8 Of The Best Modern Films To Hate-Watch
Have you ever sat and watched and entire movie you knew was absolutely terrible, but you couldn’t tear yourself away from it because it was so funny and unbelievable that it actually got made over other screenplays? Me too. If a movie is so bad that it’s good, I have to watch it. I will sit in a theater or on my couch to watch it. I will pause it if I have to go to the bathroom. I will record it if I won’t be around to watch it.
I love crappy movies. I acknowledge they’re bad, so I can sit back and judge the hell out of it. It must be a reason why one of my favorite shows is MST3K (Mystery Science Theater 3000).
What I decided to do with compile a list over a week or so of movies that pop in my head as the best of the worst from a recent time. Now, I know there are obscure movies that have become gifs, or even those purposely bad movies like Sharknado, but I wanted the ones that were actually trying to be good, but failed so badly that what you see is the work of hundreds of people onscreen put to waste. I want to feel their realization of “Oh man, this movie is awful… at least I’m getting paid.”
The more I think about how miserable it must have been to be on set and making the film, the more I can’t help but laugh at the misery. Come with me as I share with you some of my favorite movies to hate-watch.
The Room
The Room is one of the worst films ever made by a human being. It’s like the worst of the worst of Lifetime movies, but somehow cost $6 million dollars to make. Once you understand that the maker, an oddity named Tommy Wiseau who wrote and directed this, made this to be a serious film, that’s when the comedy begins.
The story is about a successful banker named Johnny who thinks he has a happy life with his fiancée, Lisa. For apparently no reason, Lisa seduces his best friend Mark into a bafflingly bad acted love affair.
If you’ve never heard of this movie, I implore you to watch it alone at first. Then, get a group of friends together to watch it. Tell them to watch the movie as if it were 100% serious. What you will see if all of your friends staring at you like a complete idiot for even putting the movie on. Assure them it will only get unintentionally funnier.
The movie has dialogue written by someone who can barely speak English, acted badly by everyone in the cast, weird scenes where people toss footballs around 10 feet away from each other, hang around in a parking lot with a green screen around it made to look like a rooftop, and more.
Everything about this movie makes me want to hate it, but it’s so bad that I think it’s possibly one of the funniest movies ever made. What’s even more interesting is that a movie starring A-List actors are making a movie about the making of this movie based on the book The Disaster Artist by Greg Sestero (Mark in the film).
The Room is a sensation all over the world where theaters sell out just so fans can hate-watch it, throw spoons at the screen, and laugh at every ridiculous moment. If you want to watch something so bad that it’s good, I beg you to watch this catastrophe.
Battlefield Earth
When I first saw this film, I actually thought it looked alright. I mostly like Barry Pepper in it because he was such a badass in Saving Private Ryan and 61*. But then I saw it again years later when I learned everything I was taught in high school.
What I really noticed about this horrible film is that every scene is a Dutch angle. A Dutch angle is, to put it simply, tilting the camera like you were tilting your head to the side. Now imagine every single shot of the film besides aerial shots done that way. It’s incredible how stupid it is.
Speaking of stupid, the entire plot of the movie. It’s passion project for John Travolta because it’s based on a terrible novel from Scientology creator and creepy Uncle who corners you in the basement, L. Ron Hubbard.
Premise: In the year 3000, humanity is no match for the Psychlos, a greedy, manipulative race on a quest for ultimate profit. Led by the seductive and powerful Terl, the Psychlos are stripping Earth of its resources, using the broken remnants of humanity as slaves. What is left of the human race has reverted to a primitive state, believing the invaders to be demons and technology to be evil.
Psychlos are based on Hubbard’s hatred for Psychiatrists. But that’s nothing when it comes to the ridiculousness of this trainwreck. The movie is set in the year 3000, yet somehow so much of humanity’s buildings, military operations (jets with fuel that isn’t deteriorated), and even mini-golf courses that look only about 2 years out from being closed down.
What the Psychlos want is gold. An advanced race that took over the human race in a matter of minutes came here to make us slaves and put us to work mining gold. Guess what the advanced race didn’t do? Look at all of humanity’s gold reserves. We’re talking Fort Knox being completely untouched, but they have humans digging for gold with primitive tools? DUMB.
There’s even a scene where this primitive war tribe goes into a military base, uses a flight simulator to learn how to fly fighter jets, then attack the alien bases. One of the guys keeps repeating “piece of cake” like that even means anything to him. He’s in the year 3000!
Just watch it for laughs, because that’s all this movie is good for.
Batman and Robin
This is arguably the worst adaptation of Batman ever put to screen. Sure, there were to old campy ones with Adam West, but that is to be expected. This one is so out of control bad that one wonders if they all realized it was bad, knew they already had the funding, and then purposely messed the whole thing up.
Batman has a Batman credit card. “Never leave home without it.” Batman brags without even trying to hide his real voice. With Batman Forever, at least it was obvious Joel Schumacher was trying to mix in the dark elements with the colorful campy elements, but it’s all lost here.
Let us not forget Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze. He may be the saving grace of this film to make it such a great hate-watch. He drops ice puns left and right that are so bad that you can’t help but laugh, then wonder what the hell made him take this role.
Clooney is by far the worst Batman ever. He is so bad that he will give a refund to anyone who asks for one on the street. What makes it really bad is that when people remark about how bad it was, he always mentions that he played Bruce Wayne as a gay guy. Uh, yeah, best not always blame you playing Batman as gay was the reason for the movie being awful. Plus, Bruce Wayne wasn’t gay in the movie, so that’s strange.
If you’re bored on a Saturday afternoon, chances are this movie might be lurking somewhere on cable. I’ve witnessed it on during the day, and then right after it’s over, The Dark Knight starts. Maybe it’s to wash the taste out of your mouth? Either way, this one is pure comedy gold.
LOL
That title of the movie is no joke. LOL, meaning “laugh out loud” is what you should take from it, but no, brace yourself, it gets stupider. Miley Cyrus’ name in the film is Lola, but everyone calls her “Lol.” Below is the plot I took from IMDB. Yes, it actually starts with “In a world…”
Premise: In a world connected by YouTube, iTunes, and Facebook, Lola and her friends navigate the peer pressures of high school romance and friendship while dodging their sometimes overbearing and confused parents. When Lola’s mom, Anne, “accidentally” reads her teenage daughter’s racy journal, she realizes just how wide their communication gap has grown.
I don’t even think you really need to see the movie to laugh at this garbage. The trailers by themselves are hilarious enough. This had to be the tipping point where Cyrus died her hair all types of colors, started humping furries on stage, and sticking her tongue out all the time. I have nothing against her whatsoever. She does all the wild and crazy stuff, but you never see her get arrested for drugs or driving drunk.
Speaking of drugs, the people who greenlit this piece of crap deserve an award beyond a Razzie. You might get dizzy watching it because you’ll be shaking your head and trying to catch your breath throughout. The movie is called LOL. I assure you, you will LOL during this movie, but that wasn’t their intention.
The Happening
Before M. Night Shyamalan finally came back with a few solid movies like Split, he dropped some serious sh*t films into our eyes. The Happening actually had me excited when I first heard of the premise, but the problem with Shyamalan most times is that he has the stories, but he doesn’t have the writing.
Mark Wahlberg isn’t a bad actor. He’s pretty good when he has a director to tell him what to do and how to act. In a Shyamalan film, there is none of that whatsoever. When he recites that crappy dialogue, you can really see everything bad about both the actor and the director.
Premise: Elliot Moore is a high school science teacher who quizzes his class one day about an article in the New York Times. It’s about the sudden, mysterious disappearance of bees. Yet again Nature is doing something inexplicable, and whatever science has to say about it will be, in the end, only a theory. Scientists will bring out more theories, but no explanations, when a more urgent dilemma hits the planet. It begins in Central Park. Suddenly and inexplicably, the behavior of everyone in the park changes in a most bizarre and horrible way. Soon, the strange behavior spreads throughout the city and beyond. Elliot, his wife, Alma, and Jess, the young daughter of a friend, will only have theories to guide them where to run and where to hide. But theories may not be enough.
Now, the movie is about plants fighting back against the humans who pollute the Earth by using a toxin or whatever. It could work if done right, but it wasn’t. For example, here’s Marky Mark talking to a plant:
Elliot Moore: [to houseplant] Hello. My name is Elliot Moore. I’m just going to talk in a very positive manner, giving off good vibes. We’re just here to use the bathroom, and we’re just going to leave. I hope that’s okay.
[Elliot touches leaf]
Elliot Moore: Plastic. I’m talking to a plastic plant. I’m still doing it.
Sound stupid? Watch the scene:
He actually realizes he’s talking to a plant. Does the plant speak English? Does it matter? It’s plastic. That is the entire movie in a nutshell, and it’s amazing. This movie is so bad that you periodically have to pause it to really grasp that this movie cost $48 million dollars for people to run away from wind. The funnier part was that it bad $163 million at the box office. $10 of that was mine. Worth it.
Every Twilight Film
The Twilight franchise is a movie made to promote abstinence. It’s pretty simple if you take a second out of watching it to think. It’s also one of the worst film franchises of all time. It took vampires, a creature which dies in sunlight, and makes them sparkle like a child poured glue all over a mannequin, then threw glitter all over it.
Not to mention it being laughably bad, the main vampire played by Robert Pattinson/Edward stalks the zero-personality Bella/Kristen Stewart to the point that she should get a restraining order from the vampire police.
I’m pretty sure breaking into her house and watching her sleep isn’t the way to a woman’s heart, but then again, her character is a walking shell of nothing. Her whole role in the books are for lonely girls to put themselves in the story because she literally has nothing about her that’s even remotely interesting. I guess that’s why the casting is so perfect.
I don’t care if I spoil any of this, but at some point in the franchise, Bella becomes a vampire because she was about to die after giving birth to her child Renesmee (Renesmee sounds like a gimmick cake released a week a year at Denny’s). What does a boring vampire need to do when she’s newly created? Hunt. This is real:
She tackles a mountain lion in a dress. That is a laugh that becomes concerning because you cannot catch your breath. It was almost scary, but then I caught my breath, calmed down, then rewound to see it again.
The series is a beautiful hate-watch, but I must say that the soundtracks for the films are legit. So there’s that.
Room 237
Room 237 is different from the others because it’s a documentary. Does that make the movie eligible of an amusing hate-watch? Hell no. This is a documentary that derails from the opening moments of the film. It’s all about how Stanley Kubrick constructed The Shining with some weird, alternate motivations that go all the way to putting hidden messages in clouds, weird Native American myths, the Moon landing, and so much more.
Premise: A subjective documentary that explores the numerous theories about the hidden meanings within Kubrick’s film The Shining. The film may be over 30 years old but it continues to inspire debate, speculation, and mystery. Five very different points of view are illuminated through voice over, film clips, animation and dramatic reenactments. Together they’ll draw the audience into a new maze, one with endless detours and dead ends, many ways in, but no way out.
There are points in the film that random voice over “experts” say certain things happened because their kid walked in the room and it made them think of something related to the film. Anyone, if they had a good amount of time, could take any film and overanalyze it to the point where a conspiracy theory could be created. The real conspiracy? This movie has a 94% on Rotten Tomatoes. That’s funnier than the whole movie… almost.
On a side note: The best joke I heard about Kubrick faking the Moon landing was that he was such a perfectionist, he actually went to the Moon to film a fake Moon landing. Think about how silly that is, then watch this film. It’s beyond Ancient Aliens crazy. But it’s so good because it’s so bad.
The Last Airbender
Once again, we have a M. Night Shyamalan film. This time he adapted the beloved Nickelodeon cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender. Did I have high hopes for this film? Big time. The trailer down below still makes me think it will look awesome. It wasn’t.
This disaster was based on the first season of the show which consisted of 20 episodes. Say an episode is about 19 minutes long. That’s 380 minutes of TV. The Last Airbender was 103 minutes long. The ability to cover everything in the first season was impossible to fit into one movie. Do you really thing kids and adults wouldn’t shell out some cash for a second part?
Premise: Follows the adventures of Aang, a young successor to a long line of Avatars, who must master all four elements and stop the Fire Nation from enslaving the Water Tribes and the Earth Kingdom.
Once again, the problem with this film is the acting and the writing. It’s so stale and boring. Even the great actors in the film feel limited by the dialogue. Some of the CGI scenes look great, but the film surrounding it drowns it. I didn’t want to laugh throughout the film, but I couldn’t help it. The changes to the airbending powers, the horrible acting of the lead, the poor directing, and the acting of just about everyone in the film is wonderfully bad.
If you’re a fan of the show, you’ll probably hate it, but still laugh at most of it. If you’ve never seen the show… strap in for a heap of garbage filmed in 35 mm.
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Jeff Sorensen is an author, writer and occasional comedian living in Detroit, Michigan. You can look for more of his work on The Huffington Post, UPROXX, BGR and by just looking up his name.
Contact: jeff@socialunderground.com