Top 10 WORST Films of 2015: #5-1

Welcome back to Rhode Island Movie Corner’s end-of-they-year Top 10 list of my picks for the Worst Films of 2015. This is the second half of a two-part post and today I’ll be listing my Top 5 Worst of the Year. For the other half, numbers 10-6, please click the link provided below. Let’s not waste any more time and get on with the rest of the list…

PART 1: (http://rimoviecorner.blogspot.com/2015/12/top-10-worst-films-of-2015-10-5.html)

Starting today’s post off is my Number 5 pick, another lousy horror flick whose short runtime was really the only thing that kept it from getting any higher on this list.

5. THE LAZARUS EFFECT

At the very least this film sort of has an interesting idea for a horror film. Basically the premise is that a group of scientists have created a special serum code-named ‘Lazarus’, hence the title of the film, that resurrects things from the dead. This serum is then used on one of the lead scientists (Olivia Wilde) when she is killed during one of the tests but when she is resurrected, things start to take a turn for the worse. What follows is… just your average horror film. Seriously, there’s not much that I can say about this film. It has some good people in it, like Wilde, Evan Peters, Donald Glover, and Mark Duplass, but it’s extremely clichéd and mediocre in almost every aspect; the ‘horror’ elements, the deaths, the fact that the black guy is the first to die, etc. As I just noted, the only major redeeming quality about the film is that it’s mercifully short at only 83 minutes long. But at the same time, that also means that it doesn’t leave any major impression whatsoever and is just another bland PG-13 rated horror film. Many of you know that I’m not too big on the horror genre in general so like ‘Unfriended’ you can chalk this up as another horror film that I’m likely never going to watch again.

My Number 4 pick has a bit of history to it due to the fact that it took four years for it to get released… watching this film, it’s clear why…

4. THE LOFT

This film was originally shot four years ago in 2011. Yet it was only released this year mainly due to a change in distributor. Originally produced by Dark Castle Entertainment and intended to be released by Universal, it ended up getting transferred to Open Road Films when it got pulled from its original August 2014 release date. It’s also worth noting that this is the second remake of a 2008 Belgian film by the same director, Erik Van Looy, and even starring one of the same actors, Matthias Schoenaerts (there was also a Dutch version produced in 2010). I haven’t seen either the original ‘Loft’ or the Dutch version but I hope that they’re at least better than this version. It’s an erotic thriller that lacks in both the erotic and the thriller elements. It’s annoyingly shot and edited, with a whole bunch of awkward wide angle lens close-ups and overly artsy edits that just seem pretentious. But perhaps the worst part of the film is that it’s full to the brim with terrible characters. The main plot of the film revolves around five friends trying to figure out the details behind the death of a young woman in their shared loft apartment… a loft that they all use to cheat on their wives. So despite the fact that there are some good people in the cast like Karl Urban and James Marsden, you don’t like any of these a-holes because they are all, to quote an unintentionally ironic line from the film itself, ‘pigs’ and you don’t even get to know anything about them. In short, this is just an ugly film in every sense of the word that very much fits the bill of a ‘January release’.

How fitting… my Number 3 is the third film in its franchise… a franchise that went downhill fast right after its first installment with its latest installment being the franchise’s all-time low.

3. TAKEN 3

Talk about a franchise that went immediately downhill after its first film, sort of like ‘The Hangover’ trilogy. And the interesting thing about this franchise was that no one really expected much out of the first ‘Taken’ film in the first place, even its star Liam Neeson. He thought that it was just going to be a direct-to-video release. But when the film was released in the U.S. in January 2009, it became a smash hit and as a result, Liam Neeson’s career was changed forever. Now he was known as the Charles Bronson-esque action star and that would become a major influence on many of his subsequent action films… but perhaps maybe a bit too much of an influence was made. Since the first ‘Taken’, Neeson has starred in numerous action films in which it seems like he’s playing the exact same character every time. Thankfully Neeson has recently stated that he’s planning on moving on from the action genre in a few years which is good given the argument that his action films are beginning to look more and more alike. And in the case of the ‘Taken’ franchise, getting worse and worse. ‘Taken 2’ was released in 2012 and did not attract the same positive reception amongst audiences. A change in director led to faster and more erratic editing, something that many cinefiles feel is one of the biggest problems today with action films. But to be perfectly honest, I don’t ‘hate’ ‘Taken 2’. Yeah it’s stupid and has the aforementioned editing problem but it doesn’t bother me as much as it did other people for some reason. I could at the very least tolerate the film. ‘Taken 3’ on the other hand…

If you thought the editing in ‘Taken 2’ was bad, just wait until you see ‘Taken 3’, which easily has the worst editing job in recent film history. Director Oliver Megaton clearly isn’t very good at shooting and editing action and it shows in the film with extremely choppy and fast editing in almost every scene. There’s seriously a scene in which Bryan Mills is just jumping over a fence and yet it cuts to somewhere around 15 different angles in the span of like 8 seconds. There are also scenes in which the editing and frantic camera movement destroy any sort of logic within the action sequences. Like in one scene, Bryan crashes a car down an elevator shaft and it explodes. And despite giving us no clear shot of him getting out of the car before he explodes, somehow the film then cuts to him out in the open, making us question just how the hell he got out of that situation. Pair all of this with a story that’s trying to be more dramatic than it is and you have what is easily one of the worst action films in recent years. Not even Liam Neeson, who at the very least is still a likable enough action lead, can save this train-wreck. When this film was first announced, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who questioned how this series could even continue after the second film. Was Liam Neeson going to have to rescue his kidnapped dog? Was he going to kidnap himself? Well now that this film is out, we can maybe rest assured knowing that this will hopefully be the last film in the franchise.

My number 2 is a big one. 2015 wasn’t as good of a year for superhero films as 2014. Now I’m not talking about the two Marvel Studios releases this year because, of course, both of those films were excellent. I’m talking about the other superhero film released this year. Not only is it one of the genre’s absolute worst, but it’s also my pick for the most disappointing film of the year. Yes… I actually was looking forward to this film.

2. FANTASTIC FOUR

Despite all of the controversy surrounding this film, I was actually looking forward to it. I thought that this was going to be the film that would redeem the ‘Fantastic Four’ film series after a string of less-than-stellar adaptations of Marvel’s ‘First Family’. Despite all of the skepticism surrounding the film, I was hopeful that it was going to be awesome. It was to be directed by Josh Trank, fresh off of directing one of my favorite films from 2012, ‘Chronicle’. And despite the usual backlash that comes with every superhero casting, I thought that the studio went with a really nice cast of leads in Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan (racists be damned), and Jamie Bell to take on the roles of the Four with Toby Kebbell, fresh off of a terrific villainous turn as Koba in ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes’, taking on the role of Dr. Doom. But in the months leading up to the film’s release, there was controversies everywhere you looked. There was the rumor about how the film was going to make drastic changes to the characters, including making Dr. Doom a hacker. Then Fox announced reshoots in January 2015 and reports stated that the studio wasn’t happy with Trank’s original cut of the film along with other reports that Trank had behaved erratically during filming. Despite all of this, I was still hoping for the best when it came to this film… how wrong I was.

Now for the record, I don’t entirely blame this on Josh Trank. This was probably just a case of a young director being unprepared to tackle a big-budget superhero film after working on the lower-budgeted ‘Chronicle’. Not only that, but Trank himself confirmed that the studio had made numerous changes to his original cut of the film, basically screwing him over in the process. That’s something that you can definitely tell based solely on the final cut. The reshoots are obvious, with the most infamous example of this being Kate Mara’s frequently changing hairstyle, and the plot feels completely garbled at times. After the Four first gain their powers, the film literally cuts to a year later when they are already in control of their powers and working for the government. What happened in this year could’ve led to some nice bits of character development but instead they just cut that part out entirely. But that doesn’t mean that Trank is off the hook because he was responsible for one of the major problems of the film; its dour tone. Simply put, it’s not fun to watch. I get that they were trying to not go too far into goofy territory like the previous ‘Fantastic Four’ films did but they should’ve just taken notes from what Marvel has been doing with the MCU in terms of overall tone. And yes I know that there are some who complain about the MCU’s supposed overly silly nature but even if that was true, and quite frankly it isn’t, I very much prefer the MCU films over something like this that’s actually kind of depressing.

The jumbled final product, as well as Trank apparently telling the actors to be as ‘dull’ as possible in regards to their performances, also has a severely negative impact on the overall character development. The four main characters in this film never once act like the Fantastic Four of the comics. Heck, they’re only together once in the entire film and that’s right at the end of the film. When they first acquire their powers, Reed (AKA Mr. Fantastic) leaves the group for that aforementioned year that we don’t see in order to find a cure for the group’s newfound powers. It isn’t until the finale when the four are onscreen together and as a result, they never once capture the personalities and relationships that define their characters in the comics, aside from maybe ‘a little’ of the friendship between Reed and Ben at the beginning. Speaking of that finale, it is literally the only major action set piece in the entire film. Yes, that’s right, a superhero film released the same year as ‘The Avengers: Age of Ultron’ has only one major action sequence and it’s directly at the end of the film. And it’s a pretty terrible action sequence to boot, which makes me think that it was thrown in at the last second because the studio realized that they hadn’t done anything superhero-related in the span of an hour and a half. In other words, this is a pretty damn boring superhero film. Sure the beginning of the film is kind of interesting as the Four, along with Victor von Doom, build the teleporter device that sends them to the world where they acquire the powers but after that… nothing happens whatsoever. I couldn’t even do a Spoiler Post for this film, like I usually do for superhero films, because there was literally nothing to spoil. They get their powers, spend some time working for the government, fight Doom, The End.     

And finally let’s talk about Doctor Doom, arguably Marvel’s greatest villain of all-time. He has never been done justice on the big-screen. First there was the Doctor Doom from the 1994 unreleased ‘Fantastic Four’ film who, to put it quite simply, was a major pussy who kept getting his ass kicked by the Four and was sometimes completely unintelligible due to a clear lack of ADR work. The ’05 film version of Doom was also lackluster, with Julian McMahon being majorly miscast in the role. As for this Doom… he’s barely in the film. After the power-gaining incident, he’s left behind on the parallel dimension referred to as ‘Planet Zero’ and isn’t seen again until the government returns to that dimension. And then after that, he’s just evil because… he’s evil and wants to be left alone on that planet. So in short, you’re actually rooting for him to get his demands. It’s definitely a waste of Toby Kebbell, who’s covered in makeup (I think; it may have been CGI) so much to the point where, as the internet has put it, he looks like a damn crash test dummy. So that’s the 2015 ‘Fantastic Four’ reboot… the worst interpretation of the Four to date. It’s so bad that the 1994 unreleased ‘Fantastic Four’ film is actually better by comparison. It’s so bad that I’m no longer afraid to admit that I actually do like the 2005 ‘Fantastic Four’ film and its 2007 sequel, ‘Rise of the Silver Surfer’. And while I can’t really defend either of those films that much because they’re definitely some of the lesser films of their genre, they’re at least better than what we got here. Hopefully the rights to the characters will revert back to Marvel Studios soon. Fourth time’s the charm?

So what can be worse than ‘Fantastic Four’, you ask? Well, thankfully not a lot of people have seen this one but I did so I have to talk about it. And for the first time on this blog, I have to talk about the infamous duo of stinkers that have produced some of the worst films of all-time. That’s right, for my Number 1 worst film of 2015, it’s time to talk about… Seltzerberg…

1. SUPERFAST

Since this is the first time that I’m talking about this two on here, I better start off with a history lesson about the masters of crap that are Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer. These two got their start writing the screenplay for the 1996 Leslie Nielsen starring spoof ‘Spy Hard’, directed by Friedberg’s father Rick. Similar to how their future films turned out, the film received highly negative reviews from critics. But that didn’t stop them from getting more work and in 2000, they collaborated with the Wayans on that year’s big box office hit ‘Scary Movie’, parodying 1996’s ‘Scream’ and effectively spawning the formula for all future spoof films. In 2006, the duo finally moved into directing with ‘Date Movie’ and have since produced other ‘spoof’ films such as ‘Epic Movie’, ‘Meet the Spartans’, ‘Disaster Movie’, ‘Vampires Suck’, and ‘The Starving Games’. Each of their films have been rightfully panned for being incredibly unfunny and being nothing more than brainless films that are just meant to cash in on whatever’s popular at the time, even if it has nothing to do with the supposed ‘genre’ of the film. For example, ‘Epic Movie’ spoofed films like ‘Nacho Libre’ and ‘Borat’. Epics? And as a result, the ‘spoof genre’ that had once dominated the film industry with classics like ‘Spaceballs’ and ‘Airplane’ is now home to godawful films that have forgotten about what made the spoof films of the past work so well.

So what was it about those classic spoofs that worked so well? Doug Walker of Channel Awesome and former Channel Awesome member Welshy both gave some solid answers to this question. In his video ‘My Problem with Current Movie Spoofs’, Welshy noted that one of the reasons why spoof movies of the past worked as well as they did was because the actors treated the material seriously even if it was intended to be comical, whereas nowadays actors in spoof movies are fully aware of the intended tone and just act all goofy. In his video ‘Is Parody Dead?’, Doug noted that one of the biggest strengths of the genre’s earlier days was how the comedy came from the filmmakers not just making reference after reference but taking the original story that they were satirizing and viewing it from a different perspective. The primary example that he used was the film that basically kick-started the whole spoof genre in general, Mel Brooks’ ‘Young Frankenstein’, which took the classic horror story and turned it on its head while still maintaining the general atmosphere of the original film, like having the kind old man that looked after Frankenstein’s monster be clumsy and having Frankenstein’s assistant Igor be unaware of his hunchback nature. Nowadays, the ‘comedy’ that comes from spoof films is just a series of references that are made to satirize whatever’s popular at the time. And right at the top of this ‘craze’ is the duo of Seltzerberg. Their newest film, ‘Superfast’, is, as you might have guessed, a spoof of the ‘Fast and Furious’ films. Particularly it’s a ‘re-do’ of the first film, even though the official series’ seventh installment was just released this year.

So yeah, if you’ve been unfortunate enough to have seen any of Seltzerberg’s films, you know what to expect from this film. Unfunny humor, dumb references, and awkward gross-out moments. The main characters are literally just named after the actors who played the real characters in the ‘Fast and Furious’ films. Dom is ‘Vin’, Letty is ‘Michelle’, Mia is ‘Jordana’, etc. And then they made their version of the Brian character a total dumbass, which is actually rather offensive to Paul Walker’s legacy if you ask me. If you want to talk about some of the cheapest films ever produced, not in regards to overall cost but quality, a Seltzerberg film is the prime example of the lowest of lows in the film industry. If there is any bright side to this, it is that since ‘Vampires Suck’, the duo’s films have not actually been getting wide releases. Originally, their films were released by Fox under their Regency label. Both this and ‘The Starving Games’ were released by an independent distributor so maybe these two will finally be stopped one day. However, they’re already working on a ‘Taken’ ‘parody’ (the term parody of course is used loosely in this context) titled ‘Who the F#@K Took My Daughter?” so we’re not out of the fire yet…

And those are my Top 10 worst films of 2015. What are yours? Be sure to sound off in the comments below. Thanks for going along with me on this ‘cleansing’ and be sure to tune in soon to me ending the year on a positive note and listing my Top 12 favorite films from this past year.