Cody’s Worst of 2018

While we covered the best and the worst in our awesome year-end podcast (Go listen if you haven’t already! – Link) I saw far too much garbage this year to be confined to a mere 5 movies. Now I was a tad tipsy during our podcast, so my top 5 may have a change or two and be in different order. Bear with me.

Prepare yourself as the Garbage Man of City of Geek gives you the absolute worst of 2018! Some spoilers ahead, you’ve been warned.

10. Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween
The second Goosebumps movie came and went this year with little fanfare, and for good reason. This movie was almost a carbon copy of the first without the saving grace of Jack Black’s character R.L. Stine to help carry it (sans a small cameo). The film does have some interesting effects and great Halloween imagery, but it just can’t stop copying the first film, which leaves it without a true identity. This feels less like a sequel and more like Asylum made a TV knock-off of the first one, and that alone earns it a place on the Worst list. (Bob’s more positive review here)

9. The Possession of Hannah Grace
Another movie that appeared and disappeared from theaters, Hannah Grace takes an interesting concept and bungles it to a truly impressive degree. Starting where most Exorcism movies end, Hannah Grace starts out promising, but completely falls flat as the pace drops to a crawl. The movie seems to just exist, with no real purpose or love behind it as most of the actors mail-in their performances. Any ambition to be different is quickly squashed, and we end up with a boring sludgefest in the cheapest fake morgue on Earth. I truly don’t understand why Sony chose to give this a spot before and during Thanksgiving and turf off the far superior Escape Room (See our video review from last week!) into the wasteland of January. (Bob and Cody’s Review here)

8. Venom
This was a movie that I was initially lukewarm on, but as time went on I hated more and more. While Tom Hardy does an admirable job as Eddie Brock and tries to elevate the very weak script, there’s just not much he can do. Venom himself is animated well, and they do a great job of capturing the relationship between the symbiote and Brock, but the issue is, there isn’t enough of it. The movie is paced so strangely that we spend far too much time with Brock pre-Venom and not enough time with the movie’s namesake. The relationship suffers as a result, as they have to rush from their initial distrust/hated to them being best friends in the course of, like, 2 days. Riot is a lame villain with no real motivation other than “LOL invade Earth with Symbiote army”. SPOILERS AHEAD! While I think Woody Harrelson will end up making a wonderful Carnage, that wig was ridiculous and took me completely out of what was supposed to be a very cool moment. (Bob’s review here)

7. A Wrinkle in Time
Stop trying to adapt this fucking book to a movie. It doesn’t translate well whatsoever and it ends up producing more laughs from the shitty effects than anything else. I’m not that big a fan of the source material, but this film suffers from a major case of it just not working regardless. The child actors who comprise our main characters range in skill from “eh” to “FLING THEM INTO THE SUN” (particularly in the case of whoever plays Charles Wallace). Even talented actors/actresses such as Oprah, Mindy Kaling, Chris Pine and Zach Galifianakis can’t save this one. Also, giant Oprah was fucking stupid and failed to produce any wonder or amazement, just laughs from audience members.

6. God’s Not Dead: A Light in Darkness
I really wish David A.R. White didn’t exclusively do Christian movies, despite his company putting out some truly dogshit-filled propaganda pieces for Evangelicals who like to cry persecution in a country where Christianity is practiced by a large majority of citizens. White typically ends up being the best actor in whatever he is in, and he wastes his own ability by starring in such dreck as the God’s Not Dead series. God’s Not Dead 3 is just kinda eh. It doesn’t get quite as hateful as previous entries (which truthfully is kinda disappointing. I was hoping for a dumpster fire.) No evil Atheist professors get run over by cars and forcefully converted on their deathbeds, Melissa Joan Hart doesn’t spend a whole movie as Sabrina the Middle Age Christian, and no Muslim father beats his daughter leading up to a sick Newsboys concert. They didn’t even have the courtesy to get a Duck Dynasty cast member or a failed former Arkansas Governor to cameo for Christ’s sake! (Pun intended.) The movie does have a surprising death and does check the boxes of your average Christian film, but I was expecting far worse from this film and that is honestly a point against it.

5. Terrifer
This is one of my biggest disappointments of the year. I love the design of Art the Clown, and I was thrilled to see him get the chance to headline his own film after his ominous presence in 2013’s All Hallow’s Eve. Sadly, what came out was a boring slog through an abandoned apartment building. It tries to get away with having no story by filling the film with random gory deaths, but it fails. The leads are charisma black holes, the story has no urgency or drive behind it, and the while the gore can be impressive, it can’t replace actually having something going on in it. Also, Art uses a gun and just shoots a lead character to death halfway through, which defeats the entire point of a slasher killer and takes the air of an already struggling film.

4. Slender Man
How do you fuck something up this bad? Seriously. Slender Man has a built-in mythology, a proven pedigree of success and a loyal online fanbase that stretches back years. This film does nothing but piss all over the legacy of the online legend with uneven performances, terrible editing, bad pacing and a muddled plot. My issue is that this should have been fucking easy to do! Adapt some Marble Hornets shit and ride that rocket to success. The film is bafflingly written and edited, with characters motivations changing wildly between scenes, events not being recognized as happening at all, and a lame anticlimactic ending which leaves the viewer wondering, “Why do they hate us?”

3. Dummycrats
A lame Turning Point USA meme come to life, Dummycrats follows scam artists
Diamond and Silk as they try to milk all they can from gullible Trump supporters while doing as little actual work as possible. Diamond and Silk, daughters of a televangelist, decide to get into the family business of grifting by teaming up with The American Mirror’s Kyle Olson (A.K.A. the lovechild of Ben Shapiro and Charlie Kirk, but with none of the charisma).They make the typical easily-debunked claim about how bad Democrats are while trying to pin homelessness and other societal issues on Nancy Pelosi and Maxine Waters. They also try to take a page from Michael Moore and ambush prominent Democrats, but unlike Moore, they lack the courage to follow through and usually wind up harassing an innocent office worker. They even leave a pooper scooper for Nancy Pelosi on a bench outside her office, lacking the actual balls to go into the office, leaving me to wonder why even bother making this film if you don’t have the courage to follow through with your bravado. Then I realized they’re just following in the path of their Dear Leader Trump; talking a big game at first, cowering and spouting desperate insults when the time comes for actions. When a movie makes Dinesh D’Souza look somewhat competent, you know it’s poorly made.

2. Hell’s Kitty
Fuck no. (Kim and Cody Review here)

1. Death of a Nation
If you listen to the podcast, you knew this was coming. Death of a Nation is the true cream of the crap and deserves the top spot on this year’s Worst list. Dinesh D’Souza once again brings us a Right Wing Propaganda piece filled to the brim with some of the worst acting, editing, script writing and directing of the year. Looking past the technical issues with the film (of which there are plenty) you will find a rich tapestry thickly smeared with blatant misrepresentation of historical facts, refusing to acknowledge known events, and a whole movie based upon the premise of, “DURRRRRRR DEMONRATS BAD.” D’Souza is another opportunist looking to make a quick buck of the stupidest mothefuckers on the planet (also known as Trump supporters) by seeing how much shit he can fling at a wall and get people to believe in. And the answer is…? A surprising amount as most Right Winger’s I’ve come across have the same attraction to it that they do to their own sisters! (Roll Tide.) The movie is just a shittier Hillary’s America, if that’s even possible. D’Souza recycles the same arguments about progressives being Nazis and Democrats being the real racists. He even tries to pin Charlottesville on the left, despite the mountain of easily available proof that it was an Alt-Right member who drove his car into a crowd of people. If this is your type of movie and you thought it was great, please feel free to go fuck yourself with the pointy top of a confederate flag pole.
That’s it for 2018! I’m sure 2019 will have its own rich blend of rotting garbage for me to pick through, and in a sadistic way, I look forward to it. I plan to start a few series going more-in-depth on some religious and Right Wing Propaganda flicks, alongside some looks back at Italian Gore flicks galore with some surprises along the way! So buckle up COGers, 2019 is going to be a blast!