2023 has been a most fascinating year for movies. Normally we think of Disney as the big boss of Hollywood, but this was a disappointing year for the Mouse House at the box office. Instead, Universal has been dominant with three of the top five movies at the global box office--The Super Mario Bros Movie, Oppenheimer, and Fast X--with Barbie from Warner Bros taking the overall crown. Even Five Nights at Freddy's surprised, bringing in more money than any other Blumhouse film before it. But we're not here to talk about top performers. This post is, as you can guess from the headline, about bottom performers: specifically, the worst-reviewed movies of the year, according to GameSpot's sister site, Metacritic.
Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews for movies, TV shows, video games and other media, and the Metacritic score is the weighted average of a title's review scores. This list will be looking at the films that were released in theaters or on streaming in the USA in 2023.
While this annual list is often populated mostly with low-rent movies you've never heard of, that's not the case in 2023, with some notable titles and box office hits making the bottom 20 on Metacritic. And we also had some big names that just missed the cut, like David Gordon Green's The Exorcist: Believer, which came in at #21, as well as The Meg 2: The Trench and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. Director Calmatic had two films that just missed the cut, with his remakes of White Men Can't Jump and House Party in the first half of the year. And Chris Pine's directorial debut, The Poolman, would have come in at #2, but it's spared from this list because it only played at festivals and hasn't been released otherwise.
Among the films that did make Metacritic's bottom 20 are a pair of record-breaking box-office hits, a couple long-awaited sequels that didn't exactly hit the spot, and a very violent new version of a children's favorite. And yeah, there's at least one movie on here I think is worth defending, but that's not surprising--there's probably something you like on this list, too. Let's take a look.
20. Vacation Friends 2
Score: 38
9 reviews
The first Vacation Friends, starring Yvonne Orji, Lil Rel Howery, John Cena, and Meredith Hagner, was a surprise hit on Hulu during the pandemic, and a sequel made perfect sense. Unfortunately, as is so often the case, they couldn't recapture that magic the second time around.
19. Devil's Peak
Score: 38
8 reviews
This story of the son of an Appalachian crime boss who wants to get away from his family's nonsense so he can be with the girl he loves, starring Billy Bob Thornton as said criminal patriarch, didn't give critics enough to work with. And the lead performance by Hopper Penn, son of Sean Penn and Robin Wright, doesn't exactly live up to the family pedigree.
18. Family Switch
Score: 37
8 reviews
Two decades ago, Jennifer Garner played a child in an adult's body in the charming 13 Going on 30. Today, she's doing the same thing again in Netflix's Family Switch, in which Garner's character swaps bodies with her daughter, and her husband (Ed Helms) swaps bodies with their son. If that double dose of body-swapping sounds like too much, well, it seems that the critics agree with you. Director McG maintains his streak of never making a film that earned a positive metascore (at least 60).
17. The Machine
Score: 37
7 reviews
This action comedy starring Mark Hamill and comedian Bert Kreischer, inspired by Kreischer's based-on-a-true-story stand-up routine, seemingly works for Kreischer fans and no one else. But Hamill, as always, is a highlight.
16. The Out-Laws
Score: 36
17 reviews
Adam Devine discovers that his new wife's parents (Pierce Brosnan and Ellen Barkin) are actually famous bank robbers in this '90s-style Netflix comedy that got negative reviews from both critics and users on Metacritic. Unfortunately, it's not the '90s anymore.
15. Sound of Freedom
Score: 36
11 reviews
This story of a guy rescuing some kids from human traffickers was a Qanon favorite for years before this movie was made. But critics didn't think it was well made enough to put aside its awkward culture war trappings.
14. Knights of the Zodiac
Score: 35
8 review
This English-language Japanese film follows a young woman in the present day who's the reincarnation of Athena, and a young man who will protect her. Knights of the Zodiac is a Marvel-style CGI fest but without a Marvel budget, and critics weren't super impressed by the cliched story, either.
13. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3
Score: 35
26 reviews
In the list of "franchises that have lasted for multiple decades," how many of us expected My Big Fat Greek Wedding to be on it? That said, this third outing didn't exactly capture critics' hearts the way the original movie did 20 years ago, but maybe things will go better in the fourth movie in 2033.
12. Genie
Score: 35
7 Reviews
This story about a genie (Melissa McCarthy) trying to help a man get his family back for Christmas comes from British screenwriter Richard Curtis (best known for Love Actually and Bridget Jones' Diary), who penned this remake of his own BBC TV movie from the early '90s. But critics didn't find much of interest in this Peacock-exclusive, just a bog-standard holiday movie with little to distinguish itself.
11. One True Loves
Score: 35
7 reviews
A woman's husband dies, and then she later falls in love with a character played by Simu Liu and they get engaged. But there's a catch: The husband returns, still alive, and we basically end up with the same plot as Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor but without the war and the Michael Bay flair. This Hallmark-level production from author Taylor Jenkins Reid mostly grated critics with its attempts at self-aware humor that got in the way of any hints of substance.
10. Ghosted
Score: 34
28 reviews
Chris Evans meets Ana de Armas and falls in love…and then learns that she's a secret agent as he gets swept up into a global conspiracy. When this film hit Netflix earlier this year, there were a number of memes about how it looked like Evans and de Armas were never in the same room together in the film. And critics weren't any kinder than Reddit and Twitter users.
9. Five Nights at Freddy's
Score: 33
38 reviews
Critics had a tough time engaging with the movie version of Five Nights at Freddy's, which features extremely R-rated subject matter in a PG-13 package, and which is full of references that casual audiences aren't able to understand. Basically, it's that rare major movie release that's for gamers only. I had a pretty decent time with it, though, despite the plot being a bit much.
8. Love Again
Score: 32
12 reviews
This romantic drama is essentially a Celine Dion version of George Michael-inspired Last Christmas, with Priyanka Chopra Jonas idly texting her feelings to her dead boyfriend's phone number--except now Outlander star Sam Heughan has that number, and so he gets Celine Dion to help him win this lady's heart. If that sounds extremely cliched and trite to you, well, that's exactly how it played with critics.
7. God is a Bullet
Score: 31
9 reviews
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau plays an American police detective who has to rescue his daughter from a violent satanic cult, with the help of a young woman who had previously been kidnapped and abused by those folks. Critics described the film, which actually comes from the director of The Notebook, as an exhausting exercise in nihilism that never justifies itself.
6. Pet Sematary: Bloodlines
Score: 31
10 reviews
Pet Sematary 2019 wasn't exactly a beloved film, earning mixed reviews when it was released but not exactly leaving audiences clamoring for more. But with this prequel, more is what Paramount+ subscribers got, and after watching the film, critics were left wondering what the point of it all was. But that's how it goes sometimes in the Stephen King Cinematic Universe.
5. Expend4bles
Score: 30
33 reviews
It took a decade for a fourth Expendables movie to finally come to be, but the result is a sloppy and largely low-rent effort that, despite Jason Statham's best efforts, is exactly what the title says it is: expendable.
4. Fool's Paradise
Score: 27
9 review
Charlie Day wrote and directed this movie in which he plays a mute guy who looks exactly like a famous actor (also played by Day), and is recruited to shoot a movie as him while the real guy has locked himself in his trailer. That's one of those plots that either works super well or not at all--critics say it's the latter.
3. Assassin Club
Score: 27
7 reviews
A John Wick-alike starring Henry Golding and Noomi Rapace doesn't sound like the worst idea in the world, especially when you throw in Sam Neill in the Ian McShane old-guy role. But John Wick this ain't--maybe constantly reminding viewers of a different, better movie wasn't the best approach. It certainly didn't help with critics.
2. Freelance
Score: 24
10 review
John Cena used to be a special forces guy, but now he's a bored middle-aged lawyer. But he's just been recruited to guard a journalist (Alison Brie) who's interviewing the dictator of a Latin American country--and some bad guys attempt a coup pretty much as soon as they arrive, leading to plenty of action, quips, and romantic tension. It's just missing one thing: quality filmmaking.
1. Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey
Score: 16
19 reviews
It's Winnie the Pooh, but it's also a slasher movie. While having the beloved teddy bear become a slasher villain is a novel idea, critics thought the, ahem, execution was severely lacking. But despite this thrashing from critics, and being the worst-reviewed movie of the year, the filmmakers are moving ahead with a sequel anyway.
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