THE AARONS 2025 - Worst Film
This list could have been anchored by Popeye slasher films alone if I had had the strength to finish any of the three released last year. Here are The Aarons for Worst Film:
#10. Five Nights at Freddy’s 2
It may not top the pitifulness of the pizza parlor perils the franchise previously delivered, but the second Freddy’s is still unappealing any way you slice it. All the new animatronics added can’t hide the rotten core beneath them: a sloppy script which this time was solely written by series creator Scott Cawthon. The writer piles on plotlines, switching abruptly from one antagonist to the next, hoping fan-service will mask its shoddy structure. Yet when every one of those story threads is left unresolved by the dour cliffhanger ending, it’s obvious to all parties involved that Five Nights is a gigantic waste of time.
While television shows like Samurai Jack and Dexter’s Laboratory made Gendy Tartakovsky a legend in the animation industry, his reputation is in need of dire repair after his painful passion project Fixed. The years that the raunchy comedy spent in development completely neutered any shock value it might have had, with at least one film being released in the meanwhile with a similar premise. Once dumped on Netflix, the decent thing for them to do would have been to bag it and dispose of it. A lack of support for traditional hand-drawn animation is certainly a problem at the moment, but tasking those artists with drawing dog genitalia is just not the right fix.
#8. Den of Thieves 2: Pantera
The question going into Pantera was not how the gang of thieves would pull off their next heist, but which other movies they would rip off while doing so. The sequel picks up from the previous entry’s discount-Usual Suspects ending and continues to pilfer from Michael Mann’s Heat as its cop and conman butt heads yet again. The endless heel turns and flashbacks involved this go-round are reminiscent of the Fast & Furious films, though the most high-speed action here is a laidback drug-fueled scooter ride. The upcoming third Den of Thieves likely already has someone else in mind to rob from; audiences would be smart to steal away before then.
#7. The Woman in the Yard
Woman in the Yard, what are we doing here? The title alone doesn’t exactly inspire fear, and the film itself fares even worse. To be fair, Yard isn’t that far outside Blumhouse’s frequent output of garbled jump-scare-heavy junk. Genre fans might expect at least a little better from Orphan director Jaume Collet-Serra, though there’s only so much one can do to improve a script that’s duller than watching paint dry. In its mystifying final moments, The Woman in the Yard plants itself down alongside the worst of elevated horror; if your unsubtle monster metaphor doesn’t end up making any sense, just put it out to grass.
Anyone who decides to explore In the Lost Lands shouldn’t be surprised if they end up, well, lost. The post-apocalyptic Western, based on an unfinished series of short stories by the author of the unfinished Game of Thrones series, never seems to have any idea what direction it’s headed in or who audiences should care about. Storytelling has certainly never been the strong suit of Resident Evil director Paul W.S. Anderson, but here the video-game-esque visuals are as murky as the narrative. Even undiscerning viewers on the trail of eye-candy will find any hope put in Lost Lands to be misplaced.
Director Bryan Bertino is no stranger to bad horror films and actress Katheryn Hunter must feel just as at home in them after last year’s The Front Room. Dakota Fanning would have been better off sending them both packing. The trio’s Paramount+ film about a cursed box that demands something you love, something you need, and something you hate only appears to make room for viewers to have that last item. Beware though! The solution is not as simple as it seems: Vicious is ultimately too uneventful to inspire that much vitriol. The only sacrifice to be made to the mind-numbing film is one’s sanity.
Even though the Smurfs are 0 for 3 for modern reboots, multiverse theory suggests there will always be someone out there willing to greenlight another. If those poor souls wish to avoid the same fate, they might start with casting a no-name voice actor for their No-Name Smurf instead of one as excruciating as James Corden. Rihanna’s original songs are little relief; “Don’t stop the music” is nowhere to be heard. The third pop star to voice Smurfette in as many films leads the franchise on its second trip through the ‘real world’; Smurfs had a premise that opened up unlimited possibilities and then blue it on rehashing past failures.
#3. Star Trek: Section 31
Section 31 takes a series famous for strange new worlds and sends it to a garbage dump. The ill-advised spin-off would be incomprehensible to anyone who hasn’t seen the first three seasons of Star Trek: Discovery yet it’s unrecognizable to anyone who has. Rather than mirroring the best of the franchise, the film models itself after repellant ragtag enterprises like Suicide Squad and Borderlands right down to the unhinged editing. A Star Trek that’s too cowardly to engage with any of the concerns behind its titular black-ops agency or its reformed-dictator protagonist is one that can boldly go away.
There’s a lot of things that Don’t Log Off shouldn’t have done. For example, the screenlife horror film shouldn’t have waited so long to upload its footage if it wanted to capitalize on the COVID-19 Zoom-call craze. It shouldn’t have cast its ill-fated friend group without any regard to their acting talent or chemistry together. Social distancing be damned, it shouldn’t have structured its slim story so that each friend walks right into the killer’s trap one-by-one, nor should it have copped out on having them suffer any consequences for it. There’s only one thing prospective viewers should do: not watch it.
AND THE WORST FILM OF 2025 IS...
Following in the footsteps of the great Orson Welles, Ice Cube’s rendition of War of the Worlds will leave unsuspecting bystanders to wonder if it was real. Viewers are able to watch worlds collide from the confines of a computer screen in the found-footage adaptation, as the rapper scrambles and ultimately fails to find an appropriate reaction to situations as baffling as aliens deleting his dead wife’s Facebook page. Its biggest disgrace is its capitulation to society’s new overlord, Amazon: the tech-giant that distributed the film conveniently cast itself as humanity’s savior at the end. The true saving grace of the categorical disaster is how it briefly united the whole world, if only in its condemnation and mockery.
NEXT UP: THE 2025 AARON FOR BEST DIRECTOR!
