As a rule, I go out of my way to track down the most disgustingly awful films of a given year, usually focusing on failed blockbusters. Every once in a while, I stumble upon greatness in these critically-panned movies, but usually they’re forgettable, and their greatest sin is being boring. These are the films released in 2017 that either bored me to tears or made me violently angry.
10) The Dark Tower
Stephen King has a very interesting relationship with the book-to-film adaptation process. Most King adaptations are either awful yet watchable, or truly great films. This year, we were treated to at least three King adaptations. “It” was a perfectly fine film in spite of being grammatically difficult to talk about, Gerald’s Game was sub-par, but The Dark Tower is the King movie that really stood out to me this year, for all the wrong reasons. Based on the first book in a series I never intend to read, The Dark Tower’s story did not lend itself well to the big screen. Matthew McConaughey tries for all of the Oscars, and fails, but he is definitely the most absurd and entertaining part of this by-the-numbers fantasy/adventure film.
The most terrifying part of The Dark Tower is the prospect of a shared Stephen King universe, something the world really doesn’t need. There are characters that quite literally have “The Shining.” I know this isn’t a huge revelation, as King has always been self-referential, but with the current trend of “let’s make it a shared universe!” and the terrible trajectory of that decision, I’m very glad that The Dark Tower was a critical and commercial failure. I’ve hated King’s lame callbacks to his other work before (CAN WE NOT SET OUR STORY IN MAINE PLEASE) but The Dark Tower feels like a half-assed attempt at making those callbacks a reliable cash-cow, and watching it fail gave me warm fuzzy feelings.
9) Death Note
I am a fan of the anime Death Note. Like many people around my age, that series was the first to really open my mind to the concept that anime is not only for pathetic Japan-obsessed teenagers. It’s an interesting concept (that Japan has tried to emulate since without very much success) and it’s one of the best television experiences you could ask for. It was previously adapted into at least two live-action Japanese films, neither of which were anything groundbreaking, as they essentially covered small sections of the anime. When a Death Note movie was announced, I expected a half-assed American rehash. What I got was so much worse.
The acting in this film is a major problem, but the worst part is the meddling with traits of the characters. The problem isn’t that too much was changed, it’s that nearly every alteration was clearly done by someone who did not understand the overarching concept of Death Note, and because of this, character motivations made little sense. Ignoring its failure as an adaptation, it’s just a boring, bland film with un-relatable characters. Not even Willem Dafoe as a CGI death god could save this one.
8) Everything, Everything
If this movie hadn’t been spoiled for me, I would have never bothered watching it. It’s a young adult romantic drama with one major problematic element: the twist at the end has awful, disgusting implications that the movie isn’t willing to explore. The main character is a girl about to turn 18, who happens to have an “immuno-deficiency” disease, thus living her life trapped in a house with her mother, enduring the tragedy that is home-school. A cute boy moves in next door, which motivates her to push the boundaries of what her body can handle by letting the boy in, escaping to the front yard, and eventually going on vacation with him and falling in love. While on vacation, she gets sick and is forced to return home. She contacts the doctor who treated her while she was abroad, only to find out that she doesn’t have the rare disease she’s been told she has all her life. Instead, her immune system is simply weak because her mother has imprisoned her in what amounts to a glass cage for over ten years, due to attachment issues brought on by the loss of the mother’s husband and son.
The film as a whole is bad, but the fact that the mother isn’t painted as a twisted sadist is disturbing in its own right. It’s the most jarring tonal shift since last year’s Me Before You (or as I call it: I love you, please help me kill myself.) The twist isn’t even something that occurs 2/3 of the way through the film in an effort to create a conflict that the final 1/3 can resolve. There’s a confrontation between the mother and daughter toward the very end, and after describing what a bitch her mother is, everyone quickly and easily moves on with their lives. The author of this screenplay and the book it was based on seem to have very little idea how terrifying it is for a mother to imprison her daughter for rather arbitrary reasons, and refusing to explore this only makes the story more unbelievable.
7) The Shack
Based on the best-selling novel that everyone’s senile great-aunt inappropriately recommends after the loss of a loved one, The Shack is a story about a man who was horrifically abused as a child, and is now desperately trying to cope with the loss of his daughter. He receives an odd letter that seems to be from God, and then returns to the cabin where his daughter’s blood and tattered dress were found. There he meets God, who takes the form of three different people who spend the rest of the movie explaining their existence. One part of God is a wise African-American lady, who tests positive for being a racially-insensitive character, and gives new meaning to the term “magic negro.” God also appears as a white guy, and as Jesus, played for the first time in an English-language film by an actual Israeli person. The main character has doubts, but is still rather quick to accept this incredibly fishy allegory as fact.
Each part of God proceeds to both declare their love for the main character and put him through some needlessly torturous therapy. We watch as God tries desperately to hold his metaphor together, constantly answering the main character’s questions vaguely, and then delving into excerpts from a sermon on Christian apologetics. After over an hour and a half of backpedaling, the film backpedals once more, as the audience “realizes” they’ve been Wizard-of-Oz’d. Our main character was in a car accident, and did not spend an entire weekend at the shack. It’s implied that his revelatory hallucination was “real” in the sense that it was a vision from God. It’s the kind of movie that likes to ask the hard questions about life, and then tells us to fuck off and have a little faith.
It was also a major box-office success, earning $100 million against its $20 million budget, proving once again that the key to a high income-versus-budget ratio is to make a theologically-innocuous Christian film.
6) The Circle
One of the most unremarkable films on this list, The Circle’s ad campaign entered the public consciousness with a bang, and exited with a whimper, largely forgotten. I’ll admit, the trailer had me cautiously excited. It looked like a dystopian thriller that would explore the dangers of surveillance and social media. That’s relatively close to an accurate description, but it’s also giving the film way too much credit.
The Circle is a metaphor for Apple, Facebook, and any other large company that causes panic in technophobes over the age of 80. Emma Watson is a young, idealistic intern at this company, whose employees show an overwhelming love for The Circle. It becomes abundantly clear (before it should) that The Circle is ran by a corrupt Steve Jobs facsimile, and as Emma Watson rises to prominence in the company, she becomes something far worse than Steve Jobs. This is another film whose metaphor is too transparent, but it’s also full of baffling implications that render any potential lesson too convoluted to be anything but useless.
As a side note, Emma Watson’s father in this film is played by Bill Paxton in one of his final roles. His character has multiple sclerosis, and The Circle essentially cures his condition. Also, he throws mini-tantrums and randomly appears to have a developmental disability. As someone with MS, I really hate this portrayal.
5) The Snowman
I didn’t catch this one before the critical Hater-Aid, but it certainly lived (down?) to my expectations. Michael Fassbender, who is clearly better than this script, delivers a rather baffling performance. His character is named, no joke, Harry Hole. This is the first in a series of strange narrative choices. Mr. Hole is a guilt-ridden divorcee who happens to sleep outside quite often, presumably because he’s a drunk. He’s an amalgamation of the protagonists of every David Fincher-style detective thriller, and he’s trying to catch a serial killer whose modus operandi is building a snowman. The way this is presented in the trailer, this seems like a compelling concept. Perhaps he stuffs body parts in the snowmen, or something similarly sinister? No, he just likes building snowmen because he’s crazy. The killer is exactly who you think it is, and nothing in the movie really matters.
Watching The Snowman is really, really depressing. There are so many concepts that, if expounded upon, might be really intriguing. At every turn, it takes the lamest way out imaginable. By the time it ends, you don’t care what happens, but you will likely develop a distaste for snow.
4) Beatriz at Dinner
This may not be the worst film I’ve seen this year, but it’s certainly the one that made me the angriest. I wrote a hateful review after my first watch, and then went to see it at an art-house theater, where the prospect of a “discussion” after the film was proposed. There was no formally structured discussion, or any discussion at all to my knowledge, and that’s probably for the best. I would have likely spent the entire time holding back an angry rant about the film’s tone-deafness and ignorance. Even now, I can’t write this entry without getting a little peeved.
3) The Case for Christ
This has the best MPAA rating description: “Rated PG for thematic elements including medical descriptions of crucifixion, and incidental smoking.”
Exactly what The Case for Christ is can be hard to pinpoint. Its source material, which goes by the same name, is a series of essays about an atheist who, through emotional appeals and shaky logic, convinces himself that there is concrete evidence of the existence of the Christian God. Whether or not these claims are valid isn’t the point, because this film is more of a biopic of Lee Strobel, author of The Case for Christ.
The film’s plot revolves around Lee and his family. Because this is a Christian film, atheist Lee is a huge asshole who’s cruel to his wife and children. He goes on a tirade to prove his filthy God-believing wife wrong, using EVIDENCE, so she’ll stop embarrassing him at parties by being a dirty Bible-thumper. It’s broken down in the same way as the book, with each chapter focusing on a single argument against the existence of God. He cherry-picks experts to consult for each point. These points, narratively, unfold as such:
Lee: “Hey wife, you’re stupid because you believe in God for X reason. I’ll prove it to you after you finish fulfilling my sexual needs, doing my laundry, and raising my children.”
Lee’s Wife: “Nuh-uh, just let me have my beliefs. I’m going to do the dishes while I pretend to be an empowered female character in spite of the fact that I’m a baby machine who can’t think for herself.”
Lee: “Even though women are incapable of independent thought, you were right about that one. I guess I’ll have to find another way to belittle you!”
(Repeat)
Movie Lee Strobel is a real smug dick, and it isn’t until he accepts Jesus that he begins to act like a decent human being. This is a fairly common trend in the Pureflix era, but The Case for Christ takes it to such an over-the-top degree that I can’t help but question every aspect of its validity as being inspired by a true story. I certainly hope it isn’t accurate, because otherwise Strobel is definitely an abusive husband and father, not that this would surprise me. It’s a movie that, upon analysis, should offend anyone regardless of religious beliefs.
It tripled its budget at the box office.
2) Britney Ever After
Another unfortunate biopic that just can’t be grounded in reality, Britney Ever After is the Britney Spears film Lifetime channel regulars have been waiting for, and it’s a beautiful mess. Frankly, I’m unsure how Lifetime got away with this.
Natasha Bassett plays Britney the way one might imagine someone from L.A. describing someone from the deep south. She’s an idiot, she drops her long-time boyfriend at the first sign of fame, and if you didn’t know any better, you’d assume her parents were brother and sister. It’s the kind of performance that reflects a broad range of negative perspectives garnered from flippant comments made by adolescent boys on the internet. It’s like seeing Britney as described by the National Enquirer come to life. The same is true for every single performance, and it’s impressively bad.
One of the funniest aspects is her relationship with Justin Timberlake. He flirts with her once, they have sex, and are immediately in love. As they both become more famous, they grow a strong desire to have sex with everyone and everything, becoming on-again off-again lovers for the remainder of the film, because neither can resist the allure of sexy back-up dancers. When Britney and Justin have a major falling out, they resolve it the only way they know how: with a public dance-off in some generic club. Spears ends her relationship with her hips rather than with words.
One of the more baffling aspects of Britney Ever After is the lack of Britney Spears’ music. No, this isn’t a biopic that ignores her music in favor of focusing on her as a person. There are music numbers in this film, and none of them are Britney Spears songs. Apparently the rights were too expensive and just not worth it, so instead, Britney performs covers of songs from bands like The Rolling Stones.
The ways in which this is an incompetent film is something I could talk about for hours, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the unfathomable stupidity of my #1 pick…
1) I’m Not Ashamed
…But you should be!
I remember seeing this trailer over and over again in the latter half of 2016 and early 2017. For a while, I assumed that it was delayed indefinitely due to its touchy subject matter. It should have been, but I’m glad it wasn’t.
I’m Not Ashamed is another entry in the golden age of Christian exploitation films, with one major twist: It’s about Rachel Joy Scott, the first victim of the Columbine massacre. If that sounds like potentially messy territory for a film, that’s because it REALLY is.
The film plays out like a rather bland coming-of-age drama, except that we know its lead will never literally come of age. Rachel is a normal teenage girl who has trouble fitting in, tries alcohol once, and loves to sulk while writing in her diary. Much of the voice-over comes from the real Rachel’s diary…and it’s not used to great effect.
You see, that diary may contain the basis for Rachel’s challenge, a non-profit started by her father that aims to quell bullying in schools, but it was still written by a 16-year-old girl. Her quotes are often oversimplifications of complex ideas, typical angsty entries about how nobody understands her, and completely meaningless statements about mercy. There’s nothing special about the diary, except that it inspired a grieving parent to start a rather successful non-profit. I really, really want to talk about how horrible those diary entries are, but they weren’t meant for us. Nobody carefully plans their diary in order to inspire other people after they’ve been martyred, but the movie seems to want us to believe that there were other forces at work, and that Rachel “had a feeling” that something bad was coming prior to the massacre. In fact, once it does happen, she doesn’t really seem surprised at all. The psychic implications of this are rather disrespectful to the painfully average teenager who was gunned down in cold blood through no fault of her own. It’s like an attempt to recreate the disgusting pack of lies that was “She Said Yes.”
Perhaps the most misguided and disturbing part of I’m Not Ashamed is the Eric/Dylan subplot. At random points in the film, it cuts to Eric and Dylan doing something that’s supposed to be sinister. For example, there’s a shot (that comes out of NOWHERE) of Eric or Dylan reading Mein Kampf. We’re randomly shown the boys playing violent video games in the basement, when one turns to the other and casually says, “I wish Columbine was like this.” This film didn’t even need to be about Columbine. It does touch on Dylan and Rachel sharing the same theater class, but other than that and the final “shot,” there was no Columbine connection. Not only is the film manipulative in several ways, it’s almost an atrocity against the deified Rachel Joy Scott, who had the uncanny power to make jocks and special ed students get along, itself a simplification of ONE diary entry.
I’m Not Ashamed would be one of the most entertainingly awful films of the year, if it wasn’t the most tragically disrespectful.