Shadow People (2016)
Haunting
Husband and wife find their new home in the countryside to be haunted. A ghost story that is not up to much before what has become one of the biggest cliche endings in the book
Films of 2016
Interstellar Wars (2016)
Alien Invasion/Alien Zombies
Directed by low-budget actress Marlene Mc’Cohen, this is both an alien invasion and a zombie apocalypse film. A film where the skill gap and budget falls well short of what is needed to make a film work
Hot Bot (2016)
Sex Android Comedy
The Polish Brothers make some great Midwestern dramas but seem out of their depth trying to make a comedy about a sex robot. that comes out an embarrassingly unfunny variant on Weird Science
The Other Side of the Mirror (2016)
Darker Version of Alice in Wonderland
This sets out to offer a dark take on Alice in Wonderland but leaves you scratching you head. At most the Wonderland characters take a lot of drugs, along with a haphazard mix of scenes from the book cheaply shot
Sinbad and the War of the Furies (2016)
Modernised Arabian Nights Adventure
The Asylum attempt a modern-day Sinbad film – one where Sinbad uses a cellphone and sets sail to L.A. aboard a regular yacht. This is so cheap that it has even been stripped of all the exotic creatures
Sinister Squad (2016)
Team-Up Between Fairytale Villains
The Asylum made Avengers Grimm as a copycat of The Avengers films, featuring a team-up of fairytale heroines, and so for the release of Suicide Squad they made this sequel featuring a team-up of fairytale villains. Both films are utterly incomprehensible and require you to essentially ignore the originals
Piranha Sharks (2016)
Gonzo Killer Shark Film
Part of the gonzo shark film’s ongoing quest for the most ridiculous title mash-up, this involves a horde of genetically engineered shark-piranha hybrids loose in New York City
Urge (2016)
Designer Drug Causes Mass Insanity
The use of a designer drug causes a small island to descend into mass insanity – this is essentially The Crazies repackaged as a slick empty-headed thriller for teen audiences. The various scenes of madness are frequently laughable and the film arrives at possibly the most ridiculous twist ending one has ever seen
Demon Tongue (2016)
Paranormal Investigators/Possession
One hoped this might have taken the approach of featuring a demonically possessed tongue but more mundanely uses tongue as meaning language. In reality, this is a poorly made film about a team of ghostbusters searching a haunted bar
Alp (2016)
Sleep Paralysis Horrors
Another venture into the sleep paralysis theme. A film that has an amateurism on every level and looks as though it made by people who failed the first year of a film school program
Let’s Be Evil (2016)
Augmented Reality Experiment
While the title suggests a series of malicious games, this is an SF film about participants in an augmented reality experiment who are locked in a facility with strangely alien children
Clown Kill (2016)
Killer Clown in an Office Building
A British effort where a girl working late in an office building who is stalked by a creepy clown. Made with an incredibly amateurism, this is possibly the worst entry in the killer clown genre
Collateral Beauty (2016)
Inspirational Drama/Fantastic Twist
Gigantic flop starring Will Smith and a reasonable cast line-up that has the most ridiculous screenplay ever written. Mostly a positive inspirational drama about grief but does definitely arrive at a bizarre fantastical ending
Hectic Knife (2016)
Gonzo Vigilante Film
A clear winner for the Worst Film of 2016. Made by people who have given up any attempt to make a good film and have instead inserted a wilful inanity that is agonisingly unfunny
13 Demons (2016)
Evil Boardgame
Director Daniel E. Falicki’s Alien Implant made my Worst of 2017 list. This is one of his earlier, equally terrible films about a boardgame that possess its players
Sharkenstein (2016)
Gonzo Killer Shark Film
Z-budget director Mark Polonia makes a cheap and ridiculous variant on the gonzo killer shark film about a Nazi mad scientist creating a Franken-shark that comes with Hitler’s brain placed into it
Range 15 (2016)
Zombie Comedy
This is a crowdourced film made by military veterans who set out with the idea of creating better military characterisations in films. Bizarrely enough, they turn to the zombie comedy to do so and the result is the crassest, most willfully offensive zombie film ever made
Poignant (2016)
Haunting
This is one of a plethora of hard-to-differentiate apart ghost stories that have littered the dvd shelves in recent years, frequently copying Insidious in appropriating a sinister-seeming adjective as title. There is not a single directorial or musical cue, sound effect or line of dialogue that doesn’t feel like a cliche
The Warriors Gate (2016)
Videogamer Transported to Ancient China
Luc Besson written/produced effort where a videogamer kid is transported to Ancient China. A blatant copy of The Forbidden Kingdom that manages to be fundamentally implausible on every level and one of the worst attempts to pander to the Chinese box-office
Bigfoot vs Zombies (2016)
Bigfoot Tackles a Zombie Outbreak
Mark Polonia has been producing ultra-cheap horror films since the 1980s and developed a reputation as the worst directors currently working. This does not disappoint on what you expect
Deadman Apocalypse (2016)
Post-Holocaust Action Underground
Despite the hope that this might have been an adaptation of DC’s disembodied superhero, this is no more than a post-apocalyptic adventure that takes place in tunnels only about three feet high, including the car chases
Trolls (2016)
Animation/Small Cute Creatures
A perfect example of all the things I hate about modern animation. Based around the popular Troll dolls, this is vapidly designed, content-free product based solely around simplistic storylines, manic slapstick sequences, song and dance numbers, and inane contemporary pop culture in-jokes
The Emeryville Experiments (2016)
Sinister Town of Former Asylum Inmates
The premise of a small town inhabited by the former inmates of an asylum, suggests a variant on Poe’s The System of Dr Tarr and Professor Fether. The execution is complete amateurism on every level
Ice Age: Collision Course (2016)
Animation/Prehistoric Talking Animals
I hate the Ice Age films and their tediously extruded adventures. The opening sequence here and its ignorance of even basic science is the most inane thing in the entire series
Amerigeddon (2016)
Conspiracy Junkie Fantasy of a USA Invaded
Chuck Norris’s son directs spectacularly bad film that acts as a fantasy for every lunatic right wing conspiracy where the UN wants to overthrow the US government and confiscate everybody’s guns