The 10 Most Disappointing Movies Of 2024, Ranked

This is not a list of the worst movies of 2024. In fact, this list is unique in that it contains movies that are good, bad, and somewhere in between. But they all have one thing in common: each and every film on this list let us down in some way. They hurt us a little. They left us wounded. They took our expectations and gave them a painful kick in the rear.

We generally try to stay away from “worst of” lists here at /Film — they’re largely worthless, especially since few people actually get around to seeing the actual worst movies of a given year. However, a list of the 10 most disappointing movies of 2024 is a far more interesting proposition. These are the movies that had our undivided attention until they didn’t. For some of them, their great sin was being merely pretty good when we were hoping for something extraordinary. Others are simply profound letdowns that left us deflated. Few of them are actively bad or unwatchable, but they’re all guilty of crushing our hopes to some capacity. And in some ways, isn’t that worse than simply being a bad movie?

The final list is a tour of tarnished, and sometimes broken, dreams (the full conversation/debate over the creation of this list was recorded and will be released as a future episode of the /Film Daily podcast). We won’t say you should actively avoid any of these movies — well, maybe “Joker: Folie à Deux” — but we do suggest you keep your expectations firmly in check.

It’s curious that we, as filmgoers, are consistently tantalized by the “Alien” series. Ridley Scott’s “Alien” premiered in 1979, and remains, to this day, one of the best horror movies ever made. It helped that the central alien creature was so odd and off-putting; it looked like a penis made of teeth and gelatin. In 1986, James Cameron turned the series into an action franchise with “Aliens,” a high-octane, machine-gun-toting redux of what was essentially the same story. 

Ever since, though, audiences have been let down time and time again. David Fincher’s “Alien³” was hated upon its release, and there are very few defenders of the relatively kooky “Alien: Resurrection.” Everyone scoffs at the two “Alien vs. Predator” movies, and Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus” is hotly contested (I’m one of the few who seems to love it). There may be a few good scenes in Scott’s “Alien: Covenant,” but it’s certainly no one’s favorite. The memories of the first two “Alien” movies have been enough to keep audiences coming back for decades. 

The latest disappointment was Fede Álvarez’s prequel film “Alien: Romulus,” set in between “Alien” and “Aliens.” While the film’s craft is impeccable and its visuals sharp and terrifying, its crass use of a dead “Alien” actor (recreated via CGI) and its direct connections to Scott’s original film leave “Romulus” feeling derivative and uncreative. It isn’t an expansion of the already-simple “Alien” lore, but another rehash of safe, familiar material. (Witney Seibold)

Once upon a time, casting two of our greatest movie stars as co-leads led to modern classics such as Steven Soderbergh’s “Ocean’s” trilogy and the Coen brothers’ “Burn After Reading.” Nearly two decades later, that very same impulse to reunite George Clooney with Brad Pitt resulted in an Apple TV+ original that nobody ever heard of that played in theaters for all of a week. Yeah, the dire state of filmmaking these days sure ain’t beating those allegations.

Is that a statement on the quality of movies like “Wolfs,” which I reviewed mixed positively for /Film, or the types of projects sneaking through studio executives nowadays — or all of the above? By any metric, writer/director Jon Watts’ buzzy-sounding detour from the Marvel machine should’ve been exactly what the doctor ordered. The idea of a “Michael Clayton” redux following aging “fixers” suspiciously assigned the same job that’s boosted by little more than star power and old-school sensibilities should’ve been a dream come true. But remove the temptation to grade things on a curve and the disappointment can’t help but set in. Shouldn’t a plot carried by two world-class stars be sharper and more energetic? Can’t a sendup to Scorsese movies of old be a little more original? Is it too much to ask for style and substance?

As slickly-made as it is, “Wolfs” never escapes the feeling of settling for “good enough” when it could’ve been so much more. (Jeremy Mathai)

As the latest iteration of Starship Goth, “MaXXXine” works like a dream. Mia Goth shines as brightly as she does in “X” and “Pearl,” combining the chaotic energy of a seasoned character actress with a touch of A-lister aura. This is a very particular set of skills that bodes well for her future, if the earlier two installments of Ti West’s “X” trilogy somehow left any lingering questions about her talent.

The problem lies in the movie itself. “MaXXXine” suffers from the hefty baggage of expectations set by its two gory and innovative predecessors. The nuanced juxtaposition of Goth’s characters Maxine Minx and Pearl in the adult movie industry slasher “X” (2022) allows the film to simultaneously embrace the genre and rise above it. The demented, faux-cheerful cinema classic motifs of the prequel “Pearl” (2022) stay with you long after the end credits. Compared to them, “MaXXXine” isn’t a bad movie. Maxine’s Hollywood adventures make for a capable psychological horror piece with copious bright spots, tactical references, and a stellar cast — Kevin Bacon’s sleazy P.I., take a bow. The film just can’t keep up with the first two, so for the first time in the series the viewer can finish the movie and go: “Wait, was that it?”  

Still, despite “MaXXXine” failing to clear the bar of expectations, there’s no denying that the “X” series it wraps up has been an overall success. It’ll be interesting to see where the creative paths of Goth and West take them. (Pauli Poisuo)

When promising horror filmmaker Gary Dauberman (“Annabelle Comes Home”) signed on to direct the first big-screen adaptation of Stephen King’s classic novel “Salem’s Lot,” expectations got immediately out of whack. How could they not? The book is widely considered to be one of King’s very best, while Tobe Hooper’s 1979 TV movie rendition etched a window-tapping nightmare deep into the subconscious of every kid who’s ever watched it. Hooper’s version is quite good for what it is, but the limitations of primetime television ultimately kept it from being the bloodsucking classic it should’ve been. Yes, there was a made-for-TNT miniseries in 2004, but it was dreadfully uninspired.

With James Wan on board as a producer, this third attempt to nail an eminently nailable novel felt like close to a sure thing, especially coming on the heels of Andy Muschietti’s very R-rated take on King’s “It.” But when the release of Dauberman’s film kept getting pushed back, that feeling gradually vanished. When “‘Salem’s Lot” quietly debuted on Max in October, we were primed for disappointment. Sadly, Dauberman delivered precisely that. The best that can be said of his “‘Salem’s Lot” is that it contains scenes from what might’ve been a very good adaptation of the novel. The problem is that Dauberman rushes through the setup to the point where the characters’ motivations are muddled if not downright inexplicable. Above all, “Salem’s Lot” should be fun, but this slam job seems only interested in hitting the finish line in under two hours. Concision can certainly be a virtue, but a yarn as rich as this needs to breathe. (Jeremy Smith)

What a phenomenal waste of talent. After earning an immense amount of goodwill following the massive box office success of “Joker,” it felt like director Todd Phillips was going to take a big swing with “Joker: Folie à Deux,” which was touted as a full-on musical that would add Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn alongside Joaquin Phoenix as Arthur Fleck, aka the rising criminal madman known as Joker. Unfortunately, the results were less than satisfactory across the board, for both fans and critics. 

As someone who wasn’t particularly impressed with the muddled messaging of “Joker,” despite a praiseworthy performance by Joaquin Phoenix, the development of “Joker 2” into a musical with Lady Gaga actually piqued my interest. What a bold way to follow up a grounded approach to a comic book villain’s origin story! But Todd Phillips clearly doesn’t know how to direct a musical, and the film’s story is so hollow that it somehow has even less to say than the original.

Perhaps the most egregious sin is the complete waste of Lady Gaga’s talents, both as a singer and an actor. On top of that, her role in the story serves to completely destroy anything significant established for Arthur Fleck in the first movie. The ultimate end of “Joker 2” feels like an enormous cop-out, one that could have held promise in a more talented director’s hands, especially when it comes to deconstructing the mythologizing of villains in pop culture. But when all is said and done, “Joker 2” is nothing but a toothless punchline. (Ethan Anderton)

I should say this right off the bat: in no universe is “Kinds of Kindness” a bad movie. Yorgos Lanthimos’ anthology film — which uses the same cast to tell three utterly bizarre stories — is definitely a movie for the sickos (which is a compliment), and the core cast, which includes Jesse Plemons, Emma Stone, Margaret Qualley, Willem Dafoe, Hong Chau, Mamoudou Athie, and Joe Alywin, commit themselves entirely to some wild and sometimes unsettling material. My point is this: “Kinds of Kindness” is a disappointment because it’s a Lanthimos movie starring Stone that barely made a splash at all.

“Kinds of Kindness” flew so drastically under the cultural radar that I’d be willing to bet most people haven’t even heard of it, which is a problem considering that, earlier this year, Stone won her second Academy Award in a decade for a different and bigger Lanthimos film, “Poor Things.” People have been talking about “Poor Things” since it released in 2023 — I’d be willing to bet there’s still plenty of discourse happening about it in some corner of the Internet — and the fact that “Kinds of Kindness” went largely unnoticed is a problem. I really enjoyed watching “Kinds of Kindness” when I saw it in theaters this summer and then I went home and forgot about it immediately. That bums me out. That should not happen with a movie from someone as delightfully strange and imaginative as Lanthimos. Here’s hoping that “Bugonia,” his next project with Plemons and Stone, fares better. (Nina Starner)

Steve McQueen is one of the most exciting directors working today, having made gut-wrenching dramas, compelling character studies, an underrated thriller, and a documentary about Amsterdam under Nazi occupation (and that’s not even mentioning the towering accomplishment of the anthology saga “Small Axe”). But “Blitz,” his World War II drama starring Saoirse Ronan (one of the very best actresses of her generation) as a mother who is separated from her young son during the blitz of London, does not feel like a Steve McQueen movie. 

Despite having its heart in the right place, we’re left with the sinking feeling that a few dozen other directors could have made this instead, which is not something we can say about McQueen’s previous work. There’s a distinctive quality that’s missing here, and an anonymity to the vignette-style storytelling that keeps the film at arm’s length when the premise is ripe for audiences to melt into a puddle of tears. I was primed for some emotional catharsis, but thanks to a somewhat shoddy script, not a single tear was shed upon watching. The most disappointing aspect of “Blitz” was that after it was over, I just kind of shrugged my shoulders and moved on with my day, and that’s not something you can normally say about a Steve McQueen picture. (Ben Pearson)

Marielle Heller’s “Nightbitch,” an adaptation of Rachel Yoder’s bestselling novel of the same name, has one of the strongest openings of any film released in 2024. Amy Adams’ character, known only as Mother, runs into Sally, the woman who replaced her at her gallery job after she left to become a stay-at-home mom. “Do you just love getting to be home with him all the time? Must be wonderful,” Sally muses. Mother then unleashes a monologue about being in a hell of her own creation, loving her child but feeling like she’ll never truly be happy again … only to reveal to the audience that this is just how she feels, hidden behind the pleasant, socially acceptable line she actually gives, “I love being a mom.”

With the premise that Mother is so overwhelmed that she’s turning into a dog at night and one of Amy Adams’ career-best performances, “Nightbitch” had everything on paper to be an all-time great. Unfortunately, the outcome is a toothless satire that never goes as hard as it should. It’s all bark and no bite, with emphasis on bark, because the interior monologue of Mother quickly turns into voiceover narration that does. not. stop. Heller’s sense of comedy is well on display and the film is littered with little moments of brilliance, but it results in a maddeningly frustrating experience every time we get a glimpse of what could have, and should have been, compared to what we got. (BJ Colangelo)

It took them nearly a quarter of a century to come up with this script?

The problem with “Gladiator II” isn’t one of scope or visual ambition, as director Ridley Scott has never met a sequence he couldn’t bring to vivid, brutal life. The problem is that nothing about the actual story being told in this long-awaited sequel feels especially vital. Paul Mescal, a good actor, drowns in the middle of a screenplay that never gives him anything to do, and never lets him actually drive the action forward. This is a movie where things happen around the hero, and he eventually gets to make a bad speech about it. “Gladiator II” is less of a narrative and more of a series of events, with characters simply ambling about and stumbling over each other when they aren’t hacking one another to bits in the gladiatorial arena.

No wonder this movie is obsessed with the late Maximus and the impact he had on the characters in this film — no one here (except for a scene-stealing Denzel Washington) carries the weight and charisma of Russell Crowe, whose contributions to the first film are more clear than ever. “Gladiator II” is certainly watchable, and it’s frequently fine, but it can’t help but remind you with every frame that the first film is magnificent, and so much better than the sequel you’re watching now. (Jacob Hall)

When I was growing up goth, Tim Burton was like a god to me. Then at some point, Burton lost his mojo (in my humble opinion, 1994’s “Ed Wood” is Burton’s last great movie, while 2003’s “Big Fish” is his last good movie). So when it was revealed that Burton would be reuniting with Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, and Catherine O’Hara for the “Beetlejuice” sequel “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” I wasn’t exactly thrilled. I love the original “Beetlejuice,” but the prospect of modern Tim Burton returning to that well didn’t inspire much confidence. And yet, nostalgia got the better of me. I started to get excited, and that excitement was increased when some folks who saw the film called it a return to form for Burton. Then I finally watched “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” for myself … and my heart sank.

While Keaton seems to slip easily back into the role of the Ghost with the Most, Ryder and O’Hara both feel like completely different characters than the people they played in the original film. On top of that, the script, by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, is borderline incoherent, lacking a solid story and instead comprised of a series of hacky, unfunny bits (a “Soul Train” joke, really?). Willem Dafoe has some fun as an undead cop, but everything else on display here is a pale imitation of the original film. I’ll always cherish Burton’s early work, but the director simply does not have the juice anymore. (Chris Evangelista)