We love bad movies and we’re sure a lot of other people can relate. Hate watching is a fun fad and so we’ve decided to do some studying to determine which movie, according to users on Letterboxd (a movie reviewing app) and our own humble opinions, is considered the worst of all time. We created a bracket (pictured above) of 16 movies that, in general, have reviews of one star or lower on Letterboxd. Due to the large amount of content, we couldn’t include every match up and ask that you refer to the bracket for more information.
Our first pairing is Fateful Findings versus Joshua and the Promised Land. After watching Joshua, we were certain that the Fateful Findings would be moving on as the worse of the two. While Joshua and the Promised Land contained horrible animation, it was a basic retelling of the exodus from Egypt in the Bible, and had a lot of lines that genuinely made us giggle. Sitting at a perfect length of 53 minutes, it contained elements of the Adult Swim channel and it was a movie that we would likely watch again given the chance.
Compared to the masterpiece that was Joshua and the Promised Land, Fateful Findings had spirit, but low production value and it managed to leave me with far more questions than answers.
The second match up of the quarter finals consisted of Movie 43, often hailed as the worst movie ever made, and Fateful Findings directed by random guy Neil Breen. Movie 43 was genuinely awful, frequented with genital, poop, and race jokes, as well as incest.
Fateful Findings, being judged purely on production value and acting, was the objective worse movie, but with a budget of only 5,000 dollars, you have to give them props for what they created. There’s heart and intent, and compared to the overly indulgent edgelord suck up that was Movie 43, which managed to make a god awful film with a 6 million dollar budget, Fateful Findings did not move on.
The semi finals are where things start to heat up, due to Airplane Mode and Movie 43 having their ultimate face off.
Airplane Mode was, in short, a worse version of Movie 43. It was gory, unfunny, and loud. After watching half the movie at a normal speed, we considered even slowing it down, due to the constant onslaught of colors and yelling, but it was ultimately too painful to watch and made us wholeheartedly wish that we were dead.
Switching over to the other side of the bracket, we began with critically condemned The Room against Cool Cat Saves the Kids.
The Room was truly unwatchable, complete with horrendous acting, directing, writing, and music. Because of its completely boring lack of charm and technical finesse, The Room was the clear winner between the two.
Troll 2 (sequel to nothing and featuring no trolls), originally titled The Goblins, was actually surprisingly entertaining and fun. Reminiscent of Hobgoblins, Troll 2 is about evil goblins that terrorize visitors in their kingdom. Mac and Me, while not awful, was a far less enjoyable E.T. ripoff, thus earning it a spot in the quarter finals.
While Plan 9 From Outer Space is extremely low budget and campy, it has a charm that Cats simply does not and, frankly, doesn’t deserve a spot on this list.
Cats is an uncanny valley waste of 95 million dollars, decent source material, and an interestingly varied cast. In the final face off this side of the bracket, we decided The Room is much worse than Cats because at least Cats has an entertainment factor. Fortunately for our sanity, most of the movies on this side were not the worst in the world, just unremarkable.
The Finals:
After a full month of terrible movies our Letterboxd accounts (@barfenjoyer and @delphidav, go follow us) are in a state of disrepair. We have spent every free minute this month watching bad movies, and its time for our journey of self torture to come to an end, so we have made a decision.
The Room was truly one of the most boring and talentless movies we have watched, and it did not even begin to hold a candle to Logan Paul’s magnum opus. Out of every movie we have ever seen, Airplane Mode takes the top spot as the worst. 15 million U.S dollars were sacrificed for a guy who filmed dead bodies for YouTube to make a lazy Airplane! ripoff.
The lack of effort, bad writing, overused physical comedy, and shock factor aspects of this embarrassment to the film industry earned Airplane Mode its first and last win in any category ever. This movie is for no one.
