The 10 Worst Films of 2007

The 2007 movie season has passed and now its time to remember the best and worst it had to offer. This was an unusual year for me as I was unable to see nearly as many movies as I usually do in the course of twelve months. While it was a good year for film it still, unfortunately, wasn't difficult to comprise a list of ten movies that are considered the worst of 2007.

This list is meant to be a guide. Basically I am telling you not to waste your time with these movies. Don't see them at any cost. See anything else and it will likely be better.

Without further adieu here are the 10 worst films of 2007 listed in order of dislike.

1) HALLOWEEN - Rob Zombie's remake of John Carpenter's 1978 classic tops my list of the worst films because it strives for so much more then many films and fails miserably on all counts. Zombie deserves points for having the audacity to come within a mile of this remake and even tries to make a different movie for the first hour. Unfortunately what Zombie has come up with is laughably bad. He removes the myth of evil and the boogeyman and has reduced Michael Myers to nothing more then a hillbilly from a bad home who loves to kill animals before graduating to people. Zombie stresses the bad family life section for an almost agonizing hour topping it off with one of the most unintentionally funny scenes you will ever see. It is Halloween night. Michael can't wait to go trick-or-treating. His lazy, drunk step dad is oblivious to everything around him except that his step daughter Judith is growing up and getting curves in all the right places. Mom, a stripper (who doesn't strip in the one scene we see her at work) has promised Michael that Judith will take him out for candy. After mom (played to wooden perfection by Zombie's wife) leaves Judith pooh-poohs the idea in favor of having her boyfriend come over for some illicit sex. Michael retreats to the front porch where he pouts and, intercut with mom at work and Judith and her boyfriend in the bedroom, Zombie combines a montage sequence to Nazareth's Love Hurts. The audience was laughing. The second half is even worse then the first. After the first series of murders (which includes a scene with Malcolm McDowell wearing a ridiculous wig to try and look 20 years younger) Zombie brings the film to present day where he basically remakes Carpenter's earlier film. The problem? Zombie takes so little time to develop the characters of the three female babysitters that we barely know them before Myers starts his Halloween attack. In fact, I had a hard time telling the two blonde girls apart. There is plenty of gore but little suspense in the film. The few creepy moments Zombie achieves are lifted directly from the original. In the performance department McDowell, one of our best actors, is adequate in the role originated by Donald Pleasance. Outside of that Zombie makes another mistake, likely due to having more money then Carpenter had. He populates the film with familiar faces from past horror movies (such as Dee Wallace, Brad Dourif, Sybil Danning, William Forsythe, Richard Lynch, Udo Kier, Clint Howard) and gives them nothing at all to do. They are there for show. Reportedly Adrienne Barbeau had a part that was cut from the final product. Lucky her. My favorite cameo was by Micky Dolenz from the pop group The Monkees. His role led to a comment by my friend that had us giggling and, therefore, offered up the only entertainment of the movie for us. McDowell goes to a gun shop where Dolenz works behind the counter. McDowell buys a gun and, late in the film when he tries shooting Myers the gun jams. This led my friend to lean over to me and say, "Never buy a gun from a Monkee."

2) CAPTIVITY - The single sickest film of the year is another of the torture-porn type films made popular by Saw and Hostel. Here Elisha Cuthbert (Kim on TV's 24) plays a fashion model that is drugged at a party and awakens bound and gagged along with an unfortunate young man in a dark room. Soon they will be tortured and fighting for their lives. There is absolutely no reason to see this pile of junk. There is a big twist towards the end that is so obvious even the most un-observant patron could guess it. All that leaves us is the gore and there is no shortage of that. Is this entertainment? It feels more like a geek show and I felt dirty when the film was over. Worst of all is that two time Best Director Academy Award nominee Roland Joffe (The Killing Fields; The Mission) is responsible for this horrific film. Perhaps Joffe should concentrate on beer commercials since he is obviously throwing his craft to the wolves.

3) THE HITCHER - Thanks to Rob Zombie this is only the second worst remake of the year. This one, based on the 1986 cult hit starring Rutger Hauer, seems more needless then most. It is a virtual re-telling of the original which makes one wonder why bother in the first place? Sean Bean replaces Hauer and is completely mis-cast. He never captures the menace and pure evil that Hauer had. The other major flaw is that the remake makes the very same story mistakes the original did but could have corrected. This film barely ran 80 minutes and it still felt like forever.

4) THE INVISIBLE - The most ridiculous thriller of the year tells the tale of a teenage boy who is attacked and, presumably, murdered. His spirit roams around his school and his home trying to come to terms with the death and then to help authorities get to the body. Did someone actually pitch this idea to a film executive who then thought it would make a good film? This film is laughably goofy with an ending that cops out to its original premise. Oscar winner Marcia Gay Harden somehow got roped into this film and let's hope her agent was fired soon after

5) I KNOW WHO KILLED ME - Continuing on the band wagon of thrillers that are so bad they are funny comes the nadir of Lindsay Lohan's career thus far. Of course Lohan made more headlines in 2007 for her off-screen antics but she didn't help herself professionally first appearing in the dreary comedy Georgia Rule and then starring in this silly thriller about a young woman who is kidnapped and tortured. When she is found she awakens in the hospital claiming to be a stripper (another that fails to strip when shown doing it) while the real young woman is still out there somewhere. As ludicrous as it sounds it only gets worse as it goes on with yet another ending that is so mind bogglingly bad it gets worse when you think about it later.

6) BLADES OF GLORY- Will Ferrell continues to wear out his welcome from the success of Elf with the worst comedy of 2007. In it he and Napoleon Dynamite star Jon Heder (whose appeal is WAY beyond me) play Olympic skaters stripped of their medals and banned from future competition. Through a loop hole they are able to return to the sport as a team and the yuks are sure to follow. Unfortunately the script relies of sex jokes far too often and none of them are remotely funny. Craig T. Nelson is wasted in the role of the team's coach and Ferrell better be careful before he finds his options have run out.

7) I NOW PRONOUNCE YOU CHUCK AND LARRY - The most offensive comedy of the year comes from Adam Sandler. I'm sorry but I just don't get Adam Sandler. In film after film he plays a character far dumber then Sandler obviously is and surrounds himself with stupid supporting characters and sub-plots. Here the main story is a doozy. Kevin James plays a fireman who has to pretend he is gay to keep getting insurance benefits for his kids. He enlists Sandler's help to pose as his boyfriend and Sandler agrees. Soon enough Sandler meets a woman (the luscious Jessica Biel) who happens to be investigating James's claim but is too stupid to see through the charade. She even undresses in front of Sandler and allows him to feel her up simply because she thinks he is gay. Worst of all is that this film preaches about homophobia and then relies on homophobic humor (along with the pre-requisite sex and bodily jokes Sandler films are populated with) to make us laugh. It isn't funny it's offensive. The film makes its jokes obvious (the manly men are really gay; openly gay actor Richard Chamberlain shows up in an embarrassing cameo) and then chickens out of its homosexual theme at the end. Having seen Reign Over Me a few months earlier I can attest to the fact that Adam Sandler has talent. He was wonderful in that movie which wasn't so wonderful. But his comedies continue to rely on tired formulas with tired jokes that fall flat. Frankly I wish he would branch out and do more sophisticated comedy with Woody Allen or Albert Brooks or someone else and get away from his college buddies that continue to co-write, produce and (sometimes) direct. Their stuff may be funny over a few beers but the audience doesn't have that luxury.

8) GHOST RIDER - The worst superhero movie of the year was this early hit starring Nicolas Cage as a motorcycle daredevil who sells his soul to the devil to save the life of his dying father only to be deceived by him. Years later he will become the title character, basically a man on a motorcycle lit on fire, trying to help defeat a nemesis of the devil. Eva Mendes provides the role of the love interest with Peter Fonda (so good later in the year in 3:10 To Yuma) as the devil. Both of them are terrible. The special effects are uninspiring and the film is flat and unexciting. Cage should learn to pick his scripts more carefully. He is starting to put out a bad movie a year.

9) EVAN ALMIGHTY - The worst sequel of the year has Steve Carell reprising his amusing cameo from Jim Carrey's Bruce Almighty into a starring role here as a congressman who gets a visit from God (again played with elegance by Morgan Freeman) and is told to build an Ark for an impending flood. Not only that but soon Carell starts looking like Moses with a full beard that only grows in fuller minutes after shaving it off. The film is really a one joke idea that doesn't go very far and Carell's appeal is oddly missing throughout. The film has little going for it and few laughs but it still managed to be a hit last summer.

10) THE MESSENGERS - Yet another supernatural thriller that provokes one to laugh rather then be frightened. A family moves to a farm from Chicago to get away from big city life problems but soon find that the problems on the farm, including vicious crows, may not be of this world. Dylan McDermott, Penelope Ann Miller and John Corbett star in this weak thriller that, like the others I mentioned on this list, has a twist so completely obvious you'll kick yourself for not figuring it out one half hour into the movie.