Every year, Hollywood celebrates the best films at the Oscars ceremony, and I am eagerly awaiting the nominations announcement tomorrow. Alongside the celebration of the best films of the year, Hollywood also enjoys throwing jeers at the worst films of the year at the Razzie Awards. This year’s pack of Razzie nominations just came out, and it would appear that Netflix’s Blonde (2022) and Machine Gun Kelly’s Good Mourning (2023) lead the pack in the tongue-in-cheek awards. Admittedly, I still have not watched either of these films, but I have heard horrible things. Over the course of 2022, I watched eighty-six films, and with that came a lot of diamonds and a lot of muck. Here are my 10 WORST movies of 2022.

Dishonorable Mentions: Falling for Christmas (2022), Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank (2022), Hocus Pocus 2 (2022), My Best Friend’s Exorcism (2022), Where the Crawdads Sings (2022)

10. Ambulance

In the category of “Look, I bought a drone,” Michael Bay’s most recent film is an interesting premise that completely fails in execution. Starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Ambulance takes two phenomenal actors and wastes them in a story that completely falls apart when you consider how that world’s LA traffic works, and its overuse of drone footage leaves you questioning whether or not Bay has ever used a real camera before. Once again, Bay gives audiences a film that’s better off at the bottom of the Wal-Mart bin.

9. Prey for the Devil

I hate when exorcism movies fail. The concept of having one’s body taken over by an entity is terrifying, but Prey for the Devil takes this terrifying idea and makes it boring. This movie is a blatant repeat of every single trope found in this subgenre of horror, and its regurgitation of these tropes is painstakingly bland. With its lack of anything original and a heavy-handed conservative message, Prey for the Devil left me praying that these filmmakers never touch the horror genre again.

8. The Invitation

The Invitation is one of those movies that tries to hide all of its awful elements with a good cast. While the cast of the film is doing their best (and salvaging a lot), everything else in this movie is paint-by-numbers and entirely forgettable. Once again, Hollywood fails vampires with this slow and uninventive film.

7. Morbius

In a world where Spider-Man 3 (2007) and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014) exist, Morbius still ends up being the worst Spider-Man related film they have ever distributed. Between the Venom sequel, Let There Be Carnage, and now this, I have zero excitement for any future Marvel projects coming out of Sony’s live-action Spider-Verse. A messy plot with horrible pacing, inconsistent visuals, mediocre score, and the single worst post-credit scene of all-time, all make up the groan inducing and blood-less vampire movie (?) that isn’t worth your time.

6. Disenchanted

One of my favorite live-action Disney films, and one that I believe is criminally underrated, is 2007’s Enchanted starring Amy Adams. I was really excited for this long awaited sequel, so imagine my disappointment when we got handed this hot pile of garbage. Everything from the script to the music to the choreography to the story was a more than a step down from the original—this film is more like if the filmmakers jumped from the top of a flight of stairs and broke their ankles when they landed at the bottom. This was a film that I found insulting to my senses and a blight on the fantastic original.

5. Pinocchio (Disney)

If I was told at the beginning of the year that there was going to be two separate Pinocchio movies (2022 actually had three) and that one would be in my top 10 best films of the year with the other in my worst films, I would’ve never guessed that the Tom Hanks led, Robert Zemeckis directed Disney adaptation would’ve been the worst. For the most part, I have really liked Disney’s live action remakes other than the atrocious Dumbo (2019), and somehow Pinocchio manages to out-disappoint even that. I would say that its soullessness and lack of good would explain why it went straight to Disney+, but Lady and the Tramp (2019) and Chip n’ Dale Rescue Rangers (2022) did to and both of those movies are thoroughly entertaining. The Razzies playfully nominated Hanks for Elvis (2022), but if these farce awards unironically nominated the “worst performances”, Hanks’ Geppetto would definitely lead the pack.

4. Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Netflix)

My views on this film have not changed since my “Ranking Halloween Films Part 2“, so here is my exact quote (this film isn’t worth wasting anymore my brain power): “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise is, in my opinion, one of the worst horror franchises out there. The original film from 1974 is phenomenal, but from there, all the other entries are awful. Netflix’s newest attempt falls among the worst films in the franchise. With a severe lack of original ideas, a laughably stupid third act, and absolutely no fear or dread to be found, Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022) is one to be filed under “Why does this exist?””

3. Moonfall

Moonfall is a sci-fi disaster film that is so bad, I refused to acknowledge that I paid money to go see this movie for months. It is as the movie suggests: the moon gets knocked out of orbit and begins to plummet towards Earth. If this stuck with this premise and just had destructive chaos, this could’ve made a fun 25-minute short film on YouTube. However, from its horrible production design, story, script, and characters, I left this movie and immediately went into a depressive state. I normally laugh at the pretentious cinefreaks that complain about “too much CGI spectacle” ruining Hollywood, but this crime against the silver screen made me understand where they’re coming from.

2. Firestarter (2022)

Firestarter (2022) is one of the Stephen King adaptations that lost of coin flip. With King’s adaptations being evenly split between amazing and absolute dogwater, this film makes you wish that you actually picked up a book instead of heading out to a theater. Horrible acting, writing, and direction plague this entire film and it will go down in history as one of the worst horror films ever released. In a game of Would You Rather?, if the options are rewatch Firestarter or actually be lit on fire, I think I would take ignition: at least that dumpster fire could be put out.

1. The Mean One

I feel bad marking this as the worst film of the year. On one hand, a small team of film lovers set out to make their very own movie with a beloved Dr. Seuss character, and despite all odds, they got their film in theaters across that country. As a film fan, this is super inspirational. On the other hand, being widely distributed means that it needs to be assessed as much, and The Mean One is among one of the worst theatrically distributed films I have ever seen. This movie has nothing redeemable in it and will likely be used as a new form of CIA torture tactics. Much like Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the best way I can describe this movie I have already written down, this time in my 2022 Holiday Rankings: “For the longest time, I considered The Last Airbender (2010) to be the worst theatrically released film of all time. As bad as I feel to compare the two, I think The Mean One (2022) easily takes over that spot. Sitting through this low-budget horror spoof on Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch was a painful task, and the only reason I didn’t leave is because it was storming outside the theater I was in. This film originally caught my attention because of its insane premise of a serial killer Grinch, and a non-existent budget “bad movie” can be a lot of fun despite its expected horrible acting and writing. That said, The Mean One has no sense of fun and just toils along with its high-school level acting and writing with no redeeming qualities. What really broke the camel’s back for me , was the visual effects and camera work: it is not hyperbole when I say I’ve seen better visual effects and cinematography from middle school students. This is a film that belongs in the deepest recesses of Hell where no one can ever view it again.”