The Ten Worst Films of 2025
There’s a growing movement that says critics shouldn’t do Worst-Of lists because such lists are “mean” and critics should “focus on the positive” at the end of the year. I disagree. Worst lists provide an important bookend to Best-Of lists, helping to bring context to the cinematic year.
In that spirit, these are my picks for the 10 Worst Films of 2025:
10. Karate Kid Legends - Has a reboot ever less understood the appeal of the property it’s rebooting? Despite (briefly) bringing together Ralph Macchio and Jackie Chan, this soulless movie studiously avoids the down-to-earth charm and relatable feel that made the 1984 original an enduring teen classic. Instead, we get too many slick, overly-choreographed fight scenes and an abundance of lazy cliches.
9. The Carpenter’s Son - Nicolas Cage is woefully miscast as Joseph in this Biblical horror movie about the adolescent Jesus (Noah Jupe) taking on the devil. Despite Cage’s typically energetic performance, the movie is a dull, lethargic bore, even lighter on scares than it is on theology.
8. Wish You Were Here - Julia Stiles makes her directorial debut with this dopey romantic comedy about a young woman (Isabelle Furhman) who gets ghosted after a one-night-stand with a guy she thought she connected strongly to. This is one of those cases where movie characters behave more like aliens from space than actual human beings, and the story’s big twist is a shameless act of manipulation.
7. Smurfs - The two live-action/CGI Smurfs movies (from 2011 and 2013) and the fully animated Smurfs: The Lost Village are by no means classics, but they seem like masterpieces next to this desperate reboot that relies on dumb pop culture references and cheap humor. (“I think I Smurfed my pants,” says one character following a scare.)
6. War of the Worlds - Made by Universal Pictures during the Covid pandemic and promptly shelved for five years, this adaptation of the H.G. Wells classic has its entire alien invasion play out on a computer screen belonging to Department of Homeland Security officer Will Radford (Ice Cube). That doesn’t work at all, leading to scene after scene where Cube screams at various windows opened on his desktop. We barely see the aliens themselves. Constant plugs for Amazon are equally annoying.
5. No Address - This drama about the homeless epidemic in America has good intentions, but abhorrent execution. Every cliché imaginable is incorporated into the maudlin melodrama, leading to moments of unintentional hilarity. The presentation of a magical solution that suddenly solves the characters’ lack of residence, meanwhile, undermines what the picture is allegedly trying to say.
4. Soul on Fire - Faith-based cinema took a big step backward in 2025 with this sappy true story about a guy who perseveres after getting burns on almost 100% of his body and goes on to become a Christian motivational speaker. The message delivery is front-and-center, leaving things like a credible plot and character development on the backburner. If someone made a movie of this quality about my life, I’d be pissed.
3. HIM - Not a good sports movie, and definitely not a good horror movie. Marlon Wayans is the only saving grace of this pathetic fright flick about a football phenom selling his soul for a chance to become the GOAT. The plot twist is obvious, and director Justin Tipping mistakenly believes that throwing creepy images onscreen, devoid of meaningful context, is scary. Rest assured, it is not.
2. Flight Risk - Need another reason to dislike Mel Gibson? Here you go! The disgraced actor directed this moronic thriller about a U.S. Air Marshal (Michelle Dockery) and a fugitive (Topher Grace) trapped in a small airplane with a deranged pilot (Mark Wahlberg). I have no clue how this went into theaters rather than into the $5 DVD bin at Walmart. The plot continually finds new levels of inanity, and the three leads can’t seem to agree on what kind of movie they’re making. Don’t get me started on the unconvincing visual effects.
And my choice for the Worst Film of 2025 is:
1. Like Father, Like Son - Only one movie received the dreaded zero-star rating from me in 2025, and this is it. It’s a mean-spirited tale about a young man (Dylan Flashner) who keeps committing murders because he believes he has literally inherited the dark side of his murderer father (Dermot Mulroney). Aside from the overall ineptitude director Barry Jay shows in telling this sordid tale - including the bizarre repeated use of flashbacks to events we’ve just seen - the movie suffers from an offensive sequence where Nazi imagery is used for cheap thrills. A finale putting a small child in grave danger is almost as bad. The good news is that Like Father, Like Son barely got released, so very few people had to suffer through it.
© 2025 Mike McGranaghan