The Worst Films Of 2017

15. “Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales”
Early buzz out of its screenings at CinemaCon was that “Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales,” the fifth in Disney’s mega-franchise, marked a return to form for the series. Assuming the best of those who were responsible for spreading that buzz, we suppose that we’d acknowledge that it did at least mark an improvement on the previous instalment “Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides,” by virtue of being directed by actual filmmakers (“Kon-Tiki” helmers Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg) rather than Rob Marshall. But that’s a low-ass bar, and “Dead Men Tell No Tales” only just about hefts itself over it. Sure, part of the problem is that once-delightful semi-edgy adventure-movie icon Captain Jack Sparrow is now increasingly-tired alleged-domestic-violence-committer Captain Jack Sparrow. But it’s more detrimental that the story feels like a slog through the franchise’s supposed greatest hits, a back-to-basics approach that brings back original stars Orlando Bloom and (briefly) Keira Knightley suggesting a series that long since ran out of ideas (reinforced by the incredibly dull ghost-pirates villains led by Javier Bardem). You almost have to credit Disney for not just calling it “Pirates Of The Caribbean: Oh, I Don’t Know, Will This Do?”

14. “Flatliners”
There have been, throughout history, a handful of filmmakers maybe equal to the task of using the medium to unravel the mysteries of life itself, to peek through the veil of time, even through the boundary between the living and the dead. However, Joel Schumacher was never one of those filmmakers, certainly not back in 1990 when he made the original, luridly trashy “Flatliners” and Niels Arden Oplev is also evidently not among their number based on this remake. If you imagine a “Final Destination” installment with the fun syringed out in favor of a morphiine drip of metaphysical pretentions and dubious moralising, you’re some way to understanding the morgue-slab-stiffness Oplev brings to this high concept. Five attractive, high-achieving med students (Ellen Page, Diego Luna, Nina Dobrev, James Norton and Kiersey Clemons) each one of whom, natch, harbors a Dark Secret ranging from murder to bullying to abandoning a pregnant girlfriend, have a rare old time dying and bringing each other back, until specters from their afterlife experiences start to haunt them. Profoundly unterrifying, shot in a jaundiced color palette and set to a generic, intrigue-heavy, electro score that sounds like it came free with something else, its signature failing may be that it defibrillates Kiefer Sutherland back from the original, but as a new character (confusingly still a doctor) unrelated to his prior role. If your film lacks even the wit to do something a little twisty with that asset, DNR.

13. “Baywatch”
As we’ll see more than once on this list, the problem with the way that Lord & Miller have consistently spun straw into gold in a way that looks effortless is that, well, they make it look effortless. Someone saw one of their ‘Jump Street’ movies, remembered that they owned the rights to “Baywatch,” and went ‘hey, let’s just do that! People love that R-rated comedy shit.’ Six credit screenwriters later, we got this reheated action-comedy spin on the David Hasselhoff favorite, as Dwayne Johnson, Zac Efron and a host of entirely forgettable supporting players (congratulations to Jon Bass, the answer to the question ‘what happens when Josh Gad, and then six other actors, turns down a role?’) take on a Florida drug-running gang. There’s probably a version of this that could have coasted by on the considerable charisma of Johnson and Efron alone, but somehow the thinly-plotted,  mean-spirited gruel that we get here actively neutralizes their star power to the point that you’d suspect you’d rather just watch the original series, and the original series was always shit in the first place. Even Johnson’s “Fast & Furious” co-star Tyrese, a man who has been in three separate “Transformers” movies, knew it was rubbish: “bro just being honest I didn’t like Baywatch,” he wrote on Instagram in an open letter to Johnson this summer.

12. “The Dark Tower”
On the whole, it was a good year for Stephen King adaptations: the unexpected enjoyable “Mr. Mercedes,” two very strong Netflix movies, and of course megahit “It.” But given how beloved his fantasy epic series “The Dark Tower” is, and how badly botched Nikolaj Arcel’s long-awaited adaptation is, it has to cast something of a shadow on the Maine horror legend’s year. First, the good news: whatever outcry it might have caused from certain fans, the casting of Idris Elba as the heroic Gunslinger was a great idea, with the actor doing his best to find some dignity among this. It’s just a shame that he didn’t get a better movie to star in: the script (co-written by Akiva Goldsman because of course it is) is a weak bowlderization of King’s material, with no reason seemingly given to care about anyone or anything on screen, not least Matthew McConaughey’s deeply miscast villain. In fairness to Arcel, the film shows every sign of having been tinkered with to the point of incomprehensibility and artlessness by the studio. But in fairness to the studio, Arcel doesn’t appear to have been aiming for anything higher influence-wise than ‘one of those movies where Paul Bettany plays an angel with a machine gun.’ It went straight to the franchise graveyard, and few will really mourn it.

11. “Fifty Shades Darker”
Not even a single shade darker, kinkier or more transgressive than its already lame-as-fuck first installment, James Foley‘s sequel to “Fifty Shades of Grey” manages to take whatever meager pleasures Sam Taylor-Johnson‘s movie gave us and ignore them completely. It’s appropriate that in the feverishingly samba-ing, barely literate brain of author EL James this all started out as “Twilight” fan fiction because rather like with those adaptations, we’re only on episode 2 and already the light has gone out of the leading lady’s eyes. It’s been replaced with a kind of somnolent deadness, behind which we can read the talented Dakota Johnson‘s inner goddess desperately re-scanning her legal obligations to this franchise like it’s a sex contract with a billionaire sadist. And this time, even the superficial, furnishings-porn gloss is gone, meaning there’s nothing to distract us from the hokey plot, which has something to do with stalkers and at one point has flat-pack lust object Jamie Dornan, as premium lifestyle accessory Christian Grey, presumed dead in a helicopter crash in what has to be the absolute lowest-stakes potential death scenario in the history of cinema. In fact, perhaps the best way to appreciate this turgid sexless bore is to see it for what it actually is: A feature-length intro to the wibbly TayTay/Zayn song that plays over the end credits. Nothing but respect for MY Ana & Christian.