LIST: MY BOTTOM FIVE OF 2024

So I was browsing through Twitter the other day and I saw that the critics from Variety have done a list of the worst films of the year. This had been screenshot and quote-tweeted by one Joe Russo (not the one who did the Avengers movies) with the words "STOP. MAKING. WORST. MOVIE. LISTS.". (His allcaps and punctuation.) My response was "Why should we?" - a genuine question that elicited no coherent answer. Because there isn't one. Why shouldn't we list the worst films we've seen or the films we've liked the least? If it's perfectly acceptable to list the great ones, it's equally acceptable to point out the stinkers.

Listen: I've paid money to see all these movies. Either cash on the door, on my (soon to be abandoned) Cineworld All-You-Can-Eat card, through-the-post DVD rentals, or via streaming subscriptions. I'm not a critic or a broadcaster, I'm not a professional reviewer. I'm a paying customer. And like anyone who's gone on holiday and had a lousy time, like anyone who's bought a laptop or a PlayStation or a tin opener and it doesn't work, I have also paid for the right to say so. You don't want your movies ending up on people's Worst List? Stop making movies that deserve to be there.

As usual, my reference point is the Film Distributors Association website. And as usual, I probably dodged most of the bullets, particularly the endless superhero ones which, after the headbanging tedium of The Flash in 2023, I have given up on. I obviously avoided a lot of the films that clearly held no appeal for me (such as Transformers One or Harold And The Purple Crayon, because I'm neither a masochist nor a moron. Still, I did get hit by some fairly hefty artillery, and these were the most painful.

5. SOMETHING IN THE WATER

Yet another terrible shark movie, this time targeting a bunch of young women on a hen do in the Caribbean somewhere. Described by the director as Jaws Meets Bridesmaids, it begins with a brutal act of homophobic violence before dumping them all in the water to shout and squeal at each other while Sharky cruises around and chomps on them far too slowly. (This year also gave us a much better shark movie: Under Paris, but that went straight to streaming.)

4. HUNT HER, KILL HER / WINNIE-THE-POOH: BLOOD AND HONEY II

To be honest you can take your pick from the insultingly high number of bad horror movies this year: not just disappointments, but out-and-out rubbish. Baghead, Tarot, Night Swim, Imaginary and The Exorcism were all thoroughly tiresome (frequently taking place in near to total darkness which doesn't make for scary cinema, it makes for radio). In the end I've cheated slightly and gone for a tie: Hunt Her Kill Her is a deeply unpleasant movie in which a bunch of misogynist arsebags terrorise a woman working a night shift in a factory, while the second Winnie-The-Pooh slasher movie is a wretched splatter bore that, again, only exists because of copyright expiry. Both were garbage and frankly expressing a preference between them is like choosing which dog turd you'd rather step in.

3. GODZILLA X KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE

Staggeringly tedious and ridiculously expensive monster movie in which nothing makes sense, the numerous monster fights are CGId into pixelgasm oblivion, and the ever grander scenes of destruction and cities being stomped, nuked or otherwise destroyed become insanely boring given that no interest has been generated by any of the human beings relegated to the sidelines. (The year started with Godzilla Minus One and that was immeasurably superior because enough time was spent with the characters to make you care.) It's utter, utter rubbish.

2. GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE

Incredibly, that new Godzilla movie somehow wasn't the year's worst sequel beginning with G that had the word Empire in the title. This is a perfect example of a studio desperately flogging their "intellectual property" one more time because they have no other ideas: nothing original, nothing new, nothing innovative, just that thing we liked forty years ago even though, deep down, we know that it wasn't any more than perfectly fine. Two whole generations later: it's not remotely funny, the original stars are far too old and the new ones aren't interesting. Let it go.

1. TERRIFIER 3

Was there any doubt? I hated and detested this garbage more than any movie for quite some years and it's one of the few movies that I wish I hadn't bothered with: it's the kind of film that gives the horror genre a bad name. Twice I was tempted to walk out and I really should have. It's got absolutely nothing but gore and splatter, blood and carnage, dismemberment and slaughter. There's no wit, no character, no style and no emotion: just a succession of kill scenes showcasing the practical FX work. Mean-spirited, wilfully offensive and boring as hell, it comes across as the work of an overexcited 14-year-old boy who's just discovered Troma and couldn't tell a story to save his life. And while I don't generally single out directors, in this case I have to. Damien: grow up.

Disappointments abounded this year, including Longlegs, Poor Things and Argylle, plus unnecessary sequels Furiosa, Smile 2 and Twisters that didn't live up to their origins.

LIST: MY TOP FIVE OF 2024

I know there's still a whole week or so to go, but I'm not going to get any more of this year's films seen so why wait?

Of this year's UK cinema releases (as listed on the Film Distributors Association website), I've only managed to see 67. That doesn't sound a lot, granted, but it's still more than one a week and it doesn't count the numerous movies at FrightFest that don't appear on the official FDA lists. It does, however, include a number of titles which I saw on DVD or streaming, either because they disappeared from the circuits very quickly or they never screened anywhere near me. Pre-COVID I was seeing around twice as many new films as since, (in 2017 my score was 162!) so I'm guessing it's a combination of different releasing patterns favouring streaming rather than physical media, a tendency towards massive blockbusters which hog too many of the available screens for too long, and increased personal apathy towards a filmic menu that simply isn't aimed at me any more (the superhero parade in particular appears to be petering out a little, and not a decade before time). All this, combined with the closure of one of my two local plexes and the imminent closure of a very nice 9-screener in Northampton next month, rather suggests that my numbers are never going to reach 120+ again. C'est la vie.

So, having scanned the list of the films I did decide to see, these are my Top Five of 2025.

5. LISA FRANKENSTEIN

In truth there were quite a few possibles for fifth place, including one (Abigail) which also starred Kathryn Newton. I ultimately went with this one because it was just a really nice, sweet, charming and funny little horror comedy that benefitted in part from not having been hyped months in advance: it just turned up out of nowhere one week. Sometimes these things work better as a surprise and I went into this knowing absolutely nothing about it: absolutely worth the chance that these days I'm increasingly reluctant to take.

4. CIVIL WAR

A very near future America divided to the point of all-out war? That's precisely the dystopian vision we need right now. But it's persuasively done, gripping throughout, and quite unsettling in the idea that some ordinary people are just gagging for a green light to take up arms in a meaningless conflict, and the ease with which thise regular Joes could become stone cold killers. I liked it a lot.

3. CONCLAVE

A ripe political drama set against the ritual and rite of choosing a new Pope, as well as a string of fun mysteries with Ralph Fiennes essentially playing Cardinal Poirot uncovering the financial and sexual secrets of his peers (including the always welcome John Lithgow and Stanley Tucci) as they manouevre themselves for the top job. And it's a visual joy with many scenes framed and lit like Old Masters. More of this sort of grown-up fare, please.

2. ALIEN: ROMULUS

If we are going to have more and more followups to movies made decades ago, at least spend some money on them and make them look good. Yes, there are a couple of nostalgia callbacks which make absolutely no narrative sense and should have been excised during the rewrite stage. But it has brilliantly captured the look of the earlier movies (specifically the first two) and I enjoyed it far more than I was expecting, a better and more exciting entry in the Alien series than Covenant was, and also better than Fede Alvarez' take on The Evil Dead. Terrific stuff.

1. THE SUBSTANCE

There wasn't any doubt that this was going to place very high on my list when it practically took the roof off the Odeon as the closing film at this year's FrightFest. Exceptionally graphic in its latter stages, it's a geniunely bonkers melding of Society, The Fly, Death Becomes Her and Carrie, but there's a point to it: fear of looking old and not being seen as sexually viable. For women, of course: male stars can look like Piltdown Man but female stars still have to look like cheerleaders or they're deemed past it. And special kudos to Mubi for getting it out on the national circuits, despite the jawdropping bloodsoaked finale not being your usual mutiplex fare.

Honorable mentions: The Beekeeper (Jason Statham's best movie for some time), Immaculate (better than The First Omen), Heretic, Hundreds Of Beavers, Blink Twice, Borderlands (shut up, I liked it), Blink Twice, Megalopolis, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.

TERMINUS

CONTAINS SPOILERS?

Actually it would help if there were spoilers, because then there'd be some indication as to what the hell is going on in this mostly drab mid-1980s Franco-German future dystopia. Sometime in the future (2037, according to the IMDb trivia), Karen Allen is driving a huge truck across some wastelands: if she reaches the End Of The Line, she'll win her weight in gold. Meanwhile the gamesmaster, a 10-year-old genius, is reprogramming her onboard computer for reasons that are no more adequately explained than why that computer is a mechanically animated mouth called Monster, or why it's been given a jive voice.

Allen disappears from the action fairly early and is replaced by French pop star Johnny Halliday as a man with one arm called Stump. (I don't know what his other arm is called.) Stump takes over the truck accompanied by a small child who's escaping slavery. However, the evil mastermind behind it all (Jurgen Prochnow) has decided to close the operation down and sets another big truck against Stump. This has the power of invisibility and is driven by another Jurgen Prochnow. (Both Prochnow characters answer to a superboss known only as Sir, who is also played by Jurgen Prochnow, again for absolutely no reason, but this time he's wearing a silly wig.)

It's possible that all the mysteries of Terminus are answered in the original French version which ran more than half an hour longer than this 82-minute edit that's lurking in the murky depths of Amazon Prime. Maybe that will explain why Prochnow plays three roles, exactly why Stump lost his arm and why there don't appear to be any other contestants in the game. But that would depend on your tolerance for glum, and whether you're motivated to find out why Prochnow II's truck has a bunch of animatronic children in the back. Terminus is not quite awful enough to be a one-star disaster, but it's a close call: most of the film is pretty terrible and almost entirely uninteresting and the short version was way more than enough.

**