10 Worst Movies of the Last 25 Years, Ranked (2024)

If you want to find great movies released as recently as the 2010s, or even the current decade, the 2020s, you're in luck. Contrary to what some might say (and you know what some might say), cinema has been alive and well within the last couple of decades, and just like any other decade in history, the last quarter of a century has seen its share of both winners and critical misfires.

It’s the misfires that are going to be acknowledged below, because these movies – most of them fairly well-known and/or notorious – can be considered some of the worst made in the last 25 years. They're generally not fun in a bad way, either, so if you're wondering why The Room isn't here, it’s because The Room is just too much fun. These movies, on the other hand, are probably best avoided by anyone who’s not particularly into watching bad films as often as good ones.

10 'Yoga Hosers' (2016)

Directed by Kevin Smith

It can be hard to see the mighty fall, and Kevin Smith, for a short while, was once pretty mighty as far as boldly independent filmmakers went. He rose to fame with Clerks, which was a movie mostly just about surviving a job you hate, which found comedy in very relatable things and a mundane convenience store setting. Yoga Hosers, admittedly, also takes place predominantly in a convenience store, but it brazenly makes a decision to not be like Clerks when it comes to being funny.

Sure, it’s going for more of a comedic horror thing, with some fantasy elements that involve villainous bratwurst Nazis (don’t ask, it’s stupider than it sounds, somehow), but none of it works. Yoga Hosers rambles on and on, seeming to never end, even though information findable online will tell you it’s allegedly less than 90 minutes long. Don’t believe it. The misery of Yoga Hosers is eternal.

Yoga Hosers

R

Comedy

Fantasy

Horror

Where to Watch

• stream
• rent
• buy

*Availability in US

Release Date

July 8, 2016

Director

Kevin Smith

Cast

Lily-Rose Melody Depp , Harley Quinn Smith , Adam Brody​ , Harley Morenstein , Ashley Greene , Jack Depp

Runtime

88

9 'Sniper: Special Ops' (2016)

Directed by Fred Olen Ray

Sniper: Special Ops is one of the least compelling war movies ever made, and features one of the least committed lead performances in cinema history, courtesy of Steven Seagal. He plays a purportedly badass expert sniper, and though he does shoot some people throughout, Seagal does nothing to suggest his character cares, and it’s sort of funny how he really does spend almost the entire film sitting down.

And, yes, snipers do stay stationary, but Sniper: Special Ops sticks to this in a bad way, leading to a whole movie that feels static and uninspired. It’s a little absurd at times, owing to just how barebones and brazenly lazy it is, but bafflement isn't the same as entertainment… unless you are morbidly curious and do want to see a particularly poorly handled action/war flick.

Sniper: Special Ops

R

Action

War

See Also

Novinky, zajímavosti a tipy ze světa seriálů a filmů | Edna.cz10 Movies From 2010 That Are Now Considered ClassicsThe Best Horror Movie From Each Year Of The 2010sThe 32 most successful movies of the 2010s

Release Date

April 3, 2016

Director

Fred Olen Ray

Cast

steven seagal , Tim Abell , Rob Szatkowski , Dale Dye , Charlene Amoia , Jason-Shane Scott , Daniel Booko , Anthony Batarse , Gerald Webb , Jeff Bosley , Matthew Anderson , Paul Logan , John Henry Richardson , Rita Khori , Jim Poole , Shary Nassimi , Scott Thomas Reynolds , J Ferguson , Rydell Danzie , Trevor Scott , Brad Monclova

Runtime

84 minutes

Watch on Tubi

8 'Birdemic: Shock and Terror' (2010)

Directed by James Nguyen

In 1963, Alfred Hitchcock did a surprisingly great job at making mundane birds come across in a surprisingly terrifying way on screen. Sure, it’s one thing to have a giant shark be intimidating, or bring dinosaurs to life and have them terrorize humans (Jaws and Jurassic Park, respectively), but The Birds doing the same for ordinarily-sized birds was uniquely harrowing.

Close to half a century later, there was another attempt at a scary bird movie that failed across the board: the infamous Birdemic: Shock and Terror from 2010. It’s not quite as fun as The Room, but it’s built up the same sort of reputation, doing for “nature attacks” horror movies what Tommy Wiseau’s magnum opus did for romantic melodramas. Terrible special effects, baffling dialogue, and acting so wooden it makes the Ents from The Lord of the Rings look fleshy in comparison await anyone brave enough to experience the Shock and Terror of Birdemic.

Birdemic: Shock and Terror

Not Rated

Horror

Thriller

Release Date

February 27, 2010

Director

James Nguyen

Cast

Alan Bagh , Whitney Moore , Tippi Hedren , Laura Cassidy

Runtime

105 minutes

Watch on Amazon

7 'Battlefield Earth' (2000)

Directed by Roger Christian

The acting career John Travolta’s had since the 1970s has undeniably been up and down, but nothing put a dent in the comeback he had during the 1990s quite like Battlefield Earth. It was not a good way to kick off the new millennium for anyone involved, with its story taking place another 1000 years in the future and involving an alien race enslaving humanity.

Then, humanity fights back, blah, blah, blah, and things get ridiculous, ugly, over-acted, poorly paced, and sometimes, admittedly, quite laughable. There are flashes of genuine hilarity found throughout Battlefield Earth, but other sequences within are more of a slog. It has the sort of notoriety it has for good reason, and if someone wanted to label it a nadir of the overall science fiction genre, that might be strangely difficult to dispute.

Battlefield Earth

PG-13

Sci-Fi

Action

Adventure

Where to Watch

• stream
• rent
• buy

*Availability in US

Release Date

May 12, 2000

Director

Roger Christian

Cast

John Travolta , Forest Whitaker , Barry Pepper , Kim Coates

Runtime

6 'Saving Christmas' (2014)

Directed by Darren Doane

The problem with Saving Christmas isn't that it’s simply about faith, instead being the mess it is because it’s not an effective exploration of faith and how it relates to the titular time of the year. It is a somewhat passionate film that wants to present an argument about the true meaning of Christmas, but it’s hard to imagine any naysayers of the most wonderful time of the year being persuaded by anything contained within.

Kirk Cameron pretty much plays himself, and the movie revolves around him trying to convince a brother-in-law to not be such a sad sack around Christmastime. Through this basic premise, Saving Christmas goes to some absolutely wild places, at least in its “better” moments. Otherwise, it’s very preachy and kind of repetitive, too, but those parts can be bewildering in a sort of engaging way, too.

Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas

PG

Comedy

See Also

Novinky, zajímavosti a tipy ze světa seriálů a filmů | Edna.cz

Family

Where to Watch

• stream
• rent
• buy

*Availability in US

Release Date

November 14, 2014

Director

Darren Doane

Cast

Kirk Cameron , Darren Doane , Bridgette Cameron , Ben Kientz , David Shannon , Raphi Henly

Runtime

80

5 'Disaster Movie' (2008)

Directed by Aaron Seltzer, Jason Friedberg

Disaster Movie is the worst kind of bad movie because it’s not particularly fun to talk about (or watch). Certain movies that don’t quite work are at least fun to dig into, either by making jokes at their expense or trying to get to the heart of just why they don’t work. Sometimes, it’s possible to get a thrill out of doing a bit of both. There’s no such thrill to discussing Disaster Movie.

This is the laziest of lazy parody movies, ripping into cinema and pop culture predominantly from 2008… and infamously doing so in 2008, meaning there wasn’t much to work with parody-wise beyond some recognizable characters and the marketing they might've appeared in when Disaster Movie was made. Parody movies are great when done right, but there’s very little parody in this parody movie. It simply shows things you might vaguely know and then it hopes that'll be enough. It’s not.

Disaster Movie

PG-13

Release Date

August 29, 2008

Director

Jason Friedberg , Aaron Seltzer

Cast

Carmen Electra , vanessa lachey , Nicole Parker , Matt Lanter , Gary Johnson , Crista Flanagan , Kim Kardashian , Ike Barinholtz

Runtime

87 Minutes

Main Genre

Comedy

Watch on Amazon

4 'Verotika' (2019)

Directed by Glenn Danzig

The worst anthology movie of the last 25 years will be mentioned in a bit, but the second-worst from that same passage of time is probably Verotika. As the title suggests/threatens, Verotika is purportedly erotica combined with horror, only none of it’s sexy and none of it’s scary. Even calling it sleazy somehow feels like giving Verotika credit, and sleaze isn't even something you’d usually want in a movie!

It's just a nothing movie, telling three main stories with all of them taking common horror tropes and conventions before mutating them in thoroughly dull and tedious ways. There’s nothing fresh here, nothing technically impressive, and nothing that even comes close to being scary. Verotika doesn’t even have the courtesy to be bad in a funny way, so just avoid it at all costs.

Verotika

R

Horror

Release Date

June 13, 2019

Director

Glenn Danzig

Cast

Kayden Kross , Rachele Richey , Rachel Alig , Alice Tate , Scotch Hopkins , Sean Kanan , Natalia Borowsky , Kansas Bowling , Nika Balina , Jody Barton , Brennah Black , Kris Black , James Cullen Bressack , Katarina Bucevac , Cody Renee Cameron , Sébastien Charmant , Frankie Cullen , Tabaré Dutto , Bobbi Dylan , Daria Amona Fe , Felicity Feline , Elisabeth Ferrara , Diane Foster , Emma Gradin , Aaliyah Hadid

Runtime

90 minutes

Rent on Apple TV

3 'Cats' (2019)

Directed by Tom Hooper

After one infamously mortifying trailer, Cats, upon release, ended up being one infamously mortifying movie. With a paper-thin premise and nightmarish visuals, this movie is about a bunch of cats who all want to die and they sing some songs because they're all competing to be the one who gets to die. Well, maybe. They want to ascend to some kind of cat afterlife. But they actually want to die.

Viewers of Cats might well also find themselves wishing to ascend to a higher plane of existence while trying to survive this one. It’s a movie that feels longer than it is, being a true endurance test packed with annoying musical numbers, horrific animation mixed with live-action, and one of the most repetitive stories you’ll ever witness. Seriously, one of the most repetitive stories you’ll ever witness. The story here is so repetitive. It's a movie that repeats itself. Cats is very repetitive.

Cats

PG

Musical

Fantasy

Release Date

December 20, 2019

Director

Tom Hooper

Cast

James Corden , judi dench , Jason DeRulo , Idris Elba , Robbie Fairchild , Mette Towley

Runtime

110 minutes

Watch on Netflix

2 'Movie 43' (2013)

Directed by 15 people who should've known better

Rivaling something like 1992’s The Player when it comes to having an astounding number of A-list actors in the one movie, Movie 43 has too many famous people to count. Thankfully, there aren’t 42 more of these, and if there were, by no means would they be worth watching in order to properly understand Movie 43, because this is one of the last movies you should ever watch.

It’s even worse than Verotika, as far as anthology films go, stringing together numerous unfunny skits that are all packed with cheap, crude humor, but not cheap/crude humor that manages to be in any way amusing. Movie 43 is painful to get through, and the story of how it came to be proves far more interesting than the film itself (not to mention a whole lot stranger and more eventful).

Movie 43

R

Where to Watch

• stream
• rent
• buy

Not available

*Availability in US

Release Date

January 1, 2013

Director

Elizabeth Banks , Steven Brill , Steve Carr , Rusty Cundieff , James Duffy , Griffin Dunne

Cast

Dennis Quaid , Greg Kinnear , Common , Charlie Saxton , Will Sasso , Odessa Rae

Runtime

97

Main Genre

Comedy

1 '2025: The World Enslaved by a Virus' (2021)

Directed by Simon Wesely, Joshua Wesely

There’s something neat and numerically satisfying about giving 2025: The World Enslaved by a Virus the title of worst movie released between 1999 and 2024, given it’s set in 2025. It imagines a strange dystopia brought about by COVID-19… well, less so the virus itself, and more the ways that the powerful in the world used it to oppress and restrict, with communism being rampant and Christianity being illegal.

It was the sort of thing that had aged and felt preposterous even before it came out, and now that 2025 is right around the corner, the fearmongering here is even funnier. Also funny: the way this film is put together, the way it’s acted, the way it’s written, the way it uses music, and the fact it ends with a tragic event – like, in its final moments – that’s immediately undercut by the inclusion of bloopers in the end credits. 2025: The World Enslaved by a Virus is impossible to comprehend, even if you’ve successfully gotten through it. This kind of bafflement and cinematic ineptitude only comes around once every quarter of a century, if you're (un)lucky.

2025: The World Enslaved by a Virus

Adventure

Science Fiction

Drama

Thriller

Release Date

January 15, 2021

Director

Joshua Wesely

Cast

Joshua Wesely , Simon Wesely , Matthew Dougan , Coby Gilyard , Isabelle Scheuermann , Antonia Joy Speer , Lukas Speer , John Vogt , Tabitha Wesely , Laura Wieder

Runtime

91 minutes

Watch on Tubi

NEXT: Collider's 100 Best Movies of All Time, Ranked