The Top 10 WORST Films of 2014

Well...we already covered the best films that came out this past 2014. Now it is time to look at the stinkers. These were the films that were either massive disappointments, or just absolute garbage. There are no honorable mentions unlike the last list (or would that be dishonorable?) so let's just get right into it.

Again, like in the last list, these are simply my opinions. Film is subjective and everyone has an opinion on films. All I ask is that you please respect my choices for this list.


These are the 10 films I thought were the worst in 2014.


#10. The Monuments Men

 

This had great potential written all over it. You had a pretty stellar cast (George Clooney, Matt Damon, Bill Murray AND John Goodman involved), a plot that sounded incredibly entertaining to watch, as if it could mix an old war movie from the 40s with a heist movie from the 50s, as well as it being based on a true story In the hands of Clooney, who HAS proven to be a capable director, and with a great cast and interesting story, I should have been entertained by the film. Not completely bored to tears by it. What happened? Perhaps it is the fact that Clooney had difficult finding the tone of light humor with the serious nature of the subject matter (rescuing pieces of art history in WWII before Adolf Hitler destroys them forever). Maybe it's the fact that it's a bit TOO rooted in its nostalgia. Whatever the reason, I came into The Monuments Men with pretty high expectations and came out of it feeling sorely disappointed. It feels like there could be potential for a great movie in there, the execution was just rather poorly executed.

 

 #9. Need For Speed

 

 

 

Another year, another pointless attempt at adapting a video game into the feature film format....seriously, will we ever learn that these do not work? The latest attempt is an adaptation of EA's Need For Speed franchise. What's sad is I was actually HOPING for this to be good, mainly due to this being the first post Breaking Bad project for star Aaron Paul. Paul tries his best to rise above the material given to him, but his character of Tobey Marshall comes across as bland and almost a little too angry for his motivations. The plot itself is absolutely preposterous. While I understand this is nothing more than a mindlessly B movie, there is a fine line between entertainingly stupid (Fast and the Furious for example), and just....incredibly stupid, of which the movie falls into. I'm sorry, but how is Kid Cudi able to pull helicopters and tanks and all other vehicles out of his pocket like they are wrappers in the wind? And without getting in heaps of trouble for about two-thirds of the film? When I have to think of questions such as those in a movie where I shouldn't be thinking those questions, then we have a serious problem.

 

 

#8. The Amazing Spider Man 2

 

 

I am probably going to garner a lot of controversy for this next choice, but the fact of the matter is that this new Spider-Man movie was....pretty bad. The only things I can salvage are that Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone have fantastic chemistry and the effects were decent, the entire movie around them is god awful. The plot of this film suffers from the exact same problem that Spider-Man 3 suffered from: TMSGO, or Too Much Stuff Going On. The script is unnecessarily crowded. Why was Rhino in the film? To set up for the Sinister Six movie of course! Why did we need to see what happened to Peter's parents? Because we screwed you over last time and wanted to give you something that has NO impact on the story whatsoever! Why was Chris Cooper in this movie if he was going to DIE five seconds later? REASONS! Also, the villains in this movie were just terrible. I was really excited to see Jamie Foxx finally bring Electro into the Spider-Man film universe, but what Foxx gave us was a villain who flip flopped between good to evil within five seconds. He gets mad at Spidey....because Spidey was trying to help him? Oh-kay that's cool....I think. Also, Foxx utters some of the worst dialogue in the entire film, such as:





 I would like to point out this happens during one of the film's better moments

 

Another problem I have is all the potential build up that the movie shoves forcefully down your throat in regards to their plans for an expanded Spidey Cinematic Universe. We get it, you are all really excited by your plans for a Sinister Six movie.....now stop shoving all of this in my face. Sony, just do us a favor.....give the rights back to Marvel Studios. Let them handle the character and see what they do with it. It would probably be less convoluted than this.

 

#7. As Above, So Below

 

 

Out of all the horror movies I managed to see this year (which trust me, wasn't a lot), this was the one that stood out as one of the worst ones. You had a cool idea (something evil lurks in the catacombs of Paris) and for the first 20 minutes, sets up this idea extraordinarily well. But then, as the film goes on, it just falls into the same old tired clichés that we've seen in so many horror movies in the past: group gets trapped and decides to find another way out, insert some type of supernatural element here, the list goes on and on. This is also a found footage movie, and man is it completely awful. The idea of found footage and enclosed spaces where you have to wriggle around a lot was a terrible idea, as I started not only trying to figure out what was going on, but feeling incredibly sick as well, even to a point where I had to step out a couple of times, which is rare for me. As Above, So Below tries desperately to break the mold of most found footage films, only to find itself falling into those routines halfway through.

 

 #6. Dumb and Dumber To

 

 

I know this might seem pretty pointless to put on this list, as the whole idea of this movie is...well to be dumb. But the thing about Dumb and Dumber To is that it tries and fails miserably to capture what made the original so fun in the first place. Jim Carrey, Jeff Daniels, and the Farrelly Brothers knew they were being idiots and they played along with it and had fun with it, which in turn allowed you to have fun as well. There was a certain charm to the 1994 original that still holds very well today. With this sequel, it feels as if they were much more mean-spirited this time around and trying in absolute vain to recapture the charm of the original film, making the whole film unpleasant and rather unfunny to watch. I laughed maybe once, but other times, I was trying to force a chuckle out. The story itself is basically the same as the first, making you realize throughout the film you could have just stayed home and watched the original. Dumb and Dumber To tries to be funny, but perhaps it has been 20 years too late.

 

#5. A Million Ways To Die In The West

 

 





I like Seth MacFarlane. The man can actually be genuinely funny at times. Sure, Family Guy has stumbled in recent years and sometimes the jokes can be....astonishingly crass and misogynistic. But the man is capable of making genuine humor, and that showed with his 2012 directorial debut, Ted. That film reminded me that Seth MacFarlane could still be very funny and was awaiting what he could do without the restrictions of television by having the landscape of comedy on film. Unfortunately, A Million Ways to Die in the West is the most disappointing and worst comedy I've seen all year. All the best jokes that the film had were spoiled in the film's trailer (seriously, why would you spoil the cameo from Christopher Lloyd as Doc Brown? That would've been an absolutely great reveal) and the other jokes, while some funny, you'll barely remember within 10 minutes of walking out of the theater. In regards to Seth MacFarlane....he just makes for a really unlikable male lead, as he spends most of the film literally listing off why the West is awful. The script is also a bit of a mess, as some of the jokes feel slapdashed together for the sake of needing a joke. It's a real shame because I know Seth MacFarlane HAS the ability to tell good humor, it just did not show here.

#4. Transcendence

 

Well, now that Christopher Nolan has introduced a wave of smart science fiction films for a new generation, we have people trying to follow in his footsteps. This brings us to Transcendence, the directorial debut of Nolan's longtime cinematographer Wally Pfister. With an idea involving Johnny Depp being uploaded as an artificial intelligence, this had numerous possibilities for being a sleek and thought provoking science fiction thriller. Unfortunately, the film's pace is so incredibly slow, dragging out its 119 minute run time. Not only that, but the plot holes in this film are huge, as most of the film's logic seems to make absolutely no sense (so....we're just going to upload his brain into a computer....without any sort of consequence....okay thanks Jack Palgen). The film's great cast is entirely wasted on this premise and while Pfister knows how to set up a beautiful shot, it can't save him from helping create one utter mess of a film.

 

#3. I, Frankenstein

 

 



Take a look at the image above. Go ahead, just take a look. Everything that is wrong with this movie is captured in this image. I, Frankenstein might be one of the most inane, idiotic movies I have ever had the misfortune of seeing. The idea to basically turn Mary Shelley's classic story into an Underworld knockoff (seriously....you're knocking off UNDERWORLD of all things) was an awful idea. The acting is terrible, the dialogue is awful, and the story....OK I'm going to veer into spoiler territory but this is a plot hole that is so big it basically negates the movie's existence so spoilers ahead:

So Aaron Eckhart is forced to kill Jai Courtney's gargoyle character near the end of the film, because he has no soul so he is able to kill both demon, and, if need be, gargoyle. The demon king Naberius (Bill Nighy) wants to use Adam as a vessel for a legion of demons, as Adam has no soul and therefore can be possessed like a human corpse. Naberius also plans to use Frankenstein's formula of creating Adam to make hundreds more like him. However, when Adam's body starts to become possessed, he rejects it and is still normal, stating that he has a soul. Now....correct me if I'm wrong....but he killed an angel just moments prior after being forced to.....I'm pretty sure you are not just GIVEN a soul and forcing to ascend an angel does not qualify as such. Also, he is human made not born like everyone else....pretty sure you also CAN'T grow a soul all on your own.....it's this kind of idiotic logic that pretty much negates this film's existence.


##2. The Legend of Hercules

Oh wow....wow was this film bad. What's even more shocking to realize is that this film was made on a budget of $70 million and looks like it was made on the budget of those Saturday night schlock fests you see on Syfy. Everything in this movie, from the costumes to the CGI to the action, looks incredibly cheap and fake and it is incredibly easy to tell how fake it looks. Also, the story is...bad. This focuses on how Hercules, before being told he is the son of Zeus, was a soldier, then betrayed, then becoming....Spartacus? The story isn't fun enough to keep yourself entertained nor is the drama in the story enough to keep you invested. Not only does this film look like it ripped heavily off of 300 if it was done on a shoestring budget, in terms of story and effects, but it also fails in the acting department. Kellan Lutz is an absolutely terrible choice for Hercules. He is bland, boring, uncharismatic, and speaks everyone of his lines as if he's reading for a middle school play. Do yourselves a favor: Skip this Hercules and see the far more superior and entertaining film starring Dwayne Johnson.

And the worst film of 2014 is....

 

 

#1. Transformers: Age of Extinction

 

 

 

I. F*****g. Hate. This. Movie. Everything about Transformers: Age of Extinction fails on every single level. Michael Bay has reached a new level of garbage that I did not even think was possible to reach. First off, the film is THREE HOURS. There are parts in this movie that could have been honestly cut out and made the film a lot more quicker. The scenes in Shanghai for example, are extremely unnecessary as we are just there to see new Transformers tech (and to give Bay an excuse to be blatantly racist to the Chinese). But honestly, even if you did cut a lot of this out, I don't think that would have even helped out as the acting and dialogue is some of the worst I've seen. Honestly, I feel bad for Mark Wahlberg and Stanley Tucci. They're both extremely good actors but they both are bogged down by the idiotic script and dialogue that are given to them. Tucci tries, he tries so very hard to escape it, but it's not helped by lines like "Death is on our tail, death is on our tail!"

 

The rest of the supporting cast does not fare well, with Nicola Peltz actually somehow being a worse actress than Megan Fox. Finally, we come to the action scenes, or rather, being bombarded with mindless explosions left and right. Now, I love action and I love seeing explosions as much as the next guy. Bay has proven to be an explosion master. However, what I don't like is having my mind bombarded with bright lights and explosions attacking my senses to the point where it's just numbing to look at. When the Dinobots, who you know are the main focus of the marketing material, show up almost TWO AND A HALF HOURS LATER, I should be excited, not praying to whatever movie gods are out there for this torture to just end already. Not only is Transformers: Age of Extinction the worst movie of 2014, but it is one of the worst movies I have ever seen period. It's lazy, unfocused, and an attack on how much your senses are able to withstand this much garbage. Somehow, it managed to reach a new level of crap I didn't even think existed.

 

Also, GOOD GOD BAY COULD YOU NOT BE ANY MORE SUBTLE WITH YOUR PRODUCT PLACEMENT??

 

 

So that was my 10 worst of 2014. These are the films I pray I will never have to watch again. Got any films you hated seeing that I forgot to mention? Disagree with some of my choices and want to discuss? Sound off in the comments below or follow me on Twitter @filmfan108!

 

Now, as we move away from the past and say goodbye to 2014, let us look ahead to the future, and see what 2015 has in store. Stay tuned for my 15 most anticipated films of 2015!