The List: Top 10 Worst Films of 2012

Listed below are the films I personally feel were the worst 10 films I saw in 2012. As I am a poor, old, boy, finances limit me to a certain number of films I was able to see throughout the year. This is not to say that there are worse films out there that were released in 2012, but these were the worst 10 films released in 2012 that I saw through year's end.


10. This Means War

Directed by the continuously terrible McG, this waste of celluloid brought a decent cast together to make one forgettable film. CIA Agents and best friends Foster (Chris Pine) and Hansen (Tom Hardy) both fall in love with the same woman. Hilarity ensues. A very implausible story is tied together by predictable rom-com tropes and awful dialogue. I never hated this film, it was just too stupid for the cast it attracted.


9. The Cold Light of Day

As stated in my initial review, this really was just a way for Bruce Willis to get a trip to Spain. Future Superman star, Henry Cavill plays Will Shaw, who is having personal problems that will never arise again, when he meets with his family for a vacation in Spain. After Will's family disappears, Will's dad, Martin (Bruce Willis) briefly appears and reveals that he is a CIA Agent and his partner Jean Carrack (Sigourney Weaver) states his family has been taken due to a MacGuffin briefcase. Will then goes on the run where boring action scenes and long exposition fill the screen. Another piece of crap involving CIA Agents and a waste of a perfectly good cast.


8. Boring Man on a Boring Ledge Man on a Ledge

Once again, a solid cast is wasted on another forgettable film from the beginning of the year. Continued star in the making, Sam Worthington plays Nick Cassidy, a man who read this script and decides to end it all by stepping out onto a ledge and threatening to jump. Instead of jumping, he stands there and awaits the police to arrive. As he hasn't jumped, obviously more is going on. A bad "A" story and a horrendous "B" story involving Jamie Bell and Genesis Rodriguez help place this film on my list. This film also has the distinction of the best cast on my "Worst Of..." list that includes Elizabeth Banks, Anthony Mackie, Edward Burns and Ed Harris.


7. Stolen

Good God, I just reviewed this movie. I'm not revisiting it again so soon. Please just check out my review on this guaranteed Award Winner. Again, though, what the hell was up with Josh Lucas?

6. The Watch

See how funny the poster for this film is? This film is about 0.000000000000000001% as funny as that poster. A solid comedic cast is perfectly wasted in this overly unfunny film. These four vague outlines of characters, because none of them are actual characters, fumble around a messy plot that can't decide if it wants to be an alien invasion film or an Old School-type "frat pack" film. In between the few sequences involving the aliens, we are treated to painfully long sequences of improv that should have ended up on the cutting room floor. This misfire was thankfully avoided in theaters for the most part and should stay avoided.

5. Transformers Battleshit Battleship

Every Summer, there is a film that costs way too much money and misses the mark. This year's offering is the wildly over-budgeted and very under-everything else. Basing a film off a board game has never really been a wise decision before, and this film proves that wholeheartedly. Instead of boats sinking boats, the U.S. pisses off a bunch of aliens and the game is set. The game itself is pretty fun. The film is absolutely not.

4. ATM

Now we find us at the most unintentionally hilarious film of the year. Three douchebags are held captive inside an ATM. There's your plot and that's all you get. We have our unseen killer who decides to terrorize them all night, even at one point, sitting in a lawn chair and watching them. This film is god awful, but I will admit to laughing out loud much more than when I checked out The Watch.

3. The Devil Inside

The film that not only pissed off the critics, but film audiences and especially the horror audience. Told through the cliched "found footage" genre, we are treated to boring shocks, lame twists and awful acting... just what you expect from a horror film in January. Unfortunately, the film builds towards a climax then just ends, and leaves us wanting to check out their website. Rule number 1: Have an ending for your already terrible film.

2. Piranha 3DD

So, you decide to take all the best parts of Piranha 3D and throw them away? Ok, I don't understand that, but maybe you're trying to take the film in a whole new direction? No, you just decided to strip away all the entertainment value and give us a lame cameo with Gary Busey, no budget and David Hasselhoff being the best thing in this film? How are you not number 1 on this list?...

1. The Divide

...that's because The Divide was released this year! Sorry, Piranha 3DD, this masterpiece relegated you to the runner-up. This bleak and miserable misfire was a film I was genuinely excited to see. After a really good opening scene, we have to spend almost two hours with some of the most miserable characters in location that shows you the budget they are working with. Headed by a solid cast that includes Michael Biehn, Rosanna Arquette and Milo Ventimiglia, this film fails on all levels. When it tries to say something about how society breaks down, it instead is just an ugly film that tries to be shocking but only comes off as nasty and cheap. A truly awful film and one of the worst films I have ever seen.

There you have it, folks. My pile of crap. Ten films I would be happy to never see in my lifetime again. Hopefully, if I can save one person from checking one of these films out, then I feel like I have done my good deed for the year. Just take my word for it, these films suck.

The Cold Light of Day

The Cold Light of Day... or as I like to call it, how Bruce Willis got a free vacation to Spain.

Will Shaw (Henry Cavill) arrives in Spain, distracted by his small business in financial trouble (which never materializes into a plot point), to meet with his family for a vacation. Will and his father Martin (Bruce Willis) do not always see eye to eye and when a small accident on Martin's boat happens, Will goes to town for medicine. Upon returning, Will finds the boat abandoned and in disarray.

Back on land, Will speaks with the local police department. The police officers go to the boat where Will meets with a man who knows what happened to Will's family and is willing to show him. Will escapes and in the process meets up with Martin.

Martin informs Will that he has been hiding his true work from Will, that he is a CIA agent (shocking, I know). Martin spits out enough plot; the people who took his family are after a briefcase that Martin took and gave to his superiors, before meeting with villain partner, Jean (Sigourney Weaver). As soon as they end their conversation, Martin exits stage left and Will goes on the run with the brief knowledge that Martin dispensed.

Along the way, Will teams up with a local, Lucia (Veronica Echegui) who holds a not too surprising secret. They are chased all throughout Madrid by various bad guys including Jean's number 1 henchman, Gorman (Joseph Mawle), before the inevitable climax where Will and Jean must face off.

I was on board with this film for about the first half hour or so. I was not watching a film that was re-inventing the wheel, but I didn't hate myself for watching it. As the second half of the film kicked in, though, the plot becomes overly complicated with various needless bad guys. This could have been a standard on the run-type film, but then with a gang of Mossad agents join the fray and the plot gets very murky. After a while, my interest in this film waned and I really didn't care anymore about the briefcase (or MacGuffin, as my dear friend Karina perfectly called it) or what happened to Will's family.

Besides the overly-complicated plot, the biggest issue with this film lies within the acting. Henry Cavill might be a star in the making with the Superman reboot scheduled to launch next year, but his performance in this film is pretty laughable. One scene in particular that made me laugh involved Will being on a bus and getting a phone call. His performance in this supposed emotion-filled scene was very wooden and I ended up laughing. Besides his lack of conveying a proper level of emotion, Henry Cavill never really invests himself into the character, except when he has to be shirtless. Sorry, but he is supposed to be the son of Bruce Willis, and when I see the son of Bruce Willis, I expect someone who can handle themselves somewhat more competently.

Speaking of Bruce Willis, he has no more than an extended cameo. As I said in the beginning, I felt Bruce Willis took this film to hang out in Spain for about a week. Bruce Willis shows up, says his lines of exposition and leaves. Beyond that, he is really there to have his face and name slapped onto the poster and trailer to help sell extra movie tickets. And judging by the box office, that didn't help much.

The other big name in the film is Sigourney Weaver. She doesn't try to hide that she is evil and just chews up her scenery. Sigourney Weaver's Jean just goes through the motions as a government agent doing all she can to "protect America" from terrorists. Sigourney Weaver sits on the other side of the fence as her performance goes over the top without any rhyme or reason as she spouts out one-liners during gunfights and  casually strolls through gunfights as if knowing she wont get hurt. Again, I think she just wanted to hang out in Spain for a while.

The Cold Light of Day is directed by Mabrouk El Mechri who directed the, much better than it should have been, JCVD. In JCVD that film had style with good performances and a solid script. Unfortunately all of those aspects are missing from this film. With the exception of some nice panoramic views of Madrid, there is nothing that El Mechri brought to this film worth seeing.

As an overall experience, this is a really bad film. The stars appeared to have taken this for a paycheck and/or a nice trip to Spain. With the talent involved, this should have been better, but from the acting to writing and to directing, this was a total losing effort. And everyone was on the same page with making this a bad film.

And what was the point of Colm Meaney?

2.5/10