The worst movies of 2022

Many filmmakers didn’t apply a level of care to make films worth seeing

CITYnews halifax \ Jordan Parker

In a year where the box-office struggled to rebound, sequels, remakes and other familiar properties flooded the market trying to make a dent. Many filmmakers, however, didn’t apply a level of care to make films worth seeing, and this list is loaded with misfires.

Here are my worst – and most disappointing – movies of 2022.

Redeeming Love

We’ve all seen the escort-with-a-heart-of-gold scenario. Pretty Woman was an absolute hit when it was released, and easily showed people from opposite sides of the tracks could fall in love.

But this adaptation of Francine Rivers’s best-selling novel is dark, dreary and overall truly disgusting. Director D.J. Caruso was once an action director with promise, known for Eagle Eye, Disturbia and Taking Lives.

Unfortunately, this film relishes in lingering on the pain and suffering of its lead. It follows Angel, sold into prostitution as a child, who has spent her life mistreated and used. So when farm owner Michael falls in love with her and wants to give her a better life, she can’t accept it. Will she ever embrace destiny and a better future?

It’s unfortunate leads Abigail Cowen and Tom Lewis – perfectly serviceable – couldn’t find anything better to do. Grey’s Anatomy alum Eric Dane, character actor Logan Marshall-Green, Famke Janssen, and Nina Dobrev all inexplicably joined this one too.

It’s got less class than a 50 Shades film, and it’s even more nonsensical. What a waste of 2+ hours.

Pinocchio

It’s stunning to me how there can be this much talent in front of and behind a camera, but so much absolutely wasted potential.

Writer-director Robert Zemeckis – the Oscar-winning behind Forrest Gump, Cast Away, The Polar Express, and Back To The Future – creates a lifeless remake of a classic Disney property.

He brings aboard previous collaborators Tom Hanks and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, but to no avail. They do nothing to breathe some delight in here. Even Cynthia Erivo, Keegan-Michael Key and Luke Evans can do little to save it.

The story of a puppet brought to life to become a real boy is simply nothing more than a Disney+ cash-grab, and it really shows. It’s lazy filmmaking from a once-innovative director, and that’s difficult to sit through.

Morbius

I have to be honest – I really, really wanted to like this movie.

I’m a Jared Leto apologist. I loved every performance of his, including his hammy House Of Gucci turn, and I think he’s mega-talented. A leading turn like this could have truly changed the trajectory of his career.

It took four attempts to finish the film. Having fallen asleep the first three times, it was pretty clear it wasn’t going to light me up with joy when I finally made it all the way through. But it was even worse than I’d imagined it ever could be.

Director Daniel Espinosa has made two really great feature films in Life and Safe House, so how he went this wrong is beyond me. But I’d bet on studio interference from Sony.

Leto is awful, Michael Keaton phones it in, Tyrese Gibson looks lost, and Jared Harris seems to just want it all to end. The only person who got the memo this was going to be schlock is Dr. Who alum Matt Smith, who goes full-camp.

This was a true awful actioner that even manages to skimp on fight scenes. It’s a film the whole world could have done without, and another black mark on superhero films.

Just stop, and let’s get something original out there already.

Blacklight and Memory: Also known as everything Liam Neeson did this year

When Taken first came out in 2008, Liam Neeson dropkicked his way into the hearts of absolutely everyone.

Previously known for everything from Star Wars to Schindler’s List, he’s always been versatile. Cue 15 years of action film after action film, and we’ve now finally hit fumes.

Now in his 70s, watching Neeson kick butt and take names is no longer fun – it’s farce, and it needs to end immediately.

It’s gotten to the point where I can barely distinguish between his efforts – at this point mostly direct-to-video – and Memory and Blacklight were both absolutely awful and forgettable.

Neeson is an Oscar nominee, and needs to begin acting like it. The lone ranger thing he’s got going won’t last much longer, and these two films were so thin on plot that one swift karate shop would have eviscerated the screenplay.

Save your money and go watch The Grey again. At least that one was worth your time.

Moonfall

What’s the definition of insanity? Director Roland Emmerich apparently still hasn’t managed to figured that one out himself.

While he’s known for big disaster flicks like Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow, and 2012, the box-office returns on his films have been diminishing for decades.

Midway was a flop, his Independence Day sequel was absolutely awful, Stonewall was a queer culture abomination, and White House Down was a carbon copy of Olympus Has Fallen.

With Moonfall, he proves he’s still learned nothing. It follows the moon – knocked out of orbit – as it goes hurling toward the earth.

It’s unfortunate Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson, Michael Pena, Charlie Plummer, and Game Of Thrones alum John Bradley get dragged along for the ride.

Moonfall is a self-indulgent, over-long piece of schlock that lands with an absolute thud.

The 355

It’s less that The 355 is absolutely terrible, and more that I just don’t understand how not one of those involved cared about the end product.

Oscar-nominated director Simon Kinberg – producer of The Martian, Logan, Deadpool, and so much more – makes a careless, lazy spy thriller with more wasted talent than an Ocean’s film.

I don’t even really understand what happened. But basically, bad guys get a weapon, and a bunch of incredibly smart, fierce, female agents must push to get it back.

You’d hope a cast including Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong’o, Diane Kruger, Penelope Cruz, Bingbing Fan, Jason Flemyng, Edgar Ramirez and Sebastian Stan would at least be entertaining.

But it’s not. It’s a dizzying, silly affair that I actually kind of wish I hadn’t spent two hours on, and that’s the sad part.

Hocus Pocus 2

In a year where Top Gun: Maverick proved there absolutely is a right way to make a decades-old sequel, Hocus Pocus 2 is a masterclass on what not to do.

How director Anne Fletcher can go from The Proposal and Step Up to this dreck is beyond me, but it’s unsatisfying in almost every way.

The characters aren’t elevated in any way. The campy fun of the original is missing, and my goodness, is it ever boring.

There’s little-to-no plot, and it’s quite clearly a cash-grab that really wasn’t particularly thought through at all. The new cast didn’t particularly impress me or give me hope for the franchise’s future either.

The Sanderson Sisters may be back in Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy, but they deserved a better return than this.

Jurassic World: Dominion

Speaking of deserving better, what did Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum and Laura Dern do to deserve this franchise-ending disservice?

Just when fans thought it couldn’t get any worse than Fallen Kingdom, director Colin Trevorrow jumped back in the director’s chair to give us this awful final kick at a beautiful franchise.

It’s a 150-minute movie that’s about 50 minutes too long. It’s got one of the most ridiculous storylines I’ve ever seen, even for an action movie. I’ve mocked Transformers plot-lines less.

The action sequences do little to make up for the stilted dialogue in between, or the truly strange performances, chief among them from Campbell Scott as Lewis Dodgson – a strange, poorly-placed callback to the 1993 original.

Chris Pratt has run his course as a leading man, and needs to go away for a while. Bryce Dallas Howard is fabulous but underutilized. Dern, Neill and Goldblum don’t get half the send-off they deserve, and ancillary characters have next to no purpose.

It was one of the most maddening films of 2022, and one that has so much un-earned potential.

Amsterdam

I went to see this one in theatres because I absolutely adore every single person involved.

God, I really wish I hadn’t spent my Cheap Tuesday $7. It’s an ambitious, madcap film that is just too weird for anyone to really relate.

Strange to a fault, it follows three friends who are framed for a murder they witness in the 1930s. They uncover a conspiracy plot that marks one of the strangest goings-on in American history.

I get that this is loosely based on a true story – but just because it’s true doesn’t make it remotely interesting as a film.

Writer-director David O. Russell – known for American Hustle and Silver Linings Playbook – makes the worst movie of his career here.

Christian Bale gives a great performance, as always, but it’s lost here, as are those of his co-stars.

With a cast that includes Bale, Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Rami Malek, Michael Shannon, Mike Myers, Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Rock, Taylor Swift, Zoe Saldana, Timothy Olyphant. Robert De Niro and more, it had all the ingredients.

But this one stumbles, and by the end, not even the talent involved can pick it back up. It’s a total and utter misfire.

Halloween Ends

Ah, the not-so-thrilling conclusion in this incredible saga,

Perhaps what hurt the most about Halloween Ends was the way it was marketed to audiences. The movie we all got was not the movie we expected. We were fleeced, and we got angry.

The finale to a series as important as this one to horror fans is not the time to experiment, but that’s exactly what filmmaker David Gordon Green did.

He swung big, and he absolutely missed. The plot was kept under wraps the entire time the film was marketed, and now I can see why.

Jamie Lee Curtis and our formidable villain Michael Meyers deserved a better finale, and this was a huge fan disservice.

To promise bloody showdowns that never happened, and to give us some existential drama rather than a horror movie was a dirty trick, and I won’t ever revisit the franchise.

This was – hands down – the most disappointing movie this year, and the one that hurt me the most as a moviegoer.