The Most Disappointing Movies of 2021

By Jordan Parker

Posted Dec 27, 2021 05:40:00 PM.

If you've been following my work at CityNews Halifax since I started in 2018, you know one thing: I absolutely, steadfastly love film. My second home is the cinema, and the escapism a great film provides me with one of the biggest joys in my life.

So it shouldn't come as a surprise that when I'm faced with being entirely let down by a film I expected to love, I feel jilted. It's one thing when you go into a B-movie or low budget endeavour where you full well know there's a good chance it's schlock.

But the culprits on this list, for one reason or another, should have worked. But they all missed the mark and left me thinking of the films they could have been.

French Exit

Originally considered an awards favourite for 2020, this dramedy fell flat on almost every level.

Somehow Michelle Pfeiffer, in one of the weirdest roles of her career, was nominated for a Golden Globe award here.

This just serves to further prove that Golden Globes mean absolutely nothing and are a merely popularity contest.

French Exit — a Canadian film about a Manhattan socialite and her son who must move when their inheritance dries up — is a drab, difficult affair that's one of the inaccessible films I've ever seen.

Director Azazel Jacobs — who has made much better films Terri and The Lovers — really misses the mark in this adaptation of Patrick deWitt's book.

Pfeiffer, Lucas Hedges and Imogen Poots are all just downright bizarre, and this one faded into the distance of awards discussions fast.

Spiral

Okay, going into a Saw spin-off, I didn't expect fine art. But with the talent involved, I truly did expect this reinvigoration to bring something new to the franchise.

Based on an idea from Chris Rock, legendary stand-up comedian and Saw franchise superfan, this continuation of the originals follows a copycat who begins committing Jigsaw-style acts against crooked cops.

Starring Rock, Samuel L. Jackson and Max Minghella, I expected it to be a thrilling, fun, gory little B-movie affair, but I got absolute trash.

The acting was horrendous, the dialogue was stilted and even Darren Lynn Bousman — genre director responsible for Saw II, Saw III, Saw IV and Repo! The Genetic Opera — couldn't save this one with his stylings.

It ended up being an absolutely huge disappointment that, despite boasting a pretty cool final sequence, just felt like an awkward, uneven retread for a lifeless franchise.

Hitman's Wife's Bodyguard

Samuel L. Jackson is one of my favourite actors of all time, so it pains me to put his films down on this list twice this year.

Unfortunately, the actor phoned it in all of 2021, and we were left with a sequel to his well-received The Hitman's Bodyguard that was lazier than anyone would have liked.

This one gets the entire gang back together in the aftermath of the original. When bodyguard Michael Brice goes on a vacation to recover from the events of the first film, he's interrupted by Sonia, the wife of his nemesis and unlikely assassin friend Darius Kincaid, who needs his help.

Brice is pulled back into a dangerous game as he tries to rescue Kincaid, and we're thrown into a big, blustery mess of bad comic timing and shootouts.

Jackson, Salma Hayek, Ryan Reynolds and even the addition of Antonio Banderas and Morgan Freeman can't keep this one from feeling like a boring retread.

F9: The Fast Saga

Ever heard of the phrase “Jumping the shark?” It's what television critics say when they refer to a show that has officially gone off the deep end with no return.

It refers to the scene in Happy Days when the show, creatively, ran out of steam and had the Fonz literally jump a shark on water skis in season five. Once your show does this, you typically mark the beginning of the end of your endeavour.

Well, the equivalent in Fast & Furious language was shooting a car to space, and that's exactly what they did in the ninth instalment.

I've been a lover — and devotee — of the franchise for 20 years, but man, my suspension of disbelief reached its endpoint here.

This one follows Dom “It's All About Family” Toretto as he and his wife get the gang together to face an international terrorist who happens to be Dom's long-lost brother.

Director Justin Lin does his best, but no matter the talents of the cast, this one just can't overtake a terrible plot.

While returnees Helen Mirren, Lucas Black, Shad Moss, Sung Kang and newcomers Nathalie Emmanuel and Finn Cole spark some life here, John Cena is truly awful as Jakob, the long-lost Toretto brother.

I think it's time to admit this one's out of gas and put the franchise out to pasture.

Stillwater

Another former awards season contender, co-writer and director Tom McCarthy somehow manages to make a story of murder and secrets dull.

While star Matt Damon is understated, committed and incredible, he just can't overcome a script that gives him nothing to work with.

As a blue-collar father travelling between Oklahoma and France to help his daughter who's in prison for a murder she's steadfast she never committed, Damon gives his best performance in a decade in a film that doesn't deserve him.

It's not that director McCarthy — an Oscar winner for writing Spotlight — makes a bad film, but it doesn't pack half the punch it should.

Everyone other than Damon — including Camille Cottin and fellow Oscar nominee Abigail Breslin — falls flat.

Stillwater is a good effort, but I was just left wishing it had a bit more to it.

Dear Evan Hansen

Ugh.

As much as I'd like to leave this review at that, I'll provide you with a bit more context.

To begin with, a stage play with such difficult, heavy and upsetting subject matter really shouldn't be adapted.

Once again, Hollywood saw a Tony and Grammy-winning musical and figured they'd try to wring as much money from the property as possible.

But the story of Evan Hansen, a mentally ill teenager with social anxiety disorder who lies about being best friends with a classmate who died by suicide, is honestly not one where I had any sympathy at all for our protagonist.

I found him despicable and selfish, and both writer Steven Levenson (the wonderful Tick, Tick… Boom!) or director Stephen Chbosky (Perks of Being a Wallflower) handle the topic with any grace at all.

Throw in the fact we have Ben Platt — now 28 — trying to pass as a meek 17-year-old, and I couldn't buy in to a single moment of this one. The fact that Julianne Moore, Amy Adams, Amandla Stenberg and Kaitlyn Dever all also signed on here astounds me.

It's one of the most ill-conceived, tone-deaf films I've ever seen, and it's one of the worst films I saw this year.

Halloween Kills

When director David Gordon Green and writer Danny McBride came along in 2018 and reinvigorated my favourite horror franchise, I was positively giddy.

Had I known they would make a follow-up this positively awful, I would have been happy to stick with re-watches of the originals.

When Michael somehow survives the house fire Laurie Strode left him to perish in, he goes on an absolute killing rampage. Simple concept, and it's kind of exactly what we expect from a film like this anyway.

What I didn't expect was a hap-hazard allegory for American politics and mob mentality, or a ridiculous philosophy lesson on how Michael Myers is supernatural.

This could have been a crowd-pleasing slice-and-dice slasher, but it tried to go too big and it fell entirely flat.

For one, Jamie Lee Curtis' performance carried the 2018 film, and she's thrown into the background of this one. While Judy Greer and Andi Matichak are fully capable, and Will Patton, Dylan Arnold and Thomas Mann are plenty good, this one was missing a true, blue star.

Throw in the fact a major role was given to former John Hughes film star and child actor Anthony Michael Hall, who completely botches his chance, and this one misses the mark.

Words can't describe the annoyance I felt at seeing a franchise that has had a rollercoaster of good and bad sequels/remakes/reboots thud back down again.