We try not to reflect on negativity here at Films Fatale. We may write a bad review if we dislike a film, and then we move on. However, the end of an era makes for an exception. We’ll avoid bashing films at the end of each year, but I think it’s important that we at least see how far we can go in the industry by using these ten productions as a yardstick of what mistakes we should not repeat. I’m going to avoid including my favourite bad films that are entertaining (shout outs to Fateful Findings and Winter’s Tale, because I want to reserve the spots on this once-a-decade list for the absolute worst films I’ve seen in ten years.

We certainly have some “winners” here. We have at least a couple of films that rival the worst I have ever come across, and that is not an exaggeration. Here are the films that were torture to sit through; the features that made me realize that the mediocre films I’ve reviewed are actually blessings from heaven. Here are the ten worst films of the decade.

10. Nostalgia Critic’s The Wall

This is technically a “review”, but Doug Walker shot this video in the form of a parody feature (it just passes 40 minutes, so we will make that exception). The entire purpose was to mock everything The Wall by Pink Floyd: the album, the film, the legacy. What we got instead was incoherent vomit, a lack of a substantial review or satire, and an endurance test that only got more and more painful (until it dives into a CGI cesspool). I don’t think anything this decade has missed the mark this bad. This is a new low in the YouTube age. This is the most ambitious form of laziness ever uploaded.

9. The Emoji Movie

I can’t tell if the sincerity this film strives for actually makes it worse, but, for the sake of this remembrance, I will say that it does. The Emoji Movie is the most vapid of concepts, and executed to feel like Inside Out (while just being Inside Out, well, inside out). The jokes are as basic as the emojis themselves, the world created is unimaginative, and almost every character is being reduced to a stereotype (it’s literally the plot). Writing a three emoji review to describe this mindless stinker is way too much time being spent.

8. United Passions

Never, and I mean never, have I ever seen a film so in love with itself. FIFA — during a time they were being investigated for crooked activity, might I add — commissioned a film about the suits and ties that created this sketchy organization. The entire film is how brilliant these people are (including Sepp “Bladder” Blatter), and how everyone else is wrong. It does this in the kitschiest, most boring (and amateur) filmmaking they could. You can tell Tim Roth didn’t want to be there the entire film, and he plays the main character for two thirds of this junk. If you want to see what it’s like to have your head up your own rear end, United Passions is that experience.

7. Dirty Grandpa

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Within seconds of seeing Robert De Niro’s character (I don’t remember his name, and I don’t particularly care to), I felt sick to my stomach. This is try-hard behaviour at its worst. There’s nothing genuine about the excessive, gross-out humour in this film. The punchline is that he’s a dirty grandpa. That’s it. The joke is ruined by the title, and it’s the only joke you get. There are other idiots I’d rather spend my time with, than to ever go to Daytona with this malfeasant ever again.

6. The Last Airbender

Perhaps the worst adaptation of the decade, it’s almost painfully difficult to miss the mark of one’s creation like this. M. Night Shyamalan made this film for his kids, and claimed he loved the Avatar series himself. Well, nowhere does that show. Having never watched the show, even I could verify that it likely doesn’t take four earthbenders to lift a small rock in the original anime show (I don’t even need to watch it to know I’m right). The pacing is wretched, the acting wouldn’t even bend paper, and the effects were dated a week after the film premiered. The controversial casting decisions being the least-worst part of this film says it all.

5. Gotti

Who honestly cares to hear John Travolta’s John Gotti talk business for ten seconds? Gotti is bad for three quarters of the film, but it turns into an absolute abomination by its final hour: the uplifting testimonials that claim we were all wrong about one of New York’s worst gangsters. Yes. He’s misunderstood. We sat through terrible camera work, hilarious acting, senseless plot ordering, and John Travolta screaming and debating nonstop, to be told this? Get out of here. What a gargantuan waste of time, and what a morally insane ending.

4. Jack and Jill

I’d rather I didn’t have to deal with Jack nor Jill. It takes a lot to be Adam Sandler’s worst acting vehicle and produced film, but, by God, Jack and Jill is without question the worst. We’re supposed to sympathize with Jill, despite her being a cawing crow that constantly nags and spews racist, sexist, or just flat out irritating nonsense. We’re supposed to feel that it’s realistic for her twin brother Jack to come around and admit she’s a worthy person to be around. No. It’s simply impossible. An annoying person can be a short term joke, but not a full feature length gag. Who wants to pay money to have wailing in your ear for an entire film? I wish Jack and Jill went up the hill and never came back.

3. Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star

No, Bucky, you most certainly weren’t born to be a star. Nothing in this grotesque satire is amusing. Within seconds, we have a disgusting beastiality joke to set the tone. Then, we have to endure the exact same punchline for an entire film: Bucky Larson has a small wee-wee, and wants to get into the porn industry. Who. Cares. Bucky Larson is like that nerdy kid in your class that wanted to be cool, so they went out and did some really unethical stuff to prove a point. It’s not funny. It’s just annoying. No one’s impressed. Nick Swardson has insisted that bad promotional work tainted how this film was received, but I think the lack of proper promo-ing did the world a favour.

2. Movie 43

How can this many people, talented or not, have this much lack of common sense? Movie 43 is a 4Chan thread tossed into a blender and vomited onto a wall, with a shoddy webcam trying to capture any semblance of anything. It is an attempt-after-attempt at trying to make you laugh through shock value, but absolutely none of it works. None of it. It feels more like that bad group of students that put together a lazy, mean-spirited project to make the class laugh. No one laughs. Everyone cringes. The teacher sends everyone to the office. The countless performers here are lucky to even have a career, never mind being sent to detention, after this cancerous trash of a film.

1. Saving Christmas

The 2010s had a film so bad, it ranks up there as one of the worst films of any year I have ever seen. I truly mean this. Kirk Cameron can declare war on atheists, internet bloggers, and even fellow Christians as much as he wants, but the guy cannot admit that he single handedly created the worst Christmas film ever conceived. I’ve seen elementary school pageants less embarrassing than this. So, Cameron decided to invite his family and friends to Christmas dinner, and make a movie while they were there. So, one third of the film is Cameron talking to the director (Darren Doane) in a car (not about why he should believe in Christmas, but why he should believe in Christmas his way, like the arrogant twerp he is). Another third is a low-budget series of vignettes shot in some warehouse, I’m guessing. The remaining third is in a household, with what feels like a three hour ending of nothing but terribly autotuned carol remixes, the most annoying dancing, and excessive barf (as if we hadn’t endured enough).

Toss in a conspiracy rap, three intros, and Kirk Cameron condescending you the entire film, and you have the undeniable worst film of the decade (and of most decades). The fact that Kirk Cameron slapped his producer name ahead of the film (Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas) is not only one of the most despicably self-centred things I have ever seen (Really? Mike Seaver is going to save my already-fantastic Christmas traditions?), but it’s so deliciously ironic. No one has made celebrating Christmas feel worse than you, Kirk Cameron. No one. Ever. Congratulations.

Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.

Decade Week: The Top Ten Worst Films of the Decade