One of my favorite pastimes is watching terrible movies with friends. I find it more fun than watching good movies with friends, because when I’m watching a good movie, I actually want to pay attention to it, which seems a little counterintuitive when I’m with a group of people I want to engage with. This preference has really crystallized for me during this pandemic, where contact with most of my social circle is limited to the digital realm. When my friends and I get together over Houseparty, we don’t want to watch anything important that we have to pay close attention to, but we also don’t want to sit around and talk about how scary the world is and how miserable we are. All we want, really, is to watch awful movies and provide each other with running commentary about how awful they are.
So, here are five absolutely fucking terrible movies I’ve watched with friends while social distancing — all of which are available to stream on Netflix right now, if you’re feeling masochistic. I’m going to include some comments from my friends about some of these films, starting with this quote from my friend Allan, who was present for all five viewings: “All of these movies are so utterly forgettable that I originally asked to be excluded from this article as I had no recollection of having watched any of them.” In contrast, my friend Kelly, who watched only 15 minutes of one of these movies with us, said of the experience: “I don’t anything anymore.” That turned out to be a typo, but it resonates with me anyway.
Dangerous Lies (2020)
I’m starting with this one because it’s the most recent, has the most recognizable cast, and is the film on this list you’re most likely to have heard of. Released on April 30th, not even a month ago, Dangerous Lies is a Netflix Original starring Camila Mendes (of Riverdale fame), Jessie Usher (who is not Usher’s son), Cam Gigandet (Twilight, The OC), Sasha Alexander (Dawson’s Creek, NCIS), Jamie Chung (The Real World????), and Elliott Gould (an Academy Award nominee who gives perhaps the worst performance of the entire cast).
Here’s the film’s google synopsis: “A caregiver is drawn into a web of lies and murder after a wealthy elderly man dies and leaves his estate to her.” Does this sound familiar to you? If so, it’s probably because the plot, at least in this description, is nearly identical to that of Rian Johnson’s 2019 whodunnit Knives Out (which I wrote about here). Don’t worry, though — it’s not actually that similar! Knives Out has an eclectic ensemble cast, an airtight script, hilarious jokes, incisive political commentary, and Chris Evans in a cable knit sweater. Dangerous Lies has…
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Seriously, this movie is pointless. If I had to pinpoint what I think this movie is trying to say, I guess it would be… don’t trust lawyers or real estate agents? Don’t steal large sums of money? You can love someone even if they’re deeply stupid?
I gave this movie ½ star on Letterboxd because zero isn’t an option.
Truth or Dare (2017)
While horror is one of my most-watched genres when it comes to bad movies, Truth or Dare is the only horror film I’ve watched since stay-at-home orders were issued. Starring a bunch of people I’ve never heard of and won’t remember if I ever see them in the future, this film follows a group of college friends who gather at a haunted house on Halloween to play a game of truth or dare. The catch? 25 years ago, a different group of friends visited this SAME haunted house and ALSO played truth or dare, a game in which all but one of them died!
I have so many problems with this movie, but let’s go ahead and start with the premise. The reason this group of friends does this in the first place is because one of them has rented this house for the night and persuades them all to play. First of all, that is an absolutely insane thing to spend money on, especially since all of your friends just thought you were throwing a party and did not agree to participate in this fucked up activity. Second, we’re supposed to believe that the house became haunted “after” the first game of truth or dare went bad, but if it wasn’t haunted before, then why did the original game end with a girl POURING A BUCKET OF ACID OVER HER OWN HEAD? Clearly, something was already haunting this house.
The group figures out that the spirit is trying to punish them for “lies and sins,” but we never find out anything more than that. When the friends go to talk to the survivor of the first game, she tells them that spirits aren’t drawn to places, they’re drawn to people, but five minutes later she says they have to go back to the house because “that’s where it all started.” What are rules, and does this movie have any?
On top of that, the scares in this movie aren’t even fun. They’re mostly gross-out scenes of physical anguish — stick your hand on the hot stove, electrocute yourself, etc — but the movie doesn’t even go as far as it could. We watch someone hack off someone else’s leg with an axe, but we only get a one-second-long flash of the leg just as it detaches from the thigh. The rest of the shot is just a close-up of the person with the axe, screaming and getting splattered with blood. I’m not trying to advocate for torture porn, but if that’s the only thing your film has going for it, I’m gonna have to ask you to commit and show us the full amputation.
Sorry, I watched this last night and clearly I’m still riled up. ½ star.
Home Is Where The Killer Is (2019)
The rest of the films on this list fall under the “crazy bitch” category, which I’ve been pretty into lately. Please note that when I say “crazy bitch,” I am referring to the trope, and am in no way suggesting that this is a legitimate label outside the scope of these films. I am a feminist and the mere concept of this as a genre is incredibly damaging to women… but also… these movies are almost always so absurdly bad that they circle back around to being good again. I don’t make the rules.
Home Is Where The Killer Is does not even have a Wikipedia page, let alone a Letterboxd listing. It has zero reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. I can’t figure out where it originally aired, if anywhere, and I’m not willing to do further research, but this film at least feels like a Lifetime movie. As my friend Devin so eloquently puts it, “The Lifetime-esque movies are the most fun to watch because of how batshit insane they are. They don’t try to be anything they’re not.” I concur.
This movie follows Nicole, a young woman in remission from cancer who moves in with a new roommate as she tries to start her life anew. The roommate is an older woman with Michelle Pfeiffer vibes who at first seems like a deeply caring, almost mother-like figure, but soon reveals herself to be an obsessive, manipulative abuser/murderer with Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Obviously, this movie falls firmly into the Crazy Bitch™ category, and thus includes all of the hallmarks of such. Harassment of the object’s friends and lovers? Check. Stolen mail? Check. Secret surveillance camera in the bedroom? Check. “As someone who is inexperienced with dating,” my friend Julia said, “These movies have been a great how-to-NOT win someone’s affection. At least I can get a full refund on all the teddy bear nanny cams I bought.”
As I watched this movie a couple of weeks ago, I just spent some time panning through it on Netflix to see if I’m forgetting any particularly spectacular moments I forgot to mention, but my memory is not to blame on this one, for there are none. Yet another half star for the books.
Pretty Little Stalker (2018)
This is another Lifetime-esque joint, and was originally titled The Danger of Positive Thinking, which I mention for no other reason than to serve as further proof of this film’s terribleness. It centers around Lorna Sisco, a self-help guru with a name that should be forever fixed in my memory after seeing her book covers featured in the background of nearly every shot in the film (see above), but which I had to google regardless. Anyway, Lorna becomes the target of a “troubled young woman” (AKA crazy bitch) who starts up a relationship with Lorna’s teenage son, using him to get to her.
Pretty Little Stalker is full of actors and actresses who appear to be both older and younger than the roles they play, making for a deeply confusing emotional journey. The timeline is impossible to understand because in every old photo and flashback, all of the characters look exactly the same as they do in the present, so we don’t know whether three years or three months have passed between key events. Equally confusing is the hairstyle of the film’s lead, a helmet cut that is raised at least 3 inches off of her head and would better suit something set in the 1990s than in the present day. In fact, I could go on listing confusing things about this movie for hours and not have covered half of it, but being this hateful is exhausting, so I’ll spare you.
Also notable: the presence of Glee’s Heather Morris in a truly miniature supporting role. Who knew this was where her career would take her?
Beyond the superficial elements, the absolute worst part of Pretty Little Stalker is Lorna’s son. Not only is he a complete jackass to his OG girlfriend (the only character played by an actress who actually looks to be the correct age), he is also terrible to his mother and his stepdad, and nearly ruins his entire future all because some hot girl fell off of a bike in front of his house. He is the most pathetic, easily-manipulated trash fire of a person I’ve ever been expected to sympathize with in my life… except for the guy in the next movie. ½ star.
You Get Me (2017)
I saved this movie for last, because in certain respects it is the worst of the bunch. When I asked for opinions from the viewing party, Julia replied, “I’m still blacked out from rage on that one.” That being said, Julia has also declared “that’s the worst thing we’ve watched so far” after each and every one of these films, so take her commentary with a grain of salt.
Starring Bella Thorne as a scorned and obsessive ex-lover, You Get Me is another Crazy Bitch™ special, though this one is a Netflix original. This means that while it’s technically better than the Lifetime-esque movies because of the resources Netflix has to offer, the fact that we know actual money and talent were funneled into this project makes the experience of watching it that much worse. The performances aren’t completely terrible, the wardrobe looks almost wearable, and some of the shots are actually kind of cool. It’s not bad enough to be good, which means it’s just bad — and it’s also a wasted opportunity for Netflix to have made… literally anything else.
Other than its problematic premise and its downright insulting treatment of mental illness, the worst part of You Get Me is, again, the painfully basic teenage boy at its center. Tyler (of course) starts the film by telling us he loves his girlfriend Alison. When they go to a party with people from Alison’s former life and Tyler finds out she’s not a virgin, he gets mad at her, not because she kept this from him, but because she still won’t sleep with him. They dramatically break up at the party, and Tyler immediately leaves to fuck Holly (Bella Thorne), a hot girl he met waiting in line for the bathroom. Tyler spends the night and most of the following day with Holly, having sex and traipsing around the mansion she’s supposedly house-sitting, bonding over their most intimate traumas while they make out in a pool. Then Tyler goes back home and immediately calls up Alison to beg for her forgiveness, ghosting Holly entirely.
As Holly proceeds to make Tyler’s life a living hell, we’re supposed to feel sorry for him, to even root for him, and that is this film’s biggest failure, because he sucks. Please, take this guy and the son from Pretty Little Stalker and put them in Truth or Dare so that we can at least watch them die.
This might surprise you, but this film is the only one on the list to get 1 star.
Lol jk, it’s a HARD half star.
they didn’t even kiss :(