Year in review: worst movies of 2018

Stacker Score: 52.5
IMDb rating: 5.1
Metascore: 54
Director: Gerard McMurray

The fourth installment of the “Purge" series, “The First Purge" serves as a horrifically bad prequel. In it, a third political party called the New Founding Fathers of America has overthrown the government and comes up with a novel idea to push the crime rate below 1% for the rest of the year: Suspend all laws on Staten Island for 12 hours, pay the poor residents there $5,000 if they're willing to stay in their homes (more if they're willing to participate), and see what happens.

Stacker Score: 52.0
IMDb rating: 5.8
Metascore: 46
Director: Jon Turteltaub

This action/horror/sci-fi movie follows the trials of an underwater crew (Jason Statham, Rainn Wilson, and Ruby Rose) trapped underwater with a massive shark (the Megalodon) previously thought to be extinct. The film, based on a book and filmed on location in New Zealand, was widely panned by audiences and critics alike for its anti-climactic climax and predictability.

Stacker Score: 52.0
IMDb rating: 6.9
Metascore: 35
Director: Ruben Fleischer

Tom Hardy and Michelle Williams star in this film from the Marvel franchise about an investigative journalist who crosses path with an alien symbiote and ends up as “Venom," a hybrid creature with a violent alter-ego. Audiences on Rotten Tomatoes loved it and gave it an 86% approval rating, despite critics' harsh reviews.

Stacker Score: 52.0
IMDb rating: 5.6
Metascore: 48
Director: Shane Black

A deadly group of hunters returns to Earth in “The Predator," where planetary destruction can only be stopped by a handful of ex-soldiers, a little boy, and a scientist. Starring Olivia Munn and Jacob Tremblay, the sixth franchise installment was poorly received for its cheesy references to the 1987 original, lackluster performances, and for being “no longer scary in the least but hella loud and busy."

Stacker Score: 52.0
IMDb rating: 6.5
Metascore: 39
Director: David Kerr

Rowan Atkinson stars in the third installment of the Johnny English series, which was better received by audiences than by critics and scored 64% on Rotten Tomatoes in audience reviews. The eponymous accidental secret agent gets called out of retirement when a cyber attack releases information on every active, undercover agent in Britain. It's up to English to find the culprit.

Stacker Score: 52.0
IMDb rating: 6.6
Metascore: 38
Director: Scott Speer

Similar in plot to the teen romance “Everything, Everything," “Midnight Sun" is about a girl with such extreme sensitivity to UV light that she only dares leave her house at night. Of course, having a crush on a boy threatens to change all that. The film stars Patrick Schwarzenegger and Bella Thorne and received a mere 21% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Stacker Score: 52.0
IMDb rating: 7.4
Metascore: 30
Directors: Andrew Erwin and Jon Erwin

This flick is a music biopic about the origin of MercyMe's song “I Can Only Imagine," the best-selling Christian single of all time. The plot, which centers on the lead singer's relationship with his father, was sacked by critics and audiences in spite of the movie making $85 million worldwide on a shoestring production budget of $7 million—making it the fourth highest-grossing music biopic in the U.S. behind “Bohemian Rhapsody," “Straight Outta Compton," and “Walk the Line."

Stacker Score: 52.0
IMDb rating: 6.1
Metascore: 43
Director: Fede Alvarez

Lisbeth Salander (Claire Foy) is recruited to steal FireWall, which can access codes for nuclear weapons worldwide. “The Girl in the Spider's Web" is the fifth movie based off the Millennium series of books (which includes “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo") by the late Stieg Larsson and his successor, David Lagercrantz. Critics of the movie panned it for oversimplifying Salander's persona into a “quirky Batgirl-like figure."

Stacker Score: 51.5
IMDb rating: 6.7
Metascore: 36
Director: Bethany Ashton Wolf

Only 26% of critics liked this film, according to Rotten Tomatoes. The part-musical, part-comedy follows the story of country music superstar Liam, who leaves his bride at the altar for fame and fortune. Of course, he never gets over his one true love and shows back up eight years later to mend the relationships he left behind.

Stacker Score: 51.0
IMDb rating: 6.1
Metascore: 41
Director: Jay Chandrasekhar

In this sequel to the 2001 cult favorite "Super Troopers," audiences follow five Vermont state troopers tasked with establishing a highway patrol station between the U.S. and Canada. This movie was crowdfunded on Indiegogo within 24 hours of posting its $2 million goal, but that did little to endear it to critics.

Stacker Score: 50.5
IMDb rating: 5.5
Metascore: 46
Director: Corin Hardy

This horror/mystery prequel to “The Conjuring" franchise follows a priest with a haunted past as he investigates the death of a young nun. Several critics called the movie “basic" and “overly rel[iant] on jump scares," according to the aggregation of reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.

Stacker Score: 50.5
IMDb rating: 5.3
Metascore: 48
Directors: Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein

Amy Schumer's rom-com flop focuses on a young woman who struggles with insecurity about her appearance and wakes up one day believing she is the most beautiful and capable woman on the planet. Though critics hated the film, teens loved it and nominated it for two 2018 Teen Choice Awards.


 

Stacker Score: 50.5
IMDb rating: 5.9
Metascore: 42
Director: Rob Greenberg

In this remake of the 1987 Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell film updated (and gender-swapped) with Anna Faris and Eugenio Derbez in the starring roles, a wealthy yacht owner gets amnesia after being thrown overboard and becomes the target of revenge by his disgruntled employee. This remake maintained the sketchy messaging of its original but lost the silliness, comedy, and romantic tension real-life lovebirds Hawn and Russell supplied in excess for the ‘87 version.
 

Stacker Score: 50.5
IMDb rating: 5.5
Metascore: 46
Director: Ben Falcone

After her husband dumps her, recent divorcee Deanna (Melissa McCarthy) decides to go back to college at the same university as her daughter. The movie got knocked for being overly contrived, predictable, and lacking in the laugh department.

Stacker Score: 50.0
IMDb rating: 5.6
Metascore: 44
Director: Steven S. DeKnight

The sequel to Guillermo del Toro's 2013 flick "Pacific Rim" follows a fleet of human jaeger pilots hellbent on vanquishing kaiju monsters of mass destruction. The installment's heavy focus on action and special effects left much to be desired in plot and character development.

Stacker Score: 50.0
IMDb rating: 6.4
Metascore: 36
Director: Ari Sandel

Noah (Adam Devine) thinks he has the perfect first night with Avery (Alexandra Daddario) at a party, but she thinks they should just be friends. Naturally, he spends the rest of the movie using the photo booth time machine trying to change the outcome of the night. Audiences and critics were underwhelmed by the premise, which relied far too heavily on the methodology of the far-superior classic, “Groundhog Day."

 

Stacker Score: 50.0
IMDb rating: 5.2
Metascore: 48
Director: Johannes Roberts

A family road trip goes awry in this horror movie starring Christina Hendricks and Martin Henderson. Oddly enough, the director doesn't like slasher movies or home invasion movies, which may help explain why his creation — set in a mobile home park with several masked antagonists — fell short.

Stacker Score: 50.0
IMDb rating: 5.7
Metascore: 43
Director: Federico D'Alessandro

In “Tau," a woman trapped in a house tries to hack the building's smart technology by reasoning with the artificial intelligence running it. The film was called “a shiny B movie" that would have benefited from more “world-building" to create context for the tech the protagonist is imprisoned by.

Stacker Score: 50.0
IMDb rating: 5.6
Metascore: 44
Director: Simon Kaijser

Pierce Brosnan and Guy Pearce star in “Spinning Man," based on a novel of the same name about a university professor whose alibi is questioned after one of his female students goes missing.  The New York Times critic wondered, “Can a movie devoid of thrills be called a thriller?"
 

Stacker Score: 49.5
IMDb rating: 6.1
Metascore: 38
Director: Peter Berg

Mark Wahlberg stars in "Mile 22" as an elite American intelligence officer trying to smuggle a police officer with sensitive information out of Indonesia. Despite the popularity of its star, this film did not go over well, earning generally unfavorable critical reviews across the board that compared it to a cheap knockoff of "Mission: Impossible" that neglects to deliver the thrills.

 

Stacker Score: 49.5
IMDb rating: 5.4
Metascore: 45
Director: Luke Sparke

Residents of a town must fight back against an alien invasion in order to survive in this action-packed sci-fi film. Though critics did not enjoy the movie, 94% of Rotten Tomatoes users disagreed.

Stacker Score: 49.5
IMDb rating: 5.6
Metascore: 43
Director: Malcolm D. Lee

This comedic misstep about a group of adults forced to study for their GED exams at night school stars Kevin Hart and Tiffany Haddish. The film totally missed the mark, garnering a mere 29% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Stacker Score: 49.0
IMDb rating: 5.8
Metascore: 40
Director: Ben Young

This straight-to-Netflix sci-fi film follows a man's apocalyptic dreams and a subsequent real-life alien invasion. Stars Michael Peña and Lizzy Caplan provided critically-acclaimed acting in spite of weak writing and a plot that failed to deliver.

Stacker Score: 49.0
IMDb rating: 6.1
Metascore: 37
Director: Deon Taylor

Paula Patton and Omar Epps star in this thriller about two couples on a weekend getaway that quickly turns deadly. The Hollywood Reporter called it a “cheesy, by-the-numbers melodrama that takes itself seriously." Fellow critics tended to agree.

Stacker Score: 49.0
IMDb rating: 6.4
Metascore: 34
Director: Stephanie Laing

This Netflix drama follows Abbie (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), a young woman diagnosed with terminal cancer, as she embarks on a mission to find a new love interest for her fiancé and long-term best friend, Sam (Michiel Huisman). The tackiness of the plot fell flat with critics, earning a Metascore of 34 overall. Audiences didn't like it much either, with only 58% of people on Rotten Tomatoes viewing it positively.

Stacker Score: 48.5
IMDb rating: 5.2
Metascore: 45
Director: Clint Eastwood

This drama about a group of Americans who discover a terrorist plot on a train bound for Paris earned a meager 45 rating on Metacritic. The film was based on a true story, and Eastwood made the unconventional decision to have the three leads play themselves—perhaps contributing to how poorly the film was received.

Stacker Score: 47.5
IMDb rating: 6.4
Metascore: 31
Director: Eli Roth

A remake of the 1974 film of the same name, “Death Wish" stars Bruce Willis as a surgeon tracking down the criminals who murdered his wife and young daughters. The film was criticized for being little more than “a first-person shooter fantasy."

Stacker Score: 47.5
IMDb rating: 4.2
Metascore: 53
Director: Ava DuVernay

The star-studded reimagining of Madeleine L'Engle's beloved children's classic did not live up to the hype, ultimately criticized for coming across chiefly as a children's movie without the added elements that would have made the film more universal. Even celebrity heavyweights Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, and Mindy Kaling, acting as the three magical beings with whom Meg Murry (Storm Reid) travels across the universe to save her father, could not save this film from its dismal reviews.

Stacker Score: 47.5
IMDb rating: 5.6
Metascore: 39
Director: Jennifer Yuh Nelson

In this YA dystopian novel come to life, Amandla Stenberg stars as a teen who develops powerful abilities and is declared a threat by the government. She and others like her rise up in an attempt to take back their future in this film that received overwhelmingly lackluster reviews.

Stacker Score: 47.5
IMDb rating: 5.6
Metascore: 39
Director: Lasse Hallström

Despite a star-studded cast including Keira Knightley and famed ballerina Misty Copeland, Disney's take on the classic "Nutcracker" story fell flat. Variety's review claims the film "squander[s] a talented cast and some of the most spectacular design work this side of 'My Fair Lady.'"

Stacker Score: 47.5
IMDb rating: 5.3
Metascore: 42
Director: James McTeigue

Gabrielle Union stars in this thriller about a mom who takes her children to their late father's vacation home, only to have violent intruders break into the high-tech hideaway. Critics were unimpressed, using words like “contrived," “listless," and “leaden" to describe it.

Stacker Score: 47.0
IMDb rating: 6.5
Metascore: 29
Director: Pierre Morel

This revenge fantasy with a female heroine conjures obvious comparisons to “Kill Bill," as the protagonist Riley North (Jennifer Garner) awakes from a coma and spends years training to become a human weapon in order to take down the bad guys who killed her husband and child. The overly caricatured antagonists and clearly unstable heroine ultimately made the movie into more of a gaffe than righteous thriller.


 

Stacker Score: 46.5
IMDb rating: 5.6
Metascore: 37
Director: Julius Onah

“The Cloverfield Paradox" is the third in producer J.J. Abrams' Cloverfield franchise. But with only a 20% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the sci-fi thriller—about a group of scientific researchers attempting to harness an energy source known as “The God Particle"—was not well-loved.

Stacker Score: 46.5
IMDb rating: 6.3
Metascore: 30
Director: Martin Zandvliet

Jared Leto stars as an American prisoner of war who joins the yakuza, or Japanese mafia, in this Netflix production set in the 1950s. The movie was well-received by fans but received a measly 30% rating on Metacritic, in part for fetishizing Japanese characters and culture and unrealistic story development.

Stacker Score: 46.5
IMDb rating: 5.1
Metascore: 42
Director: Robert Smigel

Two fathers with conflicting personalities are forced to spend time together the week their children are getting married in this almost universally reviled comedy. The film stars Adam Sandler, Chris Rock, Rachel Dratch, Steve Buscemi, and Scott Cohen, and earned only a 23% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Stacker Score: 46.0
IMDb rating: 5.7
Metascore: 35
Directors: Jonathan Baker and Josh Baker

Myles Truitt, Jack Reynor, and Dennis Quaid star in this “disjointed and at times off-putting mess" about a recently released ex-con and his 14-year-old brother who's in possession of some mysterious alien weaponry. Unpaid gangster debts, a visit to a strip club, and many, many bad plot twists ensue, much to the chagrin of audiences and critics.

 

Stacker Score: 44.5
IMDb rating: 5.4
Metascore: 35
Director: Duncan Jones

If the 20% rating on Rotten Tomatoes wasn't indication enough of its quality, The Guardian's review of the film as a “Netflix disaster" might give you a clearer picture. Set in a future Berlin, the movie follows a mute bartender (Alexander Skarsgård) as he searches for his missing partner and finds himself increasingly entangled in the city's criminal underbelly.

Stacker Score: 43.5
IMDb rating: 5.1
Metascore: 36
Director: John Stevenson

The sequel to “Gnomeo and Juliet" follows Sherlock Gnomes (Johnny Depp) as he solves the mystery of missing garden gnomes in London. Ben Keningsberg of the New York Times called the film — which features the famous voices of James McAvoy, Emily Blunt, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Mary J. Blige, and many others — “limited in its possibilities: imagine Toy Story with one kind of toy."

Stacker Score: 43.0
IMDb rating: 5.0
Metascore: 36
Director: David M. Rosenthal

This apocalyptic film follows a lawyer named Will (Theo James) who is struggling to get from Chicago to Seattle in order to reach his pregnant wife following a mysterious, seismic event. The movie was widely criticized for failing to connect emotionally with viewers.

Stacker Score: 43.0
IMDb rating: 5.1
Metascore: 35
Director: Jeff Wadlow

This supernatural horror film follows eight college friends who embark on a Mexican getaway only to wind up in a haunted mission playing a possessed version of "Truth or Dare." The decidedly un-frightening flop was called "unforgivably humorless," and a mashup of "'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' crossed with the world's most convoluted episode of 'Gossip Girl.'"

Stacker Score: 43.0
IMDb rating: 5.4
Metascore: 32
Director: Kyle Newacheck

Three losers try to save the day when a hostage situation arises at an upscale Los Angeles hotel in “Game Over, Man!" Starring Adam DeVine, Anders Holm, and Blake Anderson (the team behind “Workaholics"), the movie fell short of expectations and was actually called “a lesser version of ‘Paul Blart: Mall Cop.'"

Stacker Score: 43.0
IMDb rating: 5.1
Metascore: 35
Director: Rob Cohen

“The Hurricane Heist" involves multiple plotlines of a hurricane bearing down on the Gulf Coast while a team of 30 mercenaries simultaneously plan to loot the local treasury facility. Unsurprisingly, all this confusion leads to a lackluster thriller one critic called “one of the dumbest variations of the weather-based action thriller subgenre."

Stacker Score: 43.0
IMDb rating: 5.6
Metascore: 30
Director: James Cox

Scoring an unfavorable 30 on Metacritic, “Billionaire Boys Club" is a “Wolf of Wall Street" copycat based on a true story about a group of wealthy teens from Los Angeles in the ‘80s who establish a get-rich-quick scheme that turns deadly. It probably didn't help that Kevin Spacey — the subject of so much controversy in the #MeToo movement — starred in the film.

 

Stacker Score: 42.5
IMDb rating: 5.3
Metascore: 32
Director: Otto Bathurst

“Robin Hood" stars Taron Egerton as Robin of Loxley and Jamie Foxx as Little John as they take on the English crown in this action-adventure.The film's set and costume designers were instructed to make everything one-third historically correct, one-third contemporary, and one-third futuristic, resulting in a mashup of epically bad proportions.

 

Stacker Score: 42.0
IMDb rating: 5.2
Metascore: 32
Director: Tyler Spindel

David Spade and Nat Faxon star in this Netflix movie about two college grads whose drunken debate over which of their dads would win in a fight ends up being taken seriously. The film actually managed a 0% score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Stacker Score: 42.0
IMDb rating: 4.9
Metascore: 35
Director: Babak Najafi

This action-thriller starring Taraji P. Henson doesn't do the talented lead actress justice. Her role — as a woman working for an organized crime family in Boston — comes up lifeless even as a hit goes bad. The LA Times called it “staid" and “incredibly boring."

Stacker Score: 41.0
IMDb rating: 5.4
Metascore: 28
Directors: Michael Spierig and Paul Spierig

“Winchester" is about a mansion of the same name about 50 miles outside of San Francisco with the distinction of being the most haunted house on the planet. Yet even acting heavyweight Helen Mirren can't save the film, which — while based on a true story — ends up coming across as exceedingly trite.

Stacker Score: 40.5
IMDb rating: 4.8
Metascore: 33
Director: Lennart Ruff

“The Titan" is a sci-fi thriller made for Netflix starring Sam Worthington and Taylor Schilling. Unfortunately, the 19% critics rating and 16% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes suggest it may not be worth watching to find out if the military family achieves its goal of relocating human life to another planet.
 

Stacker Score: 40.0
IMDb rating: 5.3
Metascore: 27
Director: Vaughn Stein

“Terminal," starring Margot Robbie and Simon Pegg, follows the intertwining lives of two assassins, a terminally ill teacher, a mysterious janitor, and a waitress living a double life. The box office bomb made a big splat on Rotten Tomatoes with a critical rating of only 21%.

Stacker Score: 40.0
IMDb rating: 5.3
Metascore: 27
Director: Brian Henson

This film stars Melissa McCarthy and a puppet called Phil Philips. Yes, you read that right. It's about a pair of detectives and former partners who work together to solve a string of murders—and that's as exciting as it gets.
 

Stacker Score: 40.0
IMDb rating: 5.2
Metascore: 28
Director: Brett Donowho

Bruce Willis, Cole Hauser, and Shawn Ashmore star in this movie about three brothers, a crime lord, and a cop who collide when the youngest brother's fiancée is kidnapped by human traffickers. The meager script, fumbling narrative, and contrived tropes made for an utterly unconvincing and dull movie, according to critics.

Stacker Score: 38.5
IMDb rating: 4.3
Metascore: 34
Director: Matthew Ross

In “Siberia," Keanu Reeves stars as an American diamond merchant caught in the midst of a bad deal in Russia. Unfortunately, the thriller was panned for being boring, forgettable, and as bleak as the landscape.

Stacker Score: 38.0
IMDb rating: 4.5
Metascore: 31
Director: James Foley

The last film in the “Fifty Shades of Grey" franchise, the erotic romance “Fifty Shades Freed" tells the predictable, repetitive tale of Anastasia and Christian Grey as newlyweds. The movie was completely ripped apart by critics for its antagonist named Hyde, multiple scenes in which Anastasia seems surprised by Christian's wealth or jealousy, and countless other moments you'd swear were satire if the movie didn't take itself so seriously.

Stacker Score: 36.5
IMDb rating: 4.9
Metascore: 24
Director: Kevin Connolly

John Travolta stars as the famous New York mobster John Gotti in this epic saga/biopic. But while critics praised his "ferocious and committed performance," the seasoned actor does little to rescue the film. From the opening scene — featuring Gotti talking directly to the camera from beyond the grave — to closing credits, it's one misstep after another.

Stacker Score: 31.0
IMDb rating: 3.2
Metascore: 30
Director: Sylvain White

Four college friends attempt to prove that the Slender Man doesn't exist — until one of them mysteriously (and unsurprisingly) goes missing. The film was overwhelmingly panned as boring, and dissed for failing to draw viewers into its make-believe world. Due to the real-life stabbing case related to the lore referenced in the film (and perhaps to prevent bad reviews ahead of its release), the questionable movie did not screen for critics.