Sigh Alright let’s get this over with. Here are the Top Ten Worst Films I’ve seen in 2022:

10) Minions: The Rise of Gru

Director: Kyle Balda

Starting off the list is the fUnNy MeMe MoViE from Tiktok. You know to be honest, Minions 2 doesn’t even deserve to be on this list; it’s about as harmless as every other dumb baby film for dumb babies I’ve seen from Illumination. But since I’ve done a pretty good job avoiding the obvious stinkers from this past year and some mediocre movie needs to bite the bullet to make this list a proper top 10 it might as well be the only film I saw this year that made me feel pure indifference from its existence; it is, after all, the film that gave me a huge writer’s block for this website (hence why there were so little reviews from this year on this site.) This movie is the equivalent of watching TV static for ninety minutes. It’s like staring into the black void that awaits us all; I felt absolutely nothing from watching this film. At least try to put some effort in your baby films Illumination.

9) Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore

Director: David Yates

Fantastic Beasts 3 was one of the most boring films I’ve seen in 2022. There is hardly anything I can remember about this film; the performances were serviceable, the visuals were flat, David Yates’s direction is as uninspired as the rest of his Wizarding World films, and the writing is a load of dungbombs. I’ve already written plenty about this film earlier in the year, so for my full thoughts click here. Considering the copious amount of problematic individuals associated with this franchise and the lackluster support from even the most diehard Potter fans I think it’ll be a good idea to lay the Wizarding World to rest for another decade or so.

8) Ambulance

Director: Michael Bay

Look I swear I don’t have anything against Michael Bay; I’m sure he’s a really stand up individual in real life, his latest film just didn’t do it for me. Ambulance showcases a filmmaker that’s in desperate need to evolve his style to keep up with the ever changing landscape of Hollywood action films in order to not be a relic of his time. You could make the argument that this is a refreshing callback to a simpler time in Hollywood that isn’t dominated by franchises and superhero movies, and while I can kind of see your point there it’s unfortunately underscored by the fact that we got a better and more entertaining callback to classic Hollywood several months after this flick in the form of Top Gun: Maverick. This is nothing more than another Bay film, complete with everything I find annoying about Bay films. You can read my full review of this film right here.

7) Lightyear

Director: Agnus MacLane

Why is it that the more I think about Pixar’s Lightyear the more pissed off I get about its execution? Lightyear is another shining example that Disney doesn’t give a damn about the details of a film; they’re all about the MERCH. This is suppose to be the in-universe film that Andy fell in love with in the Toy Story films, yet nothing about this film even seems like it was made in the 90’s, let alone what a prepubescent boy on the cusp of puberty that still plays with cowboy dolls would like. I’ve already said my piece on this film in my earlier review of the film which you can read right here, but this film is nothing more than another manufactured corporate product from a multibillion dollar corporation.

6) Uncharted

Director: Ruben Fleischer

Hey, everyone loves the Uncharted video games, so why don’t we take this narrative driven video game and take out the playability of said video game, so instead of putting yourself into the shoes of Nathan Drake and experience all those crazy action sequences for yourself, now you can watch all those crazy action sequences that you already played through as non-interactive CUTSCENES?!?! But why stop there? Why don’t we also take the actor who was destined to play a live action Nathan Drake in a Uncharted film and cast him as Sully instead?! As for the actual role of Nathan Drake we’ll just cast the kid who played Spider-Man because EVERYONE LOVES SPIDER-MAN RIGHT!?!?!? Hey we ain’t done yet: Why don’t we also cast an actor who’d make the most amazing villain for an Uncharted story, and halfway through switch him out for this generic British action movie woman villain with no discernable characteristics. Wow, amazing, now who could we get to spearhead such an ambitious project? I know how about the dude who made PG-13 VENOM? Because EVERYONE LOVES VENOM RIGHT?!?!?!?!?!?!

This movie was hot ass don’t watch it.

5) Jurassic World Dominion

Director: Colin Trevorrow

Universal’s FIFTH attempt at making a Jurassic Park sequel that’s at least good, but like the other sequels that came before it, Dominion is one big pile of sh*t. It’s slow, it has too many characters with nothing to do, there’s not enough dino action, the writing is awful, and it’s too damn long for its own good. Nothing much else to say about this movie that I haven’t said about it already in my earlier review for the film, so let’s just move on. Movie bad don’t watch it.

You can read my full review of this nostalgia-bait garbage right here.

4) Pinocchio (2022)

Director: Robert Zemeckis

Speaking of nostalgia-bait, here’s another Disney remake. I know I said I would stop watching these films in the past, and believe me, I had no intention of checking this film out originally. But 2022 was a strange year that brought us three whole Pinocchio adaptations. I watched this adaptation as a meme to balance out the superior Guillermo Del Toro adaptation (I opted to not see the Pauly Shore-dubbed Pinocchio adaptation because c’mon just look at it, it’s practically cheating.) But as it turns out, if you read my Top Ten Best Movies list then you’ll notice Del Toro’s Pinocchio movie didn’t even make the cut. 2022 was already a stacked year and while Del Toro’s film was stunning it couldn’t quite leave a big enough impact on me to make the list. So now I’m left with this soulless cash-grab of a movie, serves me right for trying to be fUnNy I guess. I’m not even a huge fan of the original Disney Pinocchio, yet this remake still manages to find a way to retell the exact same story in a joyless fashion. They recreate moments from the original film without understanding the original intent, they change minor details without properly justifying those changes making them objectively dumb and pointless changes, character models are ugly, Tom Hanks was awful, there were far too many pop cultural references in a freaking PINOCCHIO movie, need I go on any further? This is a manufactured nostalgia-bait product that, just like with the rest of the Disney remakes, is not worth your time. Just watch the far superior Del Toro film on Netflix instead.

3) Morbius

Director: Daniel Espinosa

Morbius was so bad it morbed my very soul out of existence. There isn’t much to say about this film that I haven’t already said in my initial review for this film that came out earlier in the year (you can read that particular review here.) Morbius represents everything wrong with the superhero genre; the effects are wonky, the use of slow-mo is extremely dated, the action is underwhelming, literally nothing about this movie is good in any way. Having to write about this film was painful to say the least. Believe me when I say, as the only person in the world that actually saw this film, that there is nothing to gain from watching it. No amount of morbing from Jared Leto can save this dumpster fire of a movie. Keep the meme alive and continue to not watch this film.

2) Black Adam

Director: Jaume Collet-Serra

The hierarchy of power in the DC Universe has certainly changed alright. The DCEU has had a string of box office failures as of late, to the point where Warner Bros is now hitting the reset button on this troubled universe, and one can’t help but to see this film as the one that effectively killed it. Black Adam was a god awful mess that proves DC has no idea what to do with their movies.

From a technical standpoint this was one of the worst put together films all year; the editing was straight garbage, the cinematography was obnoxious at times, the sound mixing was awful, the use of slow-mo was gimmicky as hell, the CGI was laughable, Dwayne Johnson has all the charisma and charm of a rock, and every performance in this film was painfully bad. What’s even more mind boggling is the fact that all that wasn’t even the worst part about this movie; the story and writing is so asinine it made me violently angry. I wouldn’t be this upset about the film if it wasn’t for its TWO AND A HALF HOUR RUNTIME!!! At least Morbius was mercifully short at a hundred minutes.

This is a film that loves to spoon-feed you exposition on what’s going on in the film through obnoxiously dull narration instead of just letting the scene speak for itself, which is one of my most hated tropes in movies. I hate how these big tentpole movies treat their audiences like dumb babies that can’t think for themselves. DC fans can keep telling me this is actually a big boy movie because it has an edgy anti-hero for its lead, but the use of narration in the film tells me otherwise.

Now I know this film has a huge fanbase to it and I don’t like being seen as this pretentious snobby critic that only like art-house movies (for god’s sake one of my favorite movies of the year was PUSS IN BOOTS 2.) I didn’t go in to this movie expecting high-art, all I asked for was a fun time watching godlike beings punching the crap out of each other, but there wasn’t even enough of that in this film. So why should I give this film a pass over more deserving blockbusters that came out in 2022 alone like Top Gun 2, Avatar 2 or India’s RRR (which also made my Top Ten Best list and features godlike beings punching the crap out of each other)?

Face it guys, this movie didn’t bomb at the box office and killed the DCEU because some secret society of lizard people from Marvel paid critics to put a hit on DC films, Black Adam bombed because it just sucks and not enough people thought it was good in any way. If you like the movie then all power to you. As for me I will never like a film that can’t even meet the bare minimum that makes for a watchable movie.

1) Blonde

Director: Andrew Dominik

Well this is a bit of a shocker. I was genuinely looking forward to this new perspective of Marilyn Monroe’s life from writer/director Andrew Dominik, who also made 2007’s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, one of my favorite Western films of late. Dominik’s latest film Blonde is easily the most artfully made film on the list, but it’s also the only film on this list that made me uncomfortably upset, and honestly that makes the movie even worse in my opinion. Because at least with the other movies on this list for the most part they weren’t trying to create high art; the other movies on the list were made to entertain the masses (I mean they failed miserably at it but the context matters here.) This film was made to be a statement; a deep look at a tragic figure in Hollywood, and my god this was an absolute misfire of offensive proportions.

Right off the bat the film’s a tonal mess; there were so many horrific moments that should be horrific (this film doesn’t hold back on its big boy NC-17 rating), but the way Dominik sets up those moments make them unintentionally hilarious, which is something you definitely do NOT want for a film that depicts rape and abortion. The film as a whole feels like it’s trying way too hard to be avant-garde and subjective with some really silly dreamlike sequences and its obnoxious use of changing aspect ratios.

Ana de Amas really does try her best with this role, but it just didn’t do much for me; she doesn’t really do anything interesting with her portrayal of Monroe, she basically cries a lot and that’s it. To me I’m not watching Marylin Monroe on screen, I’m watching a girl do a really good impersonation of Marylin Monroe. The rest of the cast was not that special, with some of them being pretty bad in their role, the screenplay was a hot mess, Dominik’s direction was overtly indulgent, and it moves at a snails pace for its whole two and a half hour runtime.

This is not a good film. there is no reason for this film to exist; every decision this film makes was either redundant or completely asinine. This doesn’t add any intrigue to Monroe’s life; if anything it actively exploits the actress’s life, drumming up a lot of controversy and emotional click-bait from a collection of half-truths in order to be regarded as “genius” and “high art,” and that to me is quite frankly sickening enough for this to be the worst film I’ve seen in 2022.