Movies and TV
The 4 Worst Films of 2015

Matthew Parkinson | 25 Dec 2015 22:00
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When I was talking about the best movies of 2015, I mentioned how the year was one of extremes. The really good movies were excellent, and the really awful ones were the types that made you want to vomit. Picking the films for these lists is made more difficult when so many films fill the very ends of the spectrum. Like with the Best Of 2015 list, this list also has several movies easily bad enough to be on there. I decided I'd only include two comedies (half the list), so Unfinished Business couldn't be included (although it, more than any of the other honorable mentions, deserves a slot). Fantastic Four, Minions, Love the Coopers, Sinister 2, Hotel Transylvania 2, Poltergeist, Victor Frankenstein, Max, The Gallows, and Pixels also had a definite chance of making the list. However, these 4 films are the ones I went with for the worst films of 2015, presented to you in alphabetical order.

Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension


Directed by Gregory Plotkin. Produced by Jason Blum and Oren Peli. Written by Jason Harry Pagan, Andrew Deutschman, Adam Robitel, and Gavin Heffernan. Release date: October 23, 2015.

Horror movies with a central villain are at their scariest when there's some mystery surrounding the "thing" that's killing/haunting/stalking/whatever. The more you see the monster in the closet, the less it looks like a monster and the more it looks like that one moth-eaten coat you never wear. The point is, the more you show the villain, the less frightening it becomes. Given that Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension is the sixth film in the Paranormal Activity franchise, most - if not all - of the mystery is gone. However, if there was anything we still hadn't found out, this film ended that. Its whole premise is to show us the ghost that haunts families and explain to us its motivation.

Where do the scares come in? Well, they don't. This is one of the least terrifying horror movies - that wants to be scary - out there. It's also shot in a found-footage style, which is both annoying and ugly, was released in some of the worst 3D you can see, and has special effects that wouldn't pass inspection in the late 1990s. With awful characters, terrible acting - both from the adults and the child - and an awful ending, this is just awful from start to finish.

The people behind the franchise claim that this was its conclusion. While only time will tell, the film still made 7x its budget and opened the doors not for a sequel, but for a spin-off franchise. Can we just not? This is the one that explained everything away - or at least tried to - and much like the Saw franchise before its "conclusion" (they're still planning another one) the returns have diminished to the point where it soon won't be worth it. Just stop. Take time to regroup, replenish the creative juices, and make something worthwhile.

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