Ok, people. Hold your noses. Here we go. The worst movie of 2012.
The Nominees are: “Act of Valor”, “Alex Cross”, “The Apparition”, “The Cold Light of Day”, “The Devil Inside”, “The House at the End of the Street”, “Madea’s Witness Protection”, “Playing for Keeps”, “Silent Hill: Revelation 3D”, and “A Thousand Words”
Click through to see which god awful abomination offended me the worst in 2012!
“The Devil Inside”
The majority of “The Devil Inside” is just an unremarkable, low-budget exorcism movie. It was shot on a $1 million budget, and it shows. It features unknown actors and actresses, cheap to no special effects, and of course, the “found footage” style of money saving filmmaking.
It should have been a huge success story. It did, after all, make an enormous return… it’s grossed just over $100 million worldwide on it’s $1 million budget. I mean, that’s phenomenal. Except, that isn’t the headline here. The headline is how awful it is. Both critics (7% on Rotten Tomatoes) and audiences (F Cinemascore) agree. It was horrible.
There actually isn’t much “Exorcising” going on in the film. The heroine’s mother is being held in an asylum, and being denied exorcism, after murdering three people during the last attempted exorcism on her. Now her daughter is making a documentary (convenient) about her and would like to get the church to perform a sanctioned exorcism. There’s a lot of talk about exorcism, and a lot of dealing with vatican red tape. A lot of time is killed spent as Isabella befriends two priests who will see her mother without authorization from the church, and aside from one scene involving a contortionist demon (so that Isabella can see what an exorcism is) there’s really not much to this film before the shocking conclusion aside from the mother showing off her scary scars and whispering, evilly.
I mention the “shocking ending” because that’s really the story of why “The Devil Inside” is legendarily bad. A non scary low-budget exorcism movie would simply be your standard horror fail. But no, “Devil” takes things to an entirely new level in the final 20 minutes. It’s an insulting conclusion. A rip off. For those of you who wish to read about it, A SPOILER paragraph is in white text below. Highlight to read.
Late in the film it’s revealed that there are actually multiple demons inhabiting the mother. This is an excuse to have the chief characters get possessed themselves due to the demons “jumping”. One of the priests, now possessed, tries to drown a baby at a baptism, and then blows his brains out as the police close in. The daughter gets possessed as well, but as they drive away with her to perform an exorcism on her, their car suddenly gets smashed into by another vehicle in a side-on collision and the film abruptly cuts to credits, leaving the viewers with absolutely no closure whatsoever. It’s a complete cop-out. The film is left completely unresolved. You are totally and completely left hanging. A title card pops up encouraging the audience to visit therossifiles.com for more information on the ongoing investigation, to which thousands of viewers unanimously said “%#$&@ you!!”
It’s easily one of the worst endings I can recall. It was creatively cowardly.
The others were putrid, too. I wish I could award this award to like five of these, they’re all that worthy. “Act of Valor” charged you full ticket price to watch a feature-length military enlistment commercial. “Alex Cross” put forth one of the stupidest thrillers you’d ever want to see; it featured a laughable villain being pursued by a bland cop, all in the framework of a ridiculous conspiracy context. “The Apparition” might as well have been called “Horror Fail”… there are literally scarier, self-produced videos on YouTube. “The Cold Light of Day” was as generic and unoriginal as a movie can be, while “The House at the End of the Street” chose to get creative right at the end in all the wrong ways possible.”Madea’s Witness Protection” is a mess of a movie, plain and simple. “Playing for Keeps” is supposed to be some sort of comedy, I think, but I think they forgot to put anything funny in and instead stocked it up with cringe. “Silent Hill: Revelation” is literally mind-boggling as to what they were thinking, I have no idea how they thought that that movie would be watchable. And “A Thousand Words” was a misguided attempt at comedy that really needed to stay gathering dust on the shelf.
But none of them could hold a candle to “The Devil Inside”, a horrible film capped off with one of the biggest, most insulting, rip-off endings that I can even imagine.
“The Devil Inside” the FMR MAJOR Award winner for Worst Picture, 2012
I hate it when commercials are like “find out the ending of this commercial on the internet” but when they do it in a movie you actually pay for, that’s just awful. What a rip off.
LOL. I… dont even think I did it justice how much bullshit it was, either. I mean, I was angered, and I wasn’t even in to the movie that much. The movie sucked up til then… but then for some reason that had me almost throwing the remote (thankfully I skipped this in theatres).
Woooo good selection! Just think of all the good things that million could do! This wasnt my top but was in my top ten of the year! I think I ranked some higher because they wasted more money on stinking up the screen and that makes them an even bigger sin!
What was your worst? Remind me. I listened to that ep, but didnt exaclty memorize it. LOL
Budget/money wise, now I’m more concerned with them not putting “The Devil Inside 2″ into theatres. The madness needs to stop! I hope in this case they happily sit on their returns as opposed to reinvesting.
Even though I left this one part way through I hated the POS, money waisting horrible tour de force that was Wrath of Titans. It burned wayyyyy more money than The Devil Inside and sullied the career of Liam Neeson,
Wrath pissed me off in 2012 more than any other film!
Cmon. So you LEFT Devil Inside halfway through and then you’re saying you hated another movie even worse? How does that add up.
And I’ll say this right now, at least Wrath had special effects. And a couple of half decent action sequences. They’re light years apart – TDI is WAY worse, bro, way worse.
In my worst of the year list. Nuff said.
Deservedly so.
This is one that I have a hard time imagining anyone liking.
Haven’t seen any of these. You win. (?)
Heh heh heh!
VICTORY!!!
Hey, wait a minute….
I had no idea the film made that much. That’s depressing.
As far as the quality itself, The Devil Inside definitely sucks, but I still laughed my ass off. Works as a spoof.
No.
Strong disagree box checked. MAYBE if someone goes in knowing the ending. And then they laugh at how bad it is, there maybe a couple of mockery worthy moments, but even then… to me this does not “push through” to comedy. I keep the “Stay Away at all Costs” sign up.
But yeah, doesn’t that suck that this movie made all of that? Thats worldwide, but still.
It probably helps that I saw it with friends so it was a shared experience.
I must be good at detecting what movies are bad. I’m proud to say I didn’t bother with any of these.
I think all of them smelled pretty ripe from a distance Mark. LOL not to be dismissive of your abilities or anything
I hit ‘em anyways. I aint a scared.
Well, in that case I’ll cross this one off my Must See list.
(Checks list).
Hmmm, It doesn’t seem to have been on my list to begin with. Nevertheless, I’m going to add it and then cross it off Twice, just in case.
Seriously, though, we all owe you big time for sitting through all of these horrible movies. You’re like the canary in the coal mine, that comes out screaming STAY AWAY! For the love of god stay away!
LOLLLLLL
Yeah…
Ha. (Laughing here)
I am. For sure. I think I croaked like ten to fifteen times here. ANY of these in the top ten are all “Just Dont Do It” movies you know? Not even on cable on the couch one day. Watch a rerun of something!
Glad I can hook you up buddy, definitely am. LOL
I haven’t seen The Devil Inside but just looking at the ending, it sounds awful. One of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard for a film.
Yup. Makes you think they never had a plan for how they’d end it at all, and then they ran out of money or something so they just came up with that as a way out… LOL
I haven’t seen this movie. I love horror, but these “exorcist” type movies, I typically pass on. On the other hand, I always feel like I’m missing out and never know if these “exorcist” type movies are actually good. Well, thankfully, I have you.
Looks like I’m not missing out on anything.
Actually, in this case, you are. You’re missing out on about an hour of saying things like “Are they ever actually going to Exorcise someone?”, twenty minutes of laughing and saying things like “Wow, this got dumb FAST!” and then… I actually dont know how long after the movie you’d spend going “What the hell? That was a RIPOFF, I’m still pissed!”
At least, that was my process, Jen. LOL
I did not see any of these except HATES, glad I missed out. I accept your conclusion and thank you for taking these shots for the rest of us.
LOL. Not a problem. HATES was pretty bad too, obviously, seeing as it wound up here. Just didnt have enough “Oomph” to get it up over the top
You know, I looked at that poster, said “that looks really familiar”, and then realized it had been my selection to represent the #1 warning sign of a bad horror movie.
Nice selection, Fogs. I read the spoiler paragraph, and I agree — that goes beyond bad and into “rip off” territory. I’d be tempted to call it out and out fraud, even.
It was terrible dude. Don’t even consider it for the Morbid Curiosity Files… It’s not even worthy. There’s nothing there but pain.
Roger that.
When I hear you talk about all these horrible horror movies you watch for the podcast, I pity you a little…
Bah. It’s good for me as a blogger. I get content, people love to hear you bash terrible movies, and then at year end I have the best “Worst Of” list around.
Ive started this years already. It’s hard to imagine ten movies will be worst than “A Haunted House” lol
I haven’t even heard of that one.
Just came out a couple weeks ago… It’s the Marlon Wayans parody of the Paranormal Activity / Devil Inside movies.
It was horrible. I’ll have a review up later this week sometime. It’ll be vicious.
I didn’t see this one and from the looks of the “highlight spoiler section” I am very glad I didn’t. what crap!
Yup. It was a grade A ripoff, bro. I’d stay away from it even on cable. Save yourself the time completely.
No Dark Shadows? No Battleship?
I don’t know that I can really argue that much with The Devil Inside, but I’m surprised. You left out some real turkeys there, bud. Then again, there are so many more awful films than good films in any given year that it’s sort of hard to pick out ten stinkers and have everyone agree that they represent the worst of the lot.
A) I gave Battleship an honorable mention. Mainly because its the worst movie of last year that everyone SAW.
But “Dark Shadows” is no where near bad enough to fit in here. Would you honestly say it was worse than “The Cold Light of Day” or… “The Apparition”? Hell, any of them!
Madea’s Witness Protection was better than Dark Shadows? Methinks not, *mon frère*