D’Souza Media
- We turned to review aggregator Metacritic to find out what the worst movies of all time are, based on critic reviews.
- They include two controversial political documentaries from Dinesh D’Souza and ill-advised sequels.
- Visit Business Insider’s homepage for more stories.
To find out which movies film critics have been collectively hated the most, Insider turned to the reviews aggregator Metacritic to compile this list of the most critically panned movies in history.
From ill-advised sequels like “Scary Movie 5” and “Caddyshack II,” to two dubious political documentaries by conservative filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza, these films drew the ire of critics and provoked the repulsion of many.
Most recently, 2019’s critically panned “Haunting of Sharon Tate,” starring Hilary Duff, made the list, as did “Grizzly II: Revenge,” which was originally filmed in 1983 but didn’t debut until this year.
Here are the 75 worst movies of all time, according to critics:
Note: Only movies with seven or more online reviews appear in the ranking, so it skews toward more recent films.
John Lynch contributed to a previous version of this post.
20th Century Fox
Critic score: 14/100
User score: 3.4/10
What critics said: “A butt-numbing exercise in tedium, sporadically redeemed by moments of unintentional hilarity.” — TV Guide
74. “Dungeons & Dragons” (2000)
New Line Cinema
Critic score: 14/100
User score: 5.0/10
What critics said: “Stinketh like the breath of a dyspeptic dragon.” — The Washington Post
73. “Don Peyote” (2014)
XLrator Media
Critic score: 14/100
User score: 3.0/10
What critics said: “There’s no rhythm or rules, and the beyond-indifferent camerawork and community-access-TV-grade effects help nothing.” — The Dissolve
72. “The In Crowd” (2000)
Warner Bros.
Critic score: 14/100
User score: 2.3/10
What critics said: “Isn’t a movie, it’s Gorgonzola, a crumbly summertime stinker veined with pop-cultural fungus.” — Entertainment Weekly
71. “Cabin Fever” (2016)
Pelican Point Media
Critic score: 14/100
User score: 2.6/10
What critics said: “It doesn’t help that what passes for acting here seems more like a table read.” — Los Angeles Times
70. “Bolero” (1984)
Critic score: 13/100
User score: N/A
What critics said: “Erotic, surely, only for the very easily pleased, with Dereks J and B and Cannon Films converging to form a matrix of sustained, tawdry silliness.” — Time Out
69. “Love, Wedding, Marriage” (2011)
IFC
Critic score: 13/100
User score: 3.1/10
What critics said: “Only old pros James Brolin and Jane Seymour, as Eva’s colorfully squabbling parents, occasionally rouse the film beyond its fate as fodder for a Snuggie-wrapped slumber.” — Time Out
68. “Daddy Day Camp” (2007)
TriStar Pictures
Critic score: 13/100
User score: 1.8/10
What critics said: “Filling in for Eddie Murphy in a septically humored kiddie sequel to ‘Daddy Day Care,’ Gooding gives a mug-job performance that consists mainly of reacting (again and again) to nasty smells.” — Entertainment Weekly
67. “Fascination” (2005)
MGM
Critic score: 13/100
User score: N/A
What critics said: “Glacially paced, self-consciously acted and narratively risible.” — Variety
66. “Fair Game” (1995)
Warner Bros.
Critic score: 13/100
User score: N/A
What critics said: “A thriller primarily about the movement of Cindy Crawford’s breasts beneath a succession of ever-smaller T-shirts.” — Entertainment Weekly
65. “Freddy Got Fingered” (2001)
20th Century Fox
Critic score: 13/100
User score: 5.6/10
What critics said: “The movie is simply not professional. It’s not, even by the lowest standards of Republic B-westerns in the ’30s or bad, cheap horror films in the ’50s, releasable.” — The Washington Post
64. “A Beautiful Life” (2009)
New Films International
Critic score: 13/100
User score: 1.7/10
What critics said: “This laughably clichéd dive into sexual masochism and hardscrabble survival replaces story with outline and characters with place holders.” — The New York Times
63. “Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2” (2015)
Sony Pictures
Critic score: 13/100
User score: 2.4/10
What critics said: “While the original was no classic, it had a few mild laughs and the plus-sized actor displayed a certain buffoonish charm. Such is not the case with this painfully unfunny, slapdash follow-up in which the title character is so relentlessly obnoxious that you’ll be cheering for the villains.” — The Hollywood Reporter
62. “Down to You” (2000)
Miramax
Critic score: 13/100
User score: 6.4/10
What critics said: “The confusion it mistakes for true soul-searching is about as realistic a look at the politics of youthful attraction as one of those ‘Did somebody say McDonald’s?’ commercials is a look at mainstream American family values. Did somebody say McCheese?” — Austin Chronicle
61. “Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood” (1988)
Paramount
Critic score: 13/100
User score: N/A
What critics said: “Only a mote of humor graces the film, and that is Jason’s cunning ability to come up with ever more dreadful weapons for each successive crime, graduating from stake to machete to circular saw. Dare we hope, in Part VIII, for a neutron bomb to obliterate the series altogether?” — Chicago Tribune
60. “New Best Friend” (2002)
Sony Pictures Entertainment
Critic score: 13/100
User score: 4.8/10
What critics said: “A lurid, unsavory mix of ‘Reefer Madness’ hysteria, drive-in sleaze, and the queasy morality of ’80s slasher film.” — The AV Club
59. “Cannonball Run II” (1984)
Warner Bros.
Critic score: 13/100
User score: N/A
What critics said: “Burt Reynolds and a host of notable performers seem to be having a hell of a good time wandering through this meandering, episodic farce, but rarely is their good mood shared by the viewer.” — TV Guide
58. “Nothing But Trouble” (1991)
Warner Bros.
Critic score: 13/100
User score: N/A
What critics said: “Unfortunately this isn’t even half as fun as the shortest bumper-car ride, with the cast lost in a sea of unfunny situations and badly executed antique jokes on loan from The Munsters all obviously puzzled about why they are actually there.” — Empire
57. “The Avengers” (1998)
Warner Bros.
Critic score: 12/100
User score: 2.5/10
What critics said: “It’s a film to gall fans of the old television series and perplex anyone else.” — The New York Times
56. “Nothing Left to Fear” (2013)
Anchor Bay
Critic score: 12/100
User score: 3.5/10
What critics said: “It’s stale B-movie rubbish of a barely watchable sort, albeit slightly more depressing than many of its genre compatriots.” — The Dissolve
55. “Strange Wilderness” (2008)
Paramount
Critic score: 12/100
User score: 5.1/10
What critics said: “Aside from the waste of a talented cast, the only thing that really caught my attention was the tomblike silence of the audience–at least until the bong jokes started.” — Chicago Reader
54. “Cocktail” (1988)
Touchstone Pictures
Critic score: 124/100
User score: 3.0/10
What critics said: “There isn’t a scene in ‘Cocktail’ that isn’t cheap and dumb, and whether its camp entertainment value compensates for its contempt for women is a question. ‘Cocktail’ makes beer commercials look deep, makes ‘Top Gun’ look like ‘Hamlet.'” — Boston Globe
53. “Left Behind” (2014)
Stoney Creek
Critic score: 12/100
User score: 2.6/10
What critics said: “This failed epic — really, an epic failure — would barely be noticed, were it not for former Oscar-winner Nicolas Cage taking on a ‘Sharknado’-quality remake of a Kirk Cameron movie.” — New York Daily News
52. “The Emoji Movie” (2017)
Sony
Critic score: 12/100
User score: 2.0/10
What critics said: “A work so completely devoid of wit, style, intelligence or basic entertainment value that it makes that movie based on the Angry Birds app seem like a pure artistic statement by comparison.” — RogerEbert.com
51. “Slackers” (2002)
Screen Gems
Critic score: 12/100
User score: 4.5/10
What critics said: “‘Slackers’ is supposed to be a gross-out comedy, but the tastelessness of its jokes is nothing compared to its sheer cluelessness.” — Salon
50. “The Adventures of Pluto Nash” (2002)
Warner Bros.
Critic score: 12/100
User score: 4.8/10
What critics said: “A limp Eddie Murphy vehicle that even he seems embarrassed to be part of.” — The Globe and Mail
49. “The Master of Disguise” (2002)
Columbia Pictures
Critic score: 12/100
User score: 2.4/10
What critics said: “The individual scenes are just random, uninspired riffs by Carvey or awkwardly flat cameos by the likes of Jesse Ventura and Olympic sprinter Michael Johnson.” — New York Daily News
48. “King’s Ransom” (2005)
Warner Bros.
Critic score: 11/100
User score: 1.4/10
What critics said: “Generic hip-hop soundtrack? Check. Aerial stock footage of milieu? Check. Hardy-har homophobia and misogyny? Check. Emasculated sub-Gump white dude played by Jay Mohr? Double check.” — Entertainment Weekly
47. “Persecuted” (2014)
Millenium Entertainment
Critic score: 11/100
User score: 3.4/10
What critics said: “This terrible attempt at a political thriller for the religious right is aimed not at Christians in general but at a certain breed of them, the kind who feel as if the rest of the world were engaged in a giant conspiracy against their interpretation of good and truth.” — The New York Times
46. “3 Strikes” (2000)
MGM
Critic score: 11/100
User score: 4.0/10
What critics said: “Feels like a very long late-night comedy sketch that occasionally veers beyond tastelessness toward something worse.” — The New York Times
45. “Mortal Kombat: Annihilation” (1997)
New Line Cinema
Critic score: 11/100
User score: 8.0/10
What critics said: “It’s cynical and it’s depressing, and I would lock a child in a room before I’d show him ‘Mortal Kombat: Annihilation.'” — L.A. Weekly
44. “Date Movie” (2006)
Twentieth Century Fox
Critic score: 11/100
User score: 2.9/10
What critics said: “‘Comedy is hard,’ said Steve Martin. For the writers of ‘Date Movie,’ it’s apparently impossible.” — New York Daily News
43. “Pinocchio” (2002)
Miramax
Critic score: 11/100
User score: 2.9/10
What critics said: “It’s an oddity that will be avoided by millions of people, this new Pinocchio. Osama bin Laden could attend a showing in Times Square and be confident of remaining hidden.” — The New York Times
42. “Death Wish II” (1982)
Columbia Pictures
Critic score: 11/100
User score: 7.8/10
What critics said: “The shamelessly rehashed Death Wish II finds Kersey in L.A., methodically hunting down those responsible for his daughter’s death (just as she’s recovering from her assault in the first Death Wish).” — EW
41. “Nine Lives” (2016)
EuropaCorp
Critic score: 11/100
User score: 2.8/10
What critics said: “At 87 torturous, laugh-free minutes, the film could change the most avid cat fancier into a kitty hater.” — Rolling Stone
40. “Scary Movie 5” (2013)
The Weinstein Company
Critic score: 11/100
User score: 2.7/10
What critics said: “‘Scary Movie V’ murdered my capacity to feel joy. ” — Village Voice
39. “Some Kind of Beautiful” (2015)
Lionsgate
Critic score: 11/100
User score: 5.0/10
What critics said: “Some kind of hideous, a perfect storm of romantic-comedy awfulness that seems to set the ailing genre back decades with the sheer force of its ineptitude.” — Variety
38. “Whipped” (2000)
Destination Films
Critic score: 10/100
User score: 6.3/10
What critics said: “Ugly. And unpleasant. And clueless on a grand scale.” — San Francisco Chronicle
37. “Unplanned” (2019)
Pure Flix
Critic score: 10/100
User score: 9.4/10
What critics said: “Unplanned isn’t a good movie, but it’s effective propaganda — or, at least, it is if you belong to the group it’s targeting: those who believe that abortion in America, though a legal right, is really a crime. It’s hard to imagine the movie drawing many viewers outside that self-selected demographic.” — Variety
36. “Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers” (1995)
Dimension Films
Critic score: 10/100
User score: 5.6/10
What critics said: “Not even the addition of satanic rituals, farm implements or a Howard Stern-like shock jock (Leo Geter) is enough to paint over the creaky trappings.” — Variety
35. “Mektoub, My Love: Intermezzo” (2019)
Pathé
Critic score: 10/100
User score: N/A
What critics said: “No filmmaker has ever loved anything as much as Abdellatif Kechiche loves butts.” — Indiewire
34. “Johnny Be Good” (1988)
Orion Pictures
Critic score: 10/100
User score: N/A
What critics said: “But mostly the satire is as dated as the recruiters’ plaid jackets, as lame as the Johnny Walker joke.” — New York Times
33. “Saturn 3” (1980)
ITC
Critic score: 9/100
User score: N/A
What critics said: “The level of intelligence of the screenplay of ‘Saturn 3’ is shockingly low – the story is so dumb it would be laughed out of any junior high school class in the country – and yet the movie was financed. Why?” — Chicago Sun-Times
32. “Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star” (2011)
Columbia Pictures
Critic score: 9/100
User score: 2/10
What critics said: “This may be the worst movie Pauly Shore has ever been in. Think about that.” — The New York Times
31. “Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000” (2000)
Warner Bros.
Critic score: 9/100
User score: 2/10
What critics said: “A picture that will be hailed without controversy as the worst of its kind ever made.” — Slate
30. “The Tortured” (2012)
IFC Films
Critic score: 9/100
User score: 4.2/10
What critics said: “Lean, nasty, and patently absurd, ‘The Tortured’ plays like one long scream of agony.” — Village Voice
29. “Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2” (2004)
Sony Pictures
Critic score: 9/100
User score: 1.8/10
What critics said: “So bad that I predict there will be drinking games set around viewing it someday.” — The Washington Post
28. “Alone in the Dark” (2005)
Lionsgate
Critic score: 9/100
User score: 1.6/10
What critics said: “So mind-blowingly horrible that it teeters on the edge of cinematic immortality.” — San Francisco Chronicle
27. “Atlas Shrugged III: Who Is John Galt?” (2014)
20th Century Fox
Critic score: 9/100
User score: 3.0/10
What critics said: “The movie’s so slipshod and half-assed that I almost feel for Rand, whose ideas have proved enduring enough that they at least deserve a fair representation, if only for the sake of refutation.” — Village Voice
26. “Meet The Spartans” (2008)
20th Century Fox
Critic score: 9/100
User score: 2.8/10
What critics said: “Gamely alternates between unfunny gay jokes and violent pratfalls for a good 80 minutes, finding time for not one, but two musical dance numbers set to ‘I Will Survive.'” — The AV Club
25. “Dirty Love” (2005)
First Look
Critic score: 9/100
User score: 2.8/10
What critics said: “Dirty Love wasn’t written and directed, it was committed. Here is a film so pitiful, it doesn’t rise to the level of badness. It is hopelessly incompetent.” — Chicago Sun-Times
24. “State Property” (2002)
Lionsgate
Critic score: 9/100
User score: 4.9/10
What critics said: “Result is a fairly good-looking video shot down by a hackneyed script, atrocious acting and a total lack of redeeming social value.” — Variety
23. “The Mangler” (1995)
New Line Cinema
Critic score: 8/100
User score: N/A
What critics said: “It is not a compliment to suggest that a demonically possessed piece of machinery embarked on a bloodthirsty rampage has more personality than most of the flesh-and-blood characters in ‘The Mangler,’ a horror movie based on a Stephen King story.” — The New York Times
22. “The Haunting of Sharon Tate” (2019)
Saban Films
Critic score: 8/100
User score: 2.9/10
What critics said: “A run-of-the-mill home invasion thriller, and while Farrands is a solid genre craftsman — as evidenced by his similarly creepy true-crime film from earlier this year, The Amityville Murders — his taste remains suspect.” — Los Angeles Times
21. “Among Ravens” (2014)
Gravitas Ventures
Critic score: 8/100
User score: 1.6/10
What critics said: “Featuring unlikeable characters, preposterously contrived plotting, ham-fisted dialogue and strained attempts at poeticism, Among Ravens is a misfire on every level.” — The Hollywood Reporter
20. “Septic Man” (2014)
Starz Digital Media
Critic score: 8/100
User score: 2.6/10
Summary: “Jack, a sewage worker who’s determined to uncover the cause of the town’s water contamination crisis, gets trapped underground in a septic tank and undergoes a hideous transformation.”
What critics said: “Beyond its mere unfunniness and stupidity, Septic Man is criminally unimaginative.” — The Dissolve
19. “Transylmania” (2009)
Full Circle
Critic score: 8/100
User score: 8.7/10
What critics said: “The current vogue for all things vampiric is ripe for a satirical drubbing, but this repulsive comedy is part of the problem, not the solution.” — Chicago Reader
18. “Is That a Gun in Your Pocket?” (2016)
Area 23a
Critic score: 7/100
User score: 2.7/10
What critics said: “The movie tries to wrap an important social message in comedy, but it’s unpalatable all the way through.” — Los Angeles Times
17. “Miss March” (2009)
Fox Searchlight
Critic score: 7/100
User score: 4.3/10
What critics said: “Writer-director-stars Zach Cregger and Trevor Moore, of the Whitest Kids U’Know, here prove the crassest, most maladroit moviemakers you know.” — Entertainment Weekly
16. “Grizzly II: Revenge” (2020)
GBGB International
Critic score: 7/100
User score: N/A
What critics said: “It’s a pity Grizzly II: Revenge isn’t giddy-bad, the way Tommy Wiseau’s ‘The Room’ delights so many. But it’s here, it’s seriously disoriented and disorienting.” — Chicago Tribune
15. “Screwed” (2000)
Universal Pictures
Critic score: 7/100
User score: 8.2/10
What critics said: “A confusedly misconceived hybrid of interracial buddy comedy and imitation Marx Brothers farce.” — The New York Times
14. “The Hottie & the Nottie” (2008)
Regent Releasing
Critic score: 7/100
User score: 2.3/10
What critics said: “Great actors make the craft look easy. In the Paris Hilton comedy ‘The Hottie and the Nottie,’ acting looks very, very difficult.” — New York Post
13. “Caddyshack II” (1988)
Warner Bros.
Critic score: 7/100
User score: N/A
What critics said: “‘Caddyshack II,’ a feeble follow-up to the 1980 laff riot, is lamer than a duck with bunions, and dumber than grubs. It’s patronizing and clumsily manipulative, and top banana Jackie Mason is upstaged by the gopher puppet.” — The Washington Post
12. “Baby Geniuses” (1999)
TriStar Pictures
Critic score: 6/100
User score: 3.0/10
What critics said: “Bad films are easy to make, but a film as unpleasant as Baby Geniuses’ achieves a kind of grandeur.” — Chicago Sun-Times
11. “National Lampoon’s Gold Diggers” (2004)
P&A Distributors
Critic score: 6/100
User score: 2.5/10
What critics said: “So stupefyingly hideous that after watching it, you’ll need to bathe in 10 gallons of disinfectant, get a full-body scrub and shampoo with vinegar to remove the scummy residue that remains.” — The Washington Post
10. “The Human Centipede III (Final Sequence)” (2015)
IFC Films
Critic score: 5/100
User score: 2.5/10
What critics said: “It’s only fitting that a series that began with the concept of linking the digestive tracts of three people would end by feasting on its own sh-t.” — The Dissolve
9. “Vulgar” (2002)
Lionsgate
Critic score: 5/100
User score: 2.2/10
What critics said: “Sure to appear in everyone’s worst-of lists at year’s end, to say nothing of a few bad dreams, Bryan Johnson’s Vulgar is an unclassifiably awful study in self- and audience-abuse.” — Village Voice
8. “Strippers” (2000)
Hollywood Independents
Critic score: 5/100
User score: 4.3/10
What critics said: “Unbelievably awful celluloid-waster.” — New York Post
7. “Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party” (2016)
Quality Flix
Critic score: 2/100
User score: 4.7/10
What critics said: “Little more than an extended version of the kind of political screeds that can be found online with only a minimum of effort, this is just a terrible movie.” — RogerEbert.com
6. “The Singing Forest” (2003)
Hollywood Independents
Critic score: 1/100
User score: 3/10
What critics said: “‘The Singing Forest’ was written and directed by Jorge Ameer, whose film ‘Strippers’ opened three years ago and remained the single worst movie I had ever reviewed — until now.” — The New York Times
5. “The Garbage Pail Kids Movie” (1987)
Atlantic Releasing
Critic score: 1/100
User score: 0.8/10
What critics said: “Imagine parents sitting in the audience with their naughty children (who used their Cabbage Patch dolls as driveway obstructions for their Big Wheel obstacle courses) and feeling ruefully double-crassed.” — Slant
4. “United Passions” (2015)
Screen Media Films
Critic score: 1/100
User score: 0.7/10
What critics said: “As propaganda, ‘United Passions’ is as subtle as an anvil to the temple. As drama, it’s not merely ham-fisted, but pork-shouldered, bacon-wristed, and sausage-elbowed.” — Village Voice
3. “Bio-Dome” (1996)
MGM
Critic score: 1/100
User score: 7.1/10
What critics said: “The sheer ineptitude of the movie is supposed to be funny, but there’s no lunacy behind it: Shore and his writers are like comedians on Prozac, smiling through the fart jokes without a hint of desperation.” — The New Yorker
2. “Chaos” (2005)
Dinsdale Releasing
Critic score: 1/100
User score: 2.3/10
What critics said: “Writer-director David DeFalco’s ugly, pointless and dishonest remake of Craven’s remake.” — L.A. Weekly
1. “Death of a Nation” (2018)
D’Souza Media
Critic score: 1/100
User score: 4.3/10
What critics said: “D’Souza fans and Trump apologists will flock to this, misguided moths to a misleading flame. In that way, it’s a perfect representation of the current climate. In every other way, it’s a mess.” — Arizona Republic
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