The Best and Worst of 2024

2024 was something of a strange year for me personally when it came to this blog. Due to me actually getting a regular job there was a lot less time to see movies and write reviews (normally I’ve been seeing about 100+ films but this year the count is just a little over 40). Weirdly this is also the year this blog has had the most views which is a bit of a mixed bag. Hopefully next year I’ll be able to see a more normal number of films and provide a better set of end-of-year lists but this year I have to work with a much lower number. 

Normally at the end of the year there would be two long posts with two lists, a best of the year list and worst of the year list that would have 10 entries and a whole bunch of honourable mentions but that seems a little bit much considering the low number of films I’ve seen this year. I still feel like the year needs to end with some kind of list though so I’ve decided to make my best and worst lists five entries each and put them both in the same post (along with a single honourable mention in the middle because I needed something to break the post up and because I have something to say about this one specific film). Also I’m still going to do the best performances list but that will have 10 entries instead of the usual 20. Half the list for a half-assed year on my part. There is also a chance that some entries on the lists might not have reviews because I just didn’t have the time to write a review for them. 

With that bit of background done, let’s begin with the worst of the year… OK “Worst Of The Films I Actually Managed To See This Year Because I’ve Been Busy Goddamnit”, that’s nowhere near as good a title.

5: Rebel Moon — Part Two: The Scargiver

Zack Snyder described negative reviews for this film with the phrase “A vote against me is a vote for the focus groups” which is the first thing Snyder has ever said that could be considered a joke. Rebel Moon as a franchise is just Star Wars without the excitement and Rebel Moon Part 2 is not even stealing from the good Star Wars. It’s a bland flavourless piece of cinema that proves a long-running theory I’ve had that Snyder is just obsessed with making the edgy version of things he pretended to like in childhood.

There’s nothing about this franchise that’s interesting or fun, it’s irritating at its best and that’s before we factor in the stupid attempt to recreate the whole ‘release the Snydercut”’ thing by promising to release a director’s cut months after the theatrical cut came out on Netflix. I’m just going to hope that Zack Snyder’s return to the Zombie genre means he’ll go back to making something fun and exciting. I miss that version of Snyder.

4: Night Swim

I’ve made no secret that Horror is my favourite genre of film. It’s a genre full of potential to tell exciting, interesting stories, comment on things in a wild, unique way and often shows the value of a creative director who has to work with a small budget. At its best, Horror produces some of the most exciting original films you will hope to find… at its worst, you get basic bitch shit like Night Swim which just asks the question “What if your backyard pool kept trying to kill you” and decided to answer that question as boringly as possible.

A fun version of this film might just be known as “Death Pool: The Pool That Eats People” but no, no Night Swim is too determined to be serious to have fun and so we’re stuck with strobe lights, uninteresting shots of people cleaning a pool that’s meant to be scary and an entire plot about how the killer pool can also cure someone’s MS… I’d rather drown, thank you.

3: Beautiful Wedding

Beautiful Disaster was another in the depressingly long line of films based on bad fanfiction where a good girl met a bad boy and they did a bunch of fucking and she thought she could change him with the power of good fucking… Beautiful Wedding is the Scary Movie 5 of this new genre, in that it’s an obvious parody that’s also about as funny as a brick to the face. Taking uninteresting, annoying characters and making them recreate the classic “Oops, we got married while super drunk, guess we gotta stay like this” story is the only thing this film has going for it.

Every scenario is played as over the top as possible in a blatant attempt to be funny but they have a script that feels like it was rejected in the 90s for being too dated and they haven’t bothered to work on it since then. It’s wild to think that the man who made Cruel Intentions, a camp classic, is now relegated to making this but clearly he either has nothing left to offer or he’s upset someone in Hollywood who is forcing him to make this drek and I cannot honestly tell which would be the worse idea.

2: Unfrosted

Jerry Seinfeld, you can stop working now. You made all the money that a human being could ever need to make when you did Seinfeld, you are truly set for life so just relax and never make another film again because Unfrosted is one of the most bland pieces of trash that’s been put out in a long time. If we’re being generous we could call this film “forgettable” but really it’s just a waste. You have some of the best comedic actors alive working together to make a film that should be somewhat funny and it just isn’t.

A comedic retelling of the invention of a beloved food can work, Flamin’ Hot proved that a while ago and that film wasn’t written by the same person who wrote one of the most beloved sitcoms of all time. It’s almost impressive how bland and boring this film ends up being, a testament to how little Jerry cares about being entertaining anymore. He’d rather spend much of his time talking about how you can’t make jokes anymore, possibly because he hasn’t made an original or funny joke since May 14, 1998. There is nothing I would have loved more than to be able to say that this film was good because it’d mean that Seinfeld was still as funny as he ever was… instead this film has me wondering if maybe Seinfeld was just really lucky that he had Larry David nearby when he was at his peak

1: The Mouse Trap

You know, up until I saw this film I was not going to have a “This film tried to kill me” award this year. Sure a film on this list did have strobes of some kind but not enough to warrant the award… The Mouse Trap deserves this award, it deserves it so badly thanks to the film deciding to use strobe lights as a plot point for no fucking reason. On top of just trying to kill me with bad strobe effects, it tried to kill me with anger by being an absolute piece of garbage that couldn’t be more of a cash grab if it actually grew hands and tried to reach into my wallet.

It’s a pathetic film that offers nothing, insults its audience and doesn’t get the joke it’s trying to tell. There’s a point in the film where a character straight up says “I understand my audience”. The Mouse Trap, no the fuck you do not. If ANYONE was your target audience it was me, I’m the exact person who wants every public domain character to get a fucked up horror film of some kind because it’s an idea with endless potential and I hate you with every fibre of my being. You do not understand your audience, you barely understand how a functional movie works. You are so bad that I saw you three days before the end of the year and you skyrocketed to the top of my worst list, that’s how bad you are. At least the Blood and Honey people were able to prove themselves with their second movie. I hope you don’t even try to make a second movie with this idea because I have absolutely no faith in you whatsoever.

And speaking of the Blood and Honey people…

Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey 2

It’s honestly kind of stunning to me to say this but Blood and Honey 2 was easily the happiest I’ve been watching a film all year because they actually got the joke right this time. The first attempt at a Winnie The Pooh horror film was one of the most depressing things I’ve ever seen, it was my third worst film of 2023 and that was being generous. Blood and Honey 2 is what happens when a filmmaker listens to feedback, takes it on board and puts in the work to improve. It’s almost admirable in its own weird way, the director knew that the first film wasn’t good and actually put in effort to fix everything and damnit if they didn’t succeed.

I’m not about to pretend that Blood and Honey 2 is a masterpiece of cinema (notice it’s not on the best list at all? Even if this was a 10 entry list, Blood and Honey was never making the cut), but it’s big dumb fun that knows what it’s trying to be and has fun with it. It plays well with the source material, it has character and actual moments of genuine emotion mixed in with the shocked laugh because Tigger just called someone a bitch before massacring a boiler room full of people. It’s the exact film I was hoping for upon hearing “Winnie The Pooh Horror Movie”, thanks to this film I’m actually excited for the Poohniverse that we’re about to be gifted. Yes, it will be trash, but if it’s all at the level of Blood and Honey 2 it will be gloriously fun trash.

5: Tim Travers and the Time Traveler’s Paradox

So this year I managed to go to the Sydney Underground Film Festival but due to time constraints (remember the start of this post?) I did not get a chance to write about the films I saw while I was there. Well one of those was a little Sci-Fi comedy called Tim Travers and the Time Traveler’s Paradox, a film about a genius who invents a time machine and decides to test out a theory about paradoxes.

The idea is that a paradox would be created if you went back in time just a few seconds and killed your younger self… what follows from there is an insane ride that includes a biker gang, an Alex Jones analogue, a crazy gal, an orgy made up entirely of Tim Travers, a gay love story between two versions of Tim and the end of the fucking universe. It’s easily one of the funniest and smartest films of the year, the second you can see it you absolutely should because it’s something truly special and unique and there just isn’t enough of that kind of film anymore.

4: Deadpool & Wolverine

Everyone thought Logan was going to be the end of Hugh Jackman’s time as Wolverine. That’s what we were told and promised, Hugh is getting to the point where he probably wants to just not have to maintain the kind of physical form he needs to have in order to believably be Wolverine so surely he was never going to come back… and then Ryan Reynolds asked if he wanted to be part of a Deadpool movie and we got this glorious hilarious love letter to the Superhero genre. It looks to the past and thanks it for existing, joking about how some of it didn’t work, finding what did work and elevating it while just being a great time for everyone.

There’s a reason this was the second highest grossing film of the year, it was absolutely hilarious and brilliantly handled by a creative team who understood what we needed. From the moment Deadpool started dancing to Bye Bye Bye until the end credits montage played, this film had us eating out of the palm of its hand and we didn’t even ask where that hand had been because what we were being offered was so damn good.

3: Wicked

We have been waiting for this film for decades now, they’ve tried to make it dozens of times with every combination of actresses you could imagine. It’s kind of stunning that the people who wanted to make a film of this didn’t just throw up their hands in defeat and make a pro-shot of the stage show but instead they waited until they had everything perfect before releasing the first part of the Wicked saga and sure enough, they’ve made something truly magical.

Cynthia Erivo’s performance alone puts this film on any best list, she’s destined for that Best Actress Oscar and it will be stunning if anyone manages to beat her. The film itself is a delight, filled with wonderfully presented musical numbers, a cast that’s giving their all to every role and just a ton of whimsy and wonder that feels right for a film set in the merry old land of Oz. Musical adaptations needed a film like this to remind us what happens when they’re done right and hopefully Part 2 lives up to what we got this time.

2: Inside Out 2

Inside Out is probably my favourite Pixar film, its clever exploration into the problems of puberty and how emotions function is one of the best things that the studio has ever put out. You want a shortcut to make me cry? Just start singing “Who’s your friend who likes to play” and I’ll be a bawling mess, that’s what Inside Out did to me… Inside Out 2 is better in every way. The plot has gone from specifically how emotions work to how it feels to live with a severe case of Anxiety, taking this emotion and elevating it to the forefront was a risky move but boy did it work.

While Anxiety might be the antagonist of the movie, they’re never presented as a villain. They can’t control what they’re doing, it’s almost outside of their control and there’s a real power to how that emotion is being presented here. Anyone who has ever had Anxiety can relate to this portrayal, it’s uncontrollable and all-consuming and not something done intentionally or with malice by any part of our brain… it’s just a thing that’s happening, a terrifying thing that’s happening in our heads that we cannot stop and have to figure out how to deal with. Inside Out 2 is pure brilliance, it’s no wonder that it was the highest-grossing film of the year but it’s not my actual favourite film of the year… but it was close

1: In A Violent Nature

There is nothing quite like the blending of two wildly different styles of film, if done right it can create something truly fascinating. The 80s Slasher and the Arthouse are two wildly different styles of film that really shouldn’t work, Slashers are possibly the dumbest genre around while the Arthouse is about as intellectual as one could hope for and yet when those two are brought together by In A Violent Nature you get something that is hilarious, weird, ponderous and original. Taking the standard 80s slasher (very obviously Friday the 13th, the dumbest of the slashers) and deciding to follow the killer in real-time is an idea that could easily fail if not handled well. In the hands of these creatives, that idea becomes fascinating.

Things we take for granted in Slasher films are laid out in blunt, obvious detail. We know the only way for a killer like Jason to hide a body is to just drag it away but to actually see a corpse being dragged along the ground is weirdly hilarious. Johnny, the killer of this film, gets to have a real personality and a real emotional weight due in part to how he’s being presented. It’s a peek behind the Slasher curtain that fans of the genre will get a bigger kick out of than most because they know the tropes this film is using to make its grand joke about the genre. Aided by some of the best kills ever put in a horror film (seriously, the Yoga scene is bonkers in the best way), this is the intellectual slasher entry that you didn’t know we absolutely needed.

And that’s my best and worst list for the year, Hopefully next year I’ll be better organised and be able to put out a normal set of list but until then, tell me what great/awful films I missed this year and who knows, maybe I’ll catch up.