I Love You
- Directors: Dani Levy, Daniel Lwowski, Dennis Gansel, Dianna Agron, Fernando Eimbcke, Gabriela Tscherniak, Josef Rusnak, Justin Franklin, Massy Tadjedin, Peter Chelsom, and Til Schweiger
- Metascore: 34
- Number of reviews: 9
- Runtime: 120 min
An aimless and scattered collection of storylines as numerous as the film's directors, "Berlin, I Love You" is a clumsy anthology that fails to fully celebrate its namesake destination. A Detroit News critic wrote, "A love letter to a city should at least be so in love with its location that it sweeps you off your feet and makes you want to go there. 'Berlin' fails to make a proper case for Berlin."
#25. Primal
- Director: Nick Powell
- Metascore: 32
- Number of reviews: 11
- Runtime: 97 min
“Primal” features Nicolas Cage trapped on a boat in a fight for his life against a ruthless assassin and an exotic white jaguar. If that summation isn’t enough to dissuade moviegoers who are still on the fence, they should consider the synopsis delivered by AV Club’s Mike D’Angelo: “It's the sort of humdrum thriller you half-watch on TV while folding laundry.”
#24. Euphoria
- Director: Lisa Langseth
- Metascore: 32
- Number of reviews: 12
- Runtime: 104 min
A hollow meditation on life, death, and sisterhood, “Euphoria” is a story of missed opportunities. It boasts a more-than-capable cast and a well-intentioned premise, but critics seem to agree that it misses the nuance of the big, heavy subject matter it strives to tackle. Jordan Mintzer of Hollywood Reporter critic wrote, “Once the plot kicks in after the first reel, things head pretty much where you'd expect and all the sisterly bouts of love, hate and lamentation can grow rather tedious.”
#23. Jacob's Ladder
- Director: David M. Rosenthal
- Metascore: 31
- Number of reviews: 8
- Runtime: 89 min
It wasn’t just loyalists of the original “Jacob’s Ladder” who raged against the 2019 remake. It’s a challenge to find a single critic who feels the cast measured up to the one led by Tim Robbins in 1990, or that the reboot delivered anything approaching the momentum or lasting haunt-ey feeling of the first. William Bibbiani of The Wrap called it, “A shabby low-rent thriller with a few vaguely interesting ideas and an ensemble that deserves better material.”
#22. Night Hunter
- Director: David Raymond
- Metascore: 31
- Number of reviews: 10
- Runtime: 98 min
The nearly universal critical consensus is that “Night Hunter” squandered a good cast and tumbled into a regrettable series of cliches and plastic-y action-thriller sequences. The dark and violent vigilante thriller also lost audiences with a series of bizarre twists-for-the-sake-of-twists. Simon Abroms of RogerEbert.com wrote, “Testing the limits of good taste in otherwise formulaic grimdark entertainment is one thing, but pushing against those boundaries for its own sake is just tiresome.”
#21. Mary
- Director: Michael Goi
- Metascore: 31
- Number of reviews: 12
- Runtime: 84 min
A supernatural ship-at-sea horror tale—if that's a genre—"Mary" failed to impress the critics, who pounced on its silly dramatics and failure to scare. Rex Reed summed it up hysterically with this: "It's a watery tale of supernatural nonsense at sea as lost and immobile as a beached mackerel."
#20. Corporate Animals
- Director: Patrick Brice
- Metascore: 31
- Number of reviews: 15
- Runtime: 86 min
“Corporate Animals” might have been going for a satirical lampooning of the corporate culture. What it delivered was easy stereotypes, hacky one-liners, and a minor-league attempt at slapstick. In a moment of hilarity that beats any attempted in the actual movie, New York Post critic Johnny Oleksinski called it “the worst episode of ‘The Office’ ever.”
#19. Countdown
- Director: Justin Dec
- Metascore: 31
- Number of reviews: 16
- Runtime: 90 min
A discount “Final Destination” updated for mobile, “Countdown” answers the age-old question of what would happen if a person downloaded an evil app that told her when the people around her were going to die. Peter Sobczynski’s summation is that it’s “an abject failure whose only virtue is its utter forgettability.” If that’s a bit too harsh, try David Nusair’s synopsis: “a prototypically uneven teen-friendly horror flick.”
#18. Hellboy
- Director: Neil Marshall
- Metascore: 31
- Number of reviews: 44
- Runtime: 120 min
A common critique of “Hellboy” is that it crushes forward at a frantic pace that makes it hard to enjoy the enjoyable moments—or easier to miss the fact that there are very few good moments to enjoy. Trying hard to be the bad-boy movie of the year, it’s a vulgar-on-purpose reboot that begs the question about why “Hellboy” 2004 called for a do-over in the first place. Matthew Norman of the London Evening Standard offered this alternative approach: “If it was my call, I'd write nothing about the movie and leave this space blank for readers' notes.”
#17. After
- Director: Jenny Gage
- Metascore: 30
- Number of reviews: 8
- Runtime: 105 min
The critical consensus of “After” is summed up neatly by RogerEbert.com critic Mark Dujsik, who wrote, “‘After’ opens with some narration about how certain moments in life seem to define a person, and from there, the clichés pretty much don't stop.” It goes down as a soppy, PG-13 rom-dram that received praise that was equal to the effort it put in.
#16. Phil
- Director: Greg Kinnear
- Metascore: 30
- Number of reviews: 9
- Runtime: 106 min
There's a fair amount of consensus that "Phil" showed some guts and vision in taking on the heavy subject matter of suicide from a fresh angle in the context of a dramedy, but the accolades generally stop there. David Ehrlich from indieWire wrote, "The movie resolves with a degree of grace and humanity that eludes its first two acts, but at that point there's precious little use for it."
#15. The Great Alaskan Race
- Director: Brian Presley
- Metascore: 29
- Number of reviews: 7
- Runtime: 87 min
“The Great Alaskan Race” follows a familiar man-against-nature storyline—then adds dogs and diphtheria. Critics were quick to point out that it whitewashes and mishandles an amazing historical event and lacks the thrills and drama that are needed to carry a life-or-death survival movie. Sean P. Means of The Movie Cricket quips, “Too often, ‘The Great Alaskan Race’ is as much a slog as anything the sled dogs have to navigate.”
#14. The Red Sea Diving Resort
- Director: Gideon Raff
- Metascore: 29
- Number of reviews: 8
- Runtime: 129 min
Here too, critics agree that moviemakers mishandled an astonishing real-life event that was worth telling well in “The Red Sea Diving Resort.” Some, like Mark Kennedy of the Associated Press, admonished the casting of Chris Evans, who the critic wrote is “known for playing Captain America and seems not to have put aside his shield for this film.” The mishandling of the historical/political angle bothered other critics, like Roger Moore, who called it a “rushed, sloppy and generic piece of Israeli triumphalism.”
#13. The Death and Life of John F. Donovan
- Director: Xavier Dolan
- Metascore: 28
- Number of reviews: 8
- Runtime: 123 min
One of the most common threads in the critical push against “The Death and Life of John F. Donovan” is its sheer waste of a dream team cast that includes Cathy Bates, Susan Sarandon, Natalie Portman, and Kit Harrington. Benjamin Lee from the Guardian summed up the director’s long and muddled English-language debut with this: “It starts to feel like Dolan is parodying a Dolan movie.”
#12. Patrick
- Director: Mandie Fletcher
- Metascore: 28
- Number of reviews: 9
- Runtime: 94 min
Despite the movie’s undeniably adorable namesake pug, “Patrick” couldn’t capture the attention of the critics. More a series of strung-together cute moments than an actual movie, “Patrick” was summed up by Dennis Schwartz from Ozus' World Movie Reviews as, “A friendly pug comedy with no bite.”
#11. The Aspern Papers
- Director: Julien Landais
- Metascore: 28
- Number of reviews: 10
- Runtime: 90 min
Widely panned as a slow and lifeless bore, "The Aspern Papers" went for historical drama but ended up feeling stale. Manohla Dargis of the New York Times conceded that Joely Richarson held her own in the lead role, but that "the rest of the performances range from bad to wincingly bad, including the distractingly modern types on the edges."
#10. Zeroville
- Director: James Franco
- Metascore: 28
- Number of reviews: 13
- Runtime: 96 min
When scouring reviews of “Zeroville,” two words come up more frequently than any others: James Franco. A pure passion project made for the director and star, the comedy comes off as smug and unfunny even while leaning on the likes of Seth Rogen, Megan Fox, and Joey King. David Ehrlich of indieWire hits the mark with this fine dig: “A compelling reminder to spend more time reading.”
#9. The Warrior Queen of Jhansi
- Director: Swati Bhise
- Metascore: 27
- Number of reviews: 9
- Runtime: 102 min
Here again, a movie turned off critics first and foremost for its fumbling of a rich, real-life story with all the potential in the world—this time an Indian feminist icon dubbed “the Joan of Arc of the East.” Summing up “The Warrior Queen of Jhansi,” Joe Leydon of Variety writes, “Swati Bhise's old-fashioned historical epic is sincere but unexciting.”
#8. Rambo: Last Blood
- Director: Adrian Grunberg
- Metascore: 26
- Number of reviews: 31
- Runtime: 89 min
Because the fourth installment was so unexpectedly exciting, there was a glimmer of hope for “Rambo: Last Blood,” but in the end, Sylvester Stallone proved that his long-compromised and rapidly aging John Rambo character should have been put to bed before now. Most critics agreed that the fun is gone from the franchise and that there are better ways to scratch the escapist action itch—some critics even cried racism. Yoon Min-sik of the Korea Herald uttered the undeniable truth in writing, “Simply put, the franchise has overstayed its welcome.”
#7. Cold Blood
- Director: Frédéric Petitjean
- Metascore: 25
- Number of reviews: 8
- Runtime: 91 min
A former assassin is reluctantly forced from a reclusive woodlands retirement back into his life as a cold-blooded hitman—if it feels like it’s been done before, that’s because it has…a lot. “Cold Blood” adds nothing new to that storyline, and critics were not kind to its shallow characters, lack of thrills, and drudging pace. Mark Keizer from Variety tells audiences everything they need to know with this: “Generic, character-deficient and lacking in suspense or thrills, ‘Cold Blood’ never kicks into gear.”
#6. Playing with Fire
- Director: Andy Fickman
- Metascore: 24
- Number of reviews: 14
- Runtime: 96 min
Although it's a movie made purely for children, critics gripe that "Playing With Fire" demands that those children find laughs in grownup themes like dating and career drama. The firehouse-invaded-by-hard-to-corral-kids flick compelled AV Club's Jesse Hassenger to write, "Sadly, the movie never shows similar curiosity about what its young audience, and subjects, might be thinking or feeling."
#5. Polar
- Director: Jonas Åkerlund
- Metascore: 19
- Number of reviews: 12
- Runtime: 118 min
Peter Sobczynski of RogerEbert.com classified “Polar” as “a gross, stupid and relentlessly ugly film from start to finish.” Harsh, indeed, but not off the mark in terms of critical consensus. Several reviewers lamented the movie’s failure to capture the promise of a dark action-thriller helmed by Mads Mikkelsen, but few thought it delivered on that promise.
#4. Replicas
- Director: Jeffrey Nachmanoff
- Metascore: 19
- Number of reviews: 15
- Runtime: 107 min
It might seem that Keanu Reeves was born to portray an intense renegade biologist bent on using the power of science to resurrect his family while battling government-controlled laboratory bad guys—but the cluttered story simply doesn’t allow for it in “Replicas.” “Rampant silliness and gaping plot holes test audience patience in Jeffrey Nachmanoff's sci-fi thriller,” writes Joe Leydon of Variety.
#3. The Fanatic
- Director: Fred Durst
- Metascore: 17
- Number of reviews: 17
- Runtime: 88 min
John Travolta spends much of his on-screen time in “The Fanatic” delivering loud and ridiculous doses of overacting, according to many critics who panned his performance. The movie delves deep into the dangers of modern celebrity worship, with Travolta serving as the mandatory scorned fan/stalker. Evan Dossey of the Midwest Film Journal categorizes the endeavor as “an awkward entry in the growing genre of Travoltasploitation.”
#2. Unplanned
- Directors: Cary Solomon and Chuck Konzelman
- Metascore: 10
- Number of reviews: 7
- Runtime: 106 min
Critics loathed “Unplanned” not because it’s obvious and terribly done propaganda, but because it dishonestly presented itself as a viable movie to audiences on both sides of the abortion issue. Chris Knight of the National Post summed it up smartly with his own take: “[...] Even if presented to a mixed audience, Unplanned is neither smart enough to rally anyone to its cause nor dumb enough to alienate those who believe its message. As propaganda, therefore, it's basically useless.”
#1. The Haunting of Sharon Tate
- Director: Daniel Farrands
- Metascore: 8
- Number of reviews: 10
- Runtime: 94 min
Several movies on this list struck out with critics because they missed opportunities to recreate important and weighty historical events in a way that was compelling and worthy of the subject matter. "The Haunting of Sharon Tate" didn't fail in a misguided attempt to dramatize a difficult real-life story—it intentionally lampooned the fairly-recent murder of a pregnant woman at the hands of the Manson family in a way that was tacky and sleazy. William Bibbiani of TheWrap sums up 2019's biggest cinematic loser this way: "It's far too early to call this the worst movie of the year. But if it's not, it's going to be a rough 2019."
