Anything Horror Deggsy’s Worst Films of 2016
Now, you’d think that it’s easier to find the Worst of a particular something, rather than the best, now wouldn’t you? After all, there can always be arguments about the qualities of a movie or song or sexual position that might make them the best, but what makes something crap should be universal.
But it isn’t. Because the majority of things that aren’t good aren’t bad, they’re just… Meh. Buckets of Meh. Serviceable, something that will pass the time and get you that much closer to death. Few are truly terrible, and in a bad way. I’ve tried to bypass those ones that were Meh, like THE BOY, THE OTHER SIDE OF THE DOOR, THE DEVIL’S DOLLS, THE CONJURING 2, THE VEIL, THE FOREST and others. Look at those titles; they’re as generic and forgettable as the rest.
THE DARKNESS (read my review here): Australian director Greg McLean will be happy that he will probably be remembered more for his debut WOLF CREEK than this septic nonsense, which sees Human Scrotum Kevin Bacon finding his family threatened by some Native American stones his special needs kid took from an Indian burial site, or some such bullshit. It’s really tough to take such crap seriously even in the best of times, but the lacklustre direction from McLean and the pay-the-rent perfunctory performances make this Lame with a capital L.
PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES: (Read my review here): an adaptation of a book that is probably really, really clever in making the world of Jane Austen one where zombies exist. Of course, if you never read the novel or even Austen’s original novels, it’s gonna be a lot of head scratching and bemusement about all the references thrown in. Add that the 19th Century English girls have been taught Chinese martial arts to fight the undead and you have a weird mix that was unpalatable to me (for a decent mix of horror, Chinese martial arts and Georgian manners, go find LEGEND OF THE SEVEN GOLDEN VAMPIRES (read my review here)).
THE GREASY STRANGLER: Maybe it was the circumstances of when and where I watched this: on a sober Sunday morning, in my living room, with my dog snoozing on my lap. This seems to be a movie that begs to be watched with your drunk friends in a sleazy midnight movie house. Director Jim hoskin brings us this tender family drama of a father who strips down, covers himself in grease and goes out to strangle people, his son and the woman who comes between them. In every sense of the expression. There are gross moments, but gross enough, funny moments but not funny enough, and boring moments that are at least boring.
YOGA HOSERS: I used to really like Kevin Smith. I probably still do, or at least his early work. Somewhere along the way, he entered the Cult of the Personality, where he would do lecture tours and tell the same stories over and over and have his own reality show and keep threatening that his latest film will be his last. I wish he had indeed stopped with the far superior TUSK (read Scott’s review here) and not gone on to give us this self-indulgent shit. You might think the idea of seeing Smith’s daughter and Johnny Depp’s daughter battle talking Nazi sausages that crawl up people’s asses to be fun. It wasn’t.
CABIN FEVER, MARTYRS and BLAIR WITCH: Why throw all three of these rabbit turds into one paragraph? Because all share the same quality of being remakes of movies originally made not all that long ago. I used to be a purist, one who hated the very notion of remaking old movies. I warmed up to them, as I expanded my tolerance if a remake can give us something that the original didn’t (like improved special effects for the remakes of THE FLY, THE BLOB and DAWN OF THE DEAD). But these three examples were needless. Completely needless. Why? What could they do in 2016 that they couldn’t do in 2008 or 2006 or whenever these originally came out? Even the much-derided Gus Van Sant remake of PSYCHO gave us Anne Heche’s tits, which I’d much rather see than a weak-ass American version of a classic like MARTYRS.
So, what do you rest of you think? What were your worst ones?
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