You know these movies. These are the ones where you grab a few drinks, maybe microwave some popcorn, and sit down with a few friends to absolutely dunk on them. These are the top 10 awful films that are sure to make your quarantine Zoom watch party a big hit.
WARNING: For the sake of your own sanity, do not view these movies alone.
10. Sharknado (2013)
This one is obvious, but it needs to be restated. While I feel that the later Sharknado movies teetered into the “so bad it’s bad” category, the first film still holds up as a stupid good time. The first movie wasn’t trying to be funny, and therefore ended up being extremely funny. The later films were out-and-out comedies, but just.. bad. This is the king of terrible SyFy Original Movies.
Highlights
- Ian Ziering rappels down a big bridge into a half sunken school bus to fight flying sharks
- A shark lands on top of a car and uses its teeth to skillfully rip the hood off and access the precious human meat inside
- Someone is literally eaten by a shark and crawls back out
9. Insurgent (2015)
The first of our “terrible teen dystopia romance” stories, Insurgent is the sequel to the sort-of hit Divergent, in which a girl who’s not like the other girls is the Avatar of personality because she can be smart, loyal, aggressive, humble and… the green one all at the same time. The first film is pretty bland, but nothing outright awful in terms of these types of YA adaptations. Insurgent ramps up the garbage and throws away any hint of serious plot from the previous movie in a spectacular way. It’s not necessary to watch the first movie before this, there’s not even an attempt to pretend there’s an overarching story.
Highlights
- Shailene Woodley cuts all her hair off to deal with her trauma, after her boyfriend gives her permission
- The omnipotent Big Brother bad guys are unable to nail down the location of a several hundred person rebel army
- Four’s name is the number of fears he has
- My Divergent name is 83, what’s yours?
8. The Room (2003)
Tommy Wiseau’s masterpiece The Room likely needs no introduction. I cannot believe you haven’t seen this yet. Watch it, and then watch James Franco and Seth Rogen’s comedy biopic The Disaster Artist to gain true appreciation for how such a terrible movie could have gone through all the steps necessary to be put to film and released. This film, more than any here, will leave you scratching your head over how anyone involved in any stage of production looked at it and said, “yeah boss, looks good.”
Highlights
- “Oh hi Mark. So anyway, how’s your sex life?”
- Amazingly bad sex scenes
- Football
- “YOU ARE TEARING ME APART LISA”
7. Troll 2 (1990)
If I told you the plot synopsis of this movie was “vegetarian goblins want to eat a family and so they try to mutate said family into plants”, would you believe me? No? What if I told you there were no trolls in the movie Troll 2? Still in denial? What If I told you that the whole cast only spoke English, and the whole crew only spoke Italian? Do you understand now? If not, you are as naive and foolish as your father said. Bah!
Highlights
- Holly accuses her boyfriend of being gay because he likes spending time with his friends
- The town of Nilbog, which is goblin spelled backwards, is run by evil vegetarian goblins
- Joshua is approached by the ghost of his grandfather who tells him to urinate on all the goblin food, and he does that
6. Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter (2001)
Do you remember when our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ returned to the world to protect Canadian lesbians from vampires by teaming up with a Mexican wrestler? That was in Jobs III, I think. This movie was intended to be bad, but it did such a good job I think it’s still a good fit for this list.
- Jesus beats up a bunch of atheists who don’t believe in him even after getting wrecked
- The Luchador and Jesus kill dozens of vampires in a vampire nightclub
- Vampires are getting mortal skin transplants to make them immune to sunlight
- One of the vampires is named Maxine Shrek
5. Beastly (2011)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Neo6W1f7hyY
Another wonderful YA adaptation, Beastly is a modern-day retelling of The Beauty and the Beast, set in a high school. It’s about as bad as it sounds, yeah. However, it takes itself so unbelievably seriously that it becomes amazing. A hot asshole guy is mean to a witch (who just goes to high school with them) and she makes his face disfigured, and man ain’t that the same as being a beast. Join Kyle and Lindy on the dumbest romance story to ever grace the silver screen. Please also indulge yourself with Jenny Nicholson’s breakdown, which is fantastic.
Highlights
- The b-plot of the movie about a witch turning a guy into a beast (?) is an election for high school student council president
- Neil Patrick Harris has been cursed with blindness, which he calls “worse than death”
- The Jamaican nanny is able to produce three green cards with magic when the curse is broken
- Machu Pichu is the dream destination for every teenage girl
4. Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997)
Video game movies have, until the last few years, been a bad idea on principle. Luckily, the 1997 sequel to the live action Mortal Kombat movie was so completely awful that it looped back around to delightful. Nearly even role was recast from the first movie, which makes for awful continuity, on top of a plot so insane that it couldn’t exist in any other movie.
Highlights
- Sonya Blade loses control of her emotions and kills a cyber ninja and a clone in the first few minutes
- A native American shaman named “Nightwolf” is the only one who can unravel the mystical evil plot
- An astral woman seduces Liu Kang to test his manhood and then teams up with him
- That same astral woman is revealed to be a double agent working for Shao Khan because he threatened to feed her to a gargoyle
3. Vampire Academy (2014)
The film adaptation of Richelle Mead’s slam-hit YA novel series of the same name is one of my favorite pieces of media to ever grace the earth. I have watched it on nine separate occasions with different groups of people, and have never once found anyone who didn’t love it. Vampire Academy is somewhat aware of its own stupidity but chooses it ignore it in pursuit of being “sexy” and quirky. And I put “sexy” in quotation marks for a reason. This film was a commercial and critical flop, landing a 16% on Rotten Tomatoes and pulling in less than half its budget at the Box Office. Please, watch it. For me.
Highlights
- The main character, Rose, has a physically aggressive and sexual relationship with her teacher at vampire school, who is 10 years her senior
- The bitchy girl who calls Lissa a slut has sex with two vampires to convince them to intimidate Lissa, the Vampire Princess
- The bad guy is a Russian hitman who lost the election for Vampire King (?)
- One of the teachers turns herself into a demon and then blames the academy for making her a monster
- Just everything about Dimitri
2. Leprechaun 5: In the Hood (2000)
If you can only bear to watch one of the Leprechaun movies, make sure it’s this one. Warwick Davis stars as the titular Leprechaun, hunting down his gold in the projects and killing anyone that gets in his way. But when he finally comes up against a Christian soundcloud rapper, he meets his match.
Highlights
- Postmaster P. is a rapper who wants to spread a positive message, and is dropped by Ice-T’s record label for being too nice
- The Leprechaun uses the force to make the rappers shoot each other
- The only way to kill the Leprechaun is with a blunt laced with four leaf clovers
- Ice-T is shot in the chest eight times and does not die, and then kills the Leprechaun with a chair
1. Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014)
I know what you’re thinking. The first Transformers movie was fine and then after that they went way downhill. You’re almost correct. The fourth film, Age of Extinction is so, so desperately bad that it has reached the absolute apex of “so bad it’s good.” I promise, it does not get better than this. Grab a friend and do NOT go into this alone.
Highlights
- All canon about the origin of the Transformers from the previous movies is retconned in favor of making them alien plants made of “Transformium”
- Mark Wahlberg is a self described, self employed inventor who has never invented anything
- Stanley Tucci spends half a billion dollars rebuilding Galvatron with specific instruction to make him not look like Megatron, but he looks exactly like Galvatron
- Mark Wahlberg’s daughter is dating an older man while still a minor and they have to outline in the movie which specific Texas law allows this
- Such intrusive product placement that there is a Mountain Dew-only vending machine that the Decepitcons drink for power
- The dinosaurs don’t even show up until the last 20 minutes of this two and a half hour movie
- Optimus Prime kills Frasier with a laser beam
- CADE YEAGER
That’s all I’ve got for today, but I’m sure there are many movies missing from this list that deserved a spot. Let us know in the comments below!
