Just like every year I have 10 favorites I also have 10 least favorites. This is that list. It is not a list of the worst movies of the year as that is highly subjective and I did not see every movie made this year. These are the ones I didn’t respond to favorably for whatever reason. Feel free to debate the list in the comments and add your own list as well. Here we go.

10. Bullet to the Head

A horrible misfire built of buddy cop movie cliches with some truly terrible writing that completely derails any chance the film has of being interesting. The performances are hamstrung by the writing such that even normally charismatic and talented actors come off as flat and stilted. It stymies Stallone too. The action has its moments but it is wrapped so tightly is poor writing and terrible dialogue that it is really hard to care. Veteran action director Walter Hill brings an 80’s action vibe to the film but unfortunately it is not a good 80’s action vibe.

9. Grown Ups 2

I doubt this is much of a surprise to anyone but holy crap is this movie bad. There was a moment during one of the comedy set pieces that I started thinking about the logistics of people in a professional capacity actually spending the money to plan and execute the scene and it depressed me beyond words. The thing about these movies is that there are some talented people involved and I don’t get why they are satisfied in turning in something like this. The answer is likely that they make money but that is kind of depressing in its own right. I could go on but the most telling thing here is that Rob Schneider did not reprise his role due to scheduling conflicts. When your movie is so bad that Rob Schneider is too busy to do it you know you are really fucked.

8. After Earth

Another winner from M Night Shyamalan, After Earth is a big jumble of ideas in which the bad ones out number the good ones 10 to 1. The internal logic of the film is extremely faulty and nothing in the film stands up to even cursory scrutiny while at the same time being earnest and overwrought. Couple this with how boring the movie is and then top it off with substandard effects and uneven performances and you have a movie that is just lazy and ill conceived. There is a lot of talk that it is also injected with Will Smith driven Scientology propaganda and I really don’t know that it really is but if so it is mostly benign as most people will have nodded off long before they have a chance to be indoctrinated. It is better than the Happening though and that is something to be thankful for.

7. Escape Plan

A second trip to the list for Stallone with some help by Schwarzenegger, Escape Plan is out of whack from beginning to end. The writing is poor, the plot is both obvious and full of holes and what story and exposition there is to be had is lost by how thoroughly incomprehensible the two leads are. I like both Stallone an Schwarzenegger and have grown up a big fan but things were not working for them here at all. They handle the action fine but the rest of the film is such a mess that the relatively meager amount of action cannot save it. The tone is messed up pretty badly as well as there are out of place cheesy one liners while the movie is trying to be serious. Had they gone all serious or all cheesy it might have worked but straddling the line leaves no one satisfied. On top of all this the plot has a ‘twist’ in it that is so obvious I didn’t realize it was meant to be a twist until one of the characters says ‘I didn’t see that coming.’ The audience did. The only real reason to see this movie is for Jim Caviezel who turns in a performance so inspired and fun that I am convinced he thought he was in a different movie. He really should have been.

6. Olympus Has Fallen

A somewhat baffling failure given the talent both behind and in front of the camera, Olympus Has Fallen is absolutely awful and is a worse film than the other White House take down movie this year and that one was directed by the guy that made 2012. I like the cast here and I have loved the director in the past but what we have here is a mess of almost incomprehensible proportions. The action is bad, the acting feels stilted, the writing is horrible and the tone is over-serious and overly patriotic while at the same time making the armed forces and secret service look like a bunch of boobs. It is pretty funny if you are into movie riffing but otherwise there is no other value here.

5. The Conjuring

I am probably on the wrong side of this one for a lot of people but I disliked this one for a lot of reasons. Most of them are personal issues I have with the particular subject matter and people it upon whom it is based but the reason it is on my least favorite list is that despite personal issues it could have been an effective horror movie if the director had the confidence to let tension play as opposed to showing too much and making things look goofy. Again, I am in the minority here but I found genuinely creepy moments completely bungled by showing too much by not trusting the material and the audience enough to get that material. Some writing issues and the tried and true possession tropes also stymie what is otherwise a well performed film. It is too bad. It may be based on bullshit but it could have been a much better movie.

4. The Hangover III

This is another one that perplexes me greatly. I loved the first Hangover and was an apologist for the second but this was bad on an aggressive level as if it did not want anyone to like it and was going out of its way to not be even slightly funny. The characters either have nothing to do or go against type so much they are indistinguishable from who they had been in the previous films. There is also an undercurrent of darkness that does not at all fit to the degree we are presented with and the constant animal cruelty throughout is disturbing and offensive. I really don’t understand what happened here unless Todd Phillips, a director that is usually automatic for me, just didn’t want to make these anymore and gave something so bad that it would kill the franchise. It is a very strange divergence from past material otherwise.

3. The Purge

A marginally interesting concept that is essentially abandoned to provide a fairly standard home invasion movie, the performances are occasionally interesting but with huge plot holes and inconsistencies,  the Purge is predictable and dull. Rhys Wakefield is pretty awesome as the villain but Ethan Hawke and Lena Headly are essentially just going through the motions. I would like to think that it is because they read the script but if that were the case I don’t really understand what they are doing unless they read a lot of zeros on the contract. I should clarify that when I say that the concept is ‘marginally interesting’ I mean ‘doesn’t hold up to even cursory scrutiny’ but had they done something interesting with it then I wouldn’t have minded so much. As it was it was a terrible story build on a faulty foundation and the fact that there is a sequel coming out makes me twitch a little.

2. Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia

I really don’t know what to say about this movie. It is nonsensical and absurd with terrible writing and bad performances and it, as the subtitle states, does not take place in Connecticut. It isn’t as if ghosts from Georgia found their way to Connecticut. This thing takes place in Georgia. It is based on the same ‘documentary’ series that the first Haunting in Connecticut was and as such could have just been called Haunting in Georgia. I think people are smart enough to figure this shit out. Given that the film makers think their audience is so stupid it can’t put these two films together without the original title involved it isn’t that surprising that they thought the audience is too stupid to understand how lazy and poorly made this thing is. As it happens, it looks like I did  know what to say.

1. Getaway

Another notch in Ethan Hawke’s shitty movie in 2013 belt, Getaway is directed by Courtney Solomon, the man responsible for the 2000 Dungeons & Dragons movie and who may be the worst director I have ever seen. Getaway is completely nonsensical and features incredibly poor driving scenes and effects on a plot that is held together by nothing more than a couple of Hot Wheels stickers and hope. The plot is basically just one big hole and the characters are annoying to an extreme of which I was previously unaware. Even if your intention is to mock, this movie is painful to watch and I really wanted to walk out of it not just because I didn’t like it but because I was having a hard time breathing from just how much it sucked. I was acutely uncomfortable the entire time and it just never got better. The best thing I can say about this movie is that it ended.

So that is the list. If you want to debate or comment, feel free below.