My Bottom Ten Films of 2025

While 2025 has served up some inspiring films, we start with unpacking the less inspiring entries or down right catastrophic films that in my opinion were some of the worst films of the year. Some more controversial choices than others, but a lot of 2025's weak points for me are further examples of some the tedious and lifeless efforts that the industry keeps churning out, not just from Hollywood but even some of the most acclaimed indie and international filmmakers who have gone far too up their own arse for my liking. A lot of the films on this list start with a H coincidently. Though on the positive side, there was nothing as debauched or ugly as Deadpool and Wolverine this year, so it has been a more merciful year, though after that self congratulating apocalyptic voluntary hand-job of a movie I avoided Marvel entirely this year, so don't expect any of them to show up here. On that note, let us commence.

10. The Phoenician Scheme

Dir: Wes Anderson

A controversial start based on how revered and beloved Wes Anderson is as a director but his films of late have been increasingly indulgent in pseudo-intellectual smugness, and the Phoenician Scheme proved to be Anderson's most bland entry to that design. No disrespect to the cast who are all following the standard symmetrical standing, dead pan delivery, and its nice to see Benicio Del Toro leading the film, next to Mia Threapleton's break out performance, but really Wes its just more of the same stick. At times it looks like the Phoenician Scheme is trying recapture an iconic kindred spirit charm of Grand Budapest Hotel with composed gentlemanly stature of master connecting to a protégée in the form of a father and his estrange daughter, but there is no such chemistry or memorability found in their dynamic. The colourful pallet of Wes Anderson has never been so dry.

9. Avatar: Fire and Ash

Dir: James Cameron

My Thoughts:

8. Wicked for Good

Dir: Jon M Chu

As someone who was never really sold on the Wicked movies to begin with, Wicked for Good cements the pretty poor big screen adaptation that these two movies attempted. If Wicked Part 1's problem was that it overstretched a thin first half of a story to a near 3 hour runtime, For Good's problem is that it then congests the meat of the second half into a completely clustered mess of disjointed storytelling and character arcs with more random mood swings than Norman Bates. Most frustratingly Elphaba ends up as a secondary character in her own story, as the attention seems so much more focused on the light stealing self conscious privileged Princess Galinda, who out of all the characters I never cared for to begin with is the character I never cared for the most. Elphaba got laid in heavy straw!

7. Happy Gilmore 2

Dir: Kyle Newacheck

2025 was also the year we finally got the long-awaited sequel to Happy Gilmore. I confess, Happy Gilmore was one of the more consistently funny Adam Sandler films I used to enjoy in my younger years, but I certainly never felt like I needed a sequel two decades later. Happy Gilmore 2 represents the whole fallacy of legacy sequels which are cropping up more and more these days. They are born out of pure nostalgia bait and fan service where the effort to come up with an original story is just too much work for the writers and so they just have to pay the aged actors to repeat the same lines and same gags as they did in the first just so the audience can whoop and cheer in remembrance of how much better it landed the first time around. But with Sandler casting his own wife and daughters in the film with a sentimental narrative about family and fatherhood, it all feels like a fathers day present he gave to himself.

6. Havoc

Dir: Gareth Evans

As a fan of Gareth Evans' brutally violent Raid movies, its disheartening to see him direct such a colossal heap of mind-numbing scrap as Havoc. The name doesn't short change you but this stupidly haywire action film starring Tom Hardy has absolutely no taste, and just blows up in your face at every conceivable moment until your eyeballs are bleeding out with shards of broken glass. For the most part Havoc looks less like a movie and more like an extended cut-scene from Grand Theft Auto or Call of Duty, with visual effects so artificial it could have been rendered by AI. On the plus side, you do get to see Timothy Olyphant's smug face getting blasted away a few times.

5. Here

Dir: Robert Zemeckis

Speaking of fake movies, Robert Zemeckis proved once again how misjudged his attempts with visual effects are, so much so that for a film starring Tom Hanks about the legacy and emotional journey of a family from the point of view of a single room throughout history, there is no credible humanity in it what so ever. It's an ambitious experiment adapted from a graphic novel, but it simple doesn't work, as the actors are forced to awkwardly walk up in front of the static camera position to emote while their faces are repulsively de-aged. Meanwhile multiple windows peering into different time-zones from the same position are opened on screen to meditate on the circle of life but with no sense of significance. I can recommend another film that attempts to reflect on the vast expanse of the universe from a single location while simultaneously exploring grief and eternity and its called A Ghost Story (2017) by David Lowery, and it is toweringly superior.

4. Honey Don't

Dir: Ethan Coen

Take it from the film itself, Honey don't bother.

3. Maria

Dir: Pablo Lorrain

The third instalment in Pablo Lorrain's sad woman series proves to be the worst. Jackie (2016) was a film about duty in the mist of great tragedy, Spencer (2021) was about the suffocation of Royal life and liberating one's identity. Maria is just a film about a sad woman, inspired by the life of opera singer Maria Callas. I have no doubt that Maria Callas was a tremendous artist with a toxic all self involved life, but Steven Knight's utterly vain and pointless script fails to find any reason to truly care about the subject. Angelini Jolie plays the role with sharp deterioration and shallowness but that is all it is, just shallow.

2. Parthenope

Dir: Paolo Sorrentino

Probably the longest Chanel Number 5 advert I have ever sat through. This sexy Italian drama from Paolo Sorrentino tries to Fellini its way through the life of a young woman in Naples who may or may not be some sort of water goddess as she navigates the complexities of her life and her own intoxicating beauty. Sorrentino attempts to make some profound statement out of it but the camera is too distracted by the curvaceous protagonist to attempt convincing you it has any substance at all. It's maximalist male gaze perverted waffle.

1. Holland

Dir: Mimi Cave

The last turkey on this list is not the most outwardly shocking or disgraceful, but just the most mundane. A housewife living in the idyllic town of Holland Michigan, fears there is something sinister going on that threatens her perfect life. With talent like Nicole Kidman, Matthew MacFadyen and Gael García Bernal, this suburban psychological thriller so terrible it has the most lacklustre twist in the genre. David Lynch already concurred this corner of cinema back in 1986 with Blue Velvet and even after that there have been similar all American family nightmare movies with far more interesting takes American Beauty (1999), The Stepford Wives (2004), Greener Grass (2019), to name a few, and most of the phoned in attempts will naturally end up on the Channel 5 TV movie listings. At least have the aliens take off their skins suits, or the evil puppet master pulling strings be an actual giant sized puppeteer or something, but no you go with my husband is up to something, and it has nothing to do with the fact that multiple women are found dead in their homes. It's just super boring, predictable, and even the cast don't seem half convinced, though MacFadyen seems to be enjoying himself all the same. I never thought I would say this, but Don't Worry Darling was not as bad as I thought.