The 25 Worst Movies By Good Directors

Even the great ones stumble from time to time—well, unless they're one of these 10 guys. In Hollywood, the land of interfering producers, constant script rewrite demands, and top-priority marketing concerns, it's nearly impossible to get a movie made, let alone a good one. So whenever a filmmaker manages to see his or her project through from pre-production to a theatrical release, it's cause for celebration; when said motion picture is worthy of endless praise, it's a minor miracle.

Taking all of the moviemaking process' pre-release disruptions into consideration, it's no wonder that most of the game's best directors have stumbled once or twice. One prime example is Guillermo del Toro, the fanboy idol who's worked both independently (the stellar, foreign-language supernatural films The Devil's Backbone and Pan's Labyrinth) and within the major studio system (his two Hellboy flicks).

Prior to his mainstream popularity's ascension, the monster-loving Mexican visionary took a creative gamble and attached himself to a Harvey Weinstein-backed, English-language property titled Mimic, based on a short story by science fiction writer Donald A. Wollheim. Intending to craft a scary creature-driven thrill ride, del Toro found himself constantly accosted by his big-wig producers, and the film, released in 1997, suffered for it.

On the day after Mimic's 15th anniversary, we're here to make del Toro feel better by gathering The 25 Worst Movies By Good Directors, to show our boy Guillermo that he's not alone. And, frankly, Mimic is nowhere near as rotten as certain films made by his equally respected peers.

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Written by Matt Barone (@MBarone)

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Director: Woody Allen

Since his 1966 feature film debut, What's Up, Tiger Lilly?, the tireless Woody Allen has completed over 40 movies—at an average of nearly one new film a year, that's an incredible work ethic, no doubt. Putting so much original material into the marketplace also leaves one vulnerable to numerous miscues, and the proud Bronx native has fallen short of greatness on several occasions, most recently, in fact, with the June release To Rome with Love.

Picking the worst Woody Allen film wasn't easy but, ignoring the appeal of Scarlett Johansson in that red bikini (seen above), his 2006 dramedy Scoop seems like a fair selection. At the time, Johansson was Allen's "muse" and all, but that doesn't excuse her awkward attempts to mimic the writer-director's signature brand of droll one-liners and social discomfort.

Johansson isn't most at fault here—the bulk of the blame, of course, goes to Mr. Allen himself, who wrote and shot Scoop with such a lazy eye that it's ultimately just a sad reminder of his earlier, inspired blends of silly comedy and light drama.

Director: Clint Eastwood

You can't fault Clint Eastwood for having a lack of ambition when it comes to his 2010 snoozer Hereafter. The film's premise is a very lofty one, dealing with various characters' views and firsthand experiences with the afterlife. It does so with more visual trickery than the legendary actor-director is known for or has ever practiced.

Good intentions can only take a filmmaker so far, though. The problem with Hereafter is its structural unevenness, opening with a harrowing, emotionally potent tsunami but then settling into an alternately preachy and plodding gab-fest before closing with strong interpretations of what lies beyond the grave. There's an exceptional movie hidden somewhere within Hereafter—if only Eastwood realized that in the pre-production stage.

Director: Sam Raimi

Sam Raimi is many things to many different people. To horror audiences, he's the filmmaking giant who created the over-the-top, amazing 1981 gorefest The Evil Dead, its two excellent sequels (Evil Dead 2 and The Army of Darkness), and triumphantly returned to the genre with 2009's slept-on Drag Me to Hell. And to those who appreciate maturely made blockbusters, he's the thoughtful popcorn vendor who successfully introduced Spider-Man to moviegoers in two superb films starring Tobey Maguire (let's not talk about Spider-Man 3 here, OK?).

One thing Raimi is known by absolutely no one as is a sports guy, and 1999's long, sappy, and flat-lining For the Love of the Game is one convincing reason why. Starring Kevin Costner, it's an excruciating crawl of a drama that can't help but remind you of its star's much better baseball stories, Bull Durham (1988) and Field of Dreams (1989). One year later, Raimi was onto The Gift, the one in which, that's right, Katie Holmes goes topless, and two years after that it was Spider-Man time; thus, all was quickly forgiven, but still. Baseball drama from Mr. Evil Dead is something we'd rather forget ever happened.

Director: Terry Gilliam

Even at his worst, Terry Gilliam seems incapable of making an uninteresting film. The Monty Python's Flying Circus member turned filmmaker was at his intelligently wacky best with Brazil (1985), The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1989), and 12 Monkeys (1995), but the flipside to those moments of genius is the extremely disappointing 2005 clunker The Brothers Grimm.

Not even the impressive leading man duo of Matt Damon and Heath Ledger could he do much with screenwriter Ehren Kruger's emotionless story, which finds the famed sibling authors reluctantly battling supernatural opposition. Gilliam's biggest crime, aside from agreeing to do the film, was trying to pass The Brothers Grimm off as a movie for the whole family, because if there's any common thread between his aforementioned "good" movies it's their child-proof edginess.

Director: Guillermo del Toro

This much is certain: Guillermo del Toro signed onto the creature feature Mimic with the best intentions. As evidenced by every movie he’s made since, the Mexican genre maestro loves monsters and beasts with the passion of a little kid reading Famous Monsters of Filmland issues. So when mega-producers Harvey and Bob Weinstein approached del Toro after the warm reception to his excellent 1993 vampire debut Cronos, he must have leapt at the chance to play ghouls-and-goblins with Hollywood money.

It’s too bad that Hollywood money also brings with it Hollywood problems. As the story goes, the Weinsteins made del Toro’s life a living hell during Mimic’s hectic, stressful production; by the time it was released, the film—in which Mira Sorvino tries his best not to become food for humongous termite/praying mantis hybrids—wasn’t what the director had in mind.

Revisited today, Mimic has its moments, but it’s far too loud and showy to complement del Toro’s other works, known for their delicate characterizations and imaginative chills.

Directors: Joel and Ethan Coen

Ardent fans, or, better yet, apologists, of filmmaking siblings Joel and Ethan Coen swear that the brothers’ lightweight, immediately forgettable comedy The Ladykillers is a misunderstood sleeper. They’re incorrect, of course, but such loyalty to artists is commendable.

At their comedic best, the Coens mine uncomfortable laughs from subtly awkward exchanges and unforeseen outbursts of violence (i.e., in The Big Lebowski, Fargo, Burn After Reading); throughout The Ladykillers, though, the jokes are telegraphed, if not downright forced, and the performances practically scream “Look, we’re zany!” It's as if the Farrelly brothers stepped into the directors' chairs at the last minute and no one bothered to tell the studio.

Director: Peter Jackson

Peter Jackson adapting Alice Sebold’s dark, tragic novel The Lovely Bones sounds like an inspired combination—on paper, at least. Before he entered Hollywood’s history books with his Lord of the Rings trilogy, the New Zealand native was known for high-concept genre fare, but his haunting 1994 drama Heavenly Creatures showed the kind of tonal delicacy needed for Sebold’s book.

The Lovely Bones follows Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan), a 14-year-old who, in the afterlife, watches her family and friends mourn and her father (a miscast Mark Wahlberg) suspect their creepy neighbor (Stanley Tucci) of foul play.

In Sebold’s best-seller, the shifts from real world brutality (Susie’s murder is no-holds-barred disturbing) to above-the-clouds fantasy is fluid and engaging; in Jackson’s misguided film, the back-and-forth changes between heaven and Earth are clunky and jarring.

Director: Roman Polanski

It's one hell of a pitch: Johnny Depp, in his prime, acting in a Roman Polanski-directed film about Satanism. That brief description alone was enough to make us care about The Ninth Gate, giving us hope that Polanski would tap into his Repulsion creepiness. Sadly, instead of a male-protagonist-driven Rosemary's Baby, what genre fans got in 1999 was an unforgivably preposterous mess that lacks any narrative direction, has no terror whatsoever, and makes little effective use of its striking sets and production values.

Apparently aware that he signed up for an inferior Polanski project, Depp gives a dull, atypically non-engaging performance as a book dealer called upon to locate a text that's said to be able to open Hell's gates. The only thing co-writer Polanski's script opens is bag full of viewer contempt.

Director: Michael Mann

At least Michael Mann got his misstep out of the way early into his career. Before he first made waves with 1986's Manhunter, which led to the later, respective greatness of Heat (1995), The Insider (1999), and Collateral (2004), the Miami Vice producer struck out with The Keep, a visually bombastic horror flop that he also wrote.

The film has one strength going for it: a far-reaching premise. Essentially, it's about a haunted castle in German-occupied Romania, circa 1943, yet once the pissed-off spirit shows up and begins avenging the deaths of Jewish prisoners, The Keep devolves into an overbearing barrage of strobe lights, slow-motion sequences, and occasionally agreeable scenes of Nazis getting slaughtered. It's strictly for 1980s horror completists.

Director: Cecil B. DeMille

It almost feels like sacrilege to include Cecil B. DeMille on any list tinged with negativity. After all, he's the Hollywood icon, and original blockbuster champ, behind landmark motion pictures like Cleopatra (1934) and Samson and Delilah (1939). Yet the man slipped up big-time once, and, as painful as it is to acknowledge, it was quite the folly.

Considered one of the worst movies to ever win the Best Picture honor from the Oscar committee, DeMille's The Greatest Show on Earth is an overlong (two-and-a-half hours, to be exact) and virtually plot-less look at shenanigans happening at a large-scale circus. It's a tedious soap opera disguised as lavish spectacle, one that's led by an overcharged Charlton Heston and might provide some fun for little kids who beg their parents to visit Barnum & Bailey's.

All's well that ends well: DeMille avenged his reputation four years later with the monumental The Ten Commandments, the last movie he made before passing away in 1959.

Director: Steven Spielberg

In 1979, Steven Spielberg had the film world in the palm of his hands. After impressing the masses with the taut made-for-TV thriller Duel (1971), Spielberg worked his way towards a pair of box office triumphs: Jaws (1975) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. He seemed untouchable.

But then came the Pearl Harbor-set, ensemble war comedy 1941. Despite a superb cast that includes Dan Aykroyd, the late John Belushi, Ned Beatty, John Candy, and Christopher Lee, 1941 is an often brutalizing exhibition of a filmmaker not yet sure how to handle on-screen comedy. And when he’s not incredibly making dudes like Belushi and Candy unfunny, Spielberg tries to overcompensate for his comic shortcomings by indulging in distracting explosions and sloppy action.

Don’t take our word for it, though: Spielberg himself was once quoted as saying he needed to check into “a Betty Ford clinic for undisciplined filmmakers” after 1941.

Director: Cameron Crowe

With his one-two punch of Jerry Maguire (1996) and Almost Famous (2000), writer-director Cameron Crowe massively endeared himself to both critics and ticket-purchasing audiences. In each Oscar-nominated film, Crowe demonstrated his uncanny knack for mature laughs and warm-hearted characterization, done in ways that set him apart from damn near all of his filmmaking peers.

The honeymoon seemed over in 2001, however, when Crowe’s convoluted trainwreck Vanilla Sky disregarded the wonderful simplicity found in his previous movies. Elizabethtown, starring Orlando Bloom as a flashy shoe designer who heads back home to small-town life, was Crowe’s attempt to recapture that old Jerry Maguire magic—not so much.

For one, Bloom’s chemistry with co-star Kirsten Dunst is non-existent, yet that’s actually the least of Elizabethtown’s problems. Chief amongst its downfalls is the script’s utter lack of tension. Bloom’s character simply drifts around from one uneventful interaction to the next—for two hours, no less. To paraphrase Cuba Gooding, Jr. in Jerry Maguire, "Show us the NoDoz pills!"

Director: Spike Lee

Spike Lee is no stranger to overcrowded screenplays; his two most recent narrative films, for example (Miracle at St. Anna and Red Hook Summer), suffer from one too many subplots and a damaging lack of storytelling focus. But She Hate Me is the Brooklyn-bred filmmaker at his most frustratingly schizophrenic.

Led by a game but in-over-his-head Anthony Mackie, She Hate Me ricochets back and forth from being an allegorical criticism about corporate dollar-chasing to a ménage à trois saga featuring make-out scenes between Kerry Washington and Dania Ramirez—take a guess which one we prefer. Unable to pick an angle and see it through, Lee wastes a strong, diverse cast (which also includes Monica Bellucci, Ossie Davis, and Jim Brown) and confuses more than titillates.

Director: Dario Argento

Horror die-hards are a fervent bunch, and when a filmmaker executes more than one undisputed genre classic, they’re not quick to dismiss him or her. So Dario Argento will always get a pass from fans, thanks to his old-school “giallo” (code for stylish Italian slasher flicks) staples like Deep Red and The Bird with the Crystal Plummage, as well as his batshit supernatural freak-outs Suspiria and Inferno.

But there are those unwaveringly discerning horror heads who can’t, in good conscience, stomach Argento’s recent output, the worst example being 2009’s straight-to-DVD display of unbelievable ineptitude lazily titled, indeed, Giallo. Adrien Brody, looking like he’s ready to strangle his agent the entire time, plays a detective tracking down a murderer known as “Yellow,” who, himself, closely resembles Brody in a Kabuki mask.

Argento must have thought he was doing his longtime fans a solid by revisiting the stalk-and-stab subgenre he helped to popularize, but Giallo, with its widespread incompetence, is a so-called gift that keeps on grating.

Director: Robert Rodriguez

Robert Rodriguez doesn’t always have to bask in the blood, sex, and violence of exploitation cinema to earn appreciation. Taken as innocent, kid-friendly romps, his Spy Kids movies are perfectly tolerable, though, yes, they pale in comparison to gems like Desperado and From Dusk til Dawn.

With The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3D, though, Rodriguez dabbled in kids’ movie silliness way too much. Bogged down by some of the worst three-dimensional imagery imaginable, Rodriguez’s over-caffeinated mess abandons any actual story in favor of pointless devices like cookie rafts and word bubbles.

And, yes, in case you’re wondering, Taylor Lautner was just as bad an actor then as he is in the Twilight films now.

Director: Oliver Stone

Oliver Stone’s disastrous biopic on Macedonian conqueror Alexander the Great has so many things wrong with it that it seems unfair to cast the heaviest blame on Colin Farrell’s lead performance, but, fuck it, the undeniably miscast actor deserves the scorn just as much as the director of previous gems like Platoon, JFK, and Natural Born Killers.

One commonality shared by those three aforementioned films is the brisk, involving pace that Stone's best movies possess; Alexander, on the other hand, is a three-hour-long slog. Relying on Farrell to carry the talky proceedings, the director suffers from his star's inability to exude both macho presence and layered gravitas.

There's one silver lining, though: If the proposition of seeing a naked Rosario Dawson sounds enticing, Alexander may actually be worth your time. We're sure he would love to hear his costly epic boiled down to such lowbrow terms.

Director: George A. Romero

There comes a time in every artist’s career when he or she needs to put the pen down and try something else. In the case of George A. Romero, 2009’s Survival of the Dead made it obvious that the granddaddy of zombie storytelling—thanks to Night of the Living Dead (1968), Dawn of the Dead (1978), and Day of the Dead (1985)—had lost his way. Not only is Survival of the Dead a bad Romero flesh-eater flick, it’s one of the worst horror movies of the last 10 years, if not more.

Gone are all signs of the filmmaker’s once-shrewd social commentary, gallows humor, and genuinely shocking gore. At times, Survival of the Dead feels like one of those Scary Movie-types spoofs of the zombie genre, with knuckleheaded jokes, cartoonish music, and zero scares. It’s enough to make Romero’s uneven found-footage entry Diary of the Dead look like [REC] by comparison.

Director: William Friedkin

If you haven’t seen Killer Joe, the new violent and hilariously dark comedy from acclaimed director William Friedkin, we suggest you drop what you’re doing and seek it out in an art-house theater near you.

Bawdy and volatile, Killer Joe is a mean-spirited, unpredictable exercise in trailer park sleaze anchored by a ferocious Matthew McConaughey performance. And it’s also indicative of Friedkin’s cinematic comfort zone: edgier subject matter that’s R-rated and rough to the core. See: The Exorcist, The French Connection, Sorcerer, and Bug, to name a few.

In other words, the polar opposite of Friedkin’s inexcusably bad 1983 comedy (by definition only) Deal of the Century. Chevy Chase, at his absolute worst, plays an arms dealer trying to sell war planes to a South American dictator, with help from his girl (Sigourney Weaver) and wisecracking pal (Gregory Hines).

One can see why Friedkin tackled the project: On the surface, its premise welcomes scathing indictments of Reagan-era war games. But the satire is constantly weighed down by Chase’s incessant mugging and slapstick action. It’s all Chevy, no Billy (Friedkin).

Director: Francis Ford Coppola

From Vito Corleone to… Jack Powell? That's one way to describe the trajectory of Francis Ford Coppola's directorial career from 1972 through 1996, the former, of course, coming from The Godfather, and the latter deriving from, regrettably, the loathsome dramedy Jack.

While watching Robin Williams push his wild-and-crazy-guy shtick beyond its breaking point as a little boy who grows at a rapid clip, it's a challenge to remind one's self that it's directed by the same guy who once braved real-life Vietcong conditions to make the incredibly authentic and towering Apocalypse Now.

Here, with the sophomoric Jack, Coppola presents a different kind of depressing concept: Instead of loved ones dying in a "pointless" war, we're expected to laugh along with a buffoonish character we know has no chance of living past the age of, let's say, 20 or 25. Comedic gold!

Director: John Carpenter

One clear sign that an action flick is crap: Jason Statham is in it yet he somehow plays second fiddle to Ice Cube. Yes, the West Coast hip-hop icon, who’s terribly miscast in this mish-mash of hammy acting and formulaic sci-fi/horror tropes.

Guzzle a few beers while watching Ghosts of Mars and its brand of bloated razzle-dazzle could provide some enjoyment in a so-bad-it's-good manner, but one look at John Carpenter’s name in the director’s slot and the film degenerates from awesomely bad to embarrassingly sad.

A paycheck job all the way through, Ghosts of Mars represents the career nadir of a once-great filmmaker responsible for genre classics like Halloween, Escape from New York, and The Thing. Anyone unfortunate enough to see his 2011 “comeback” dud The Ward knows that’s quite the loaded statement.

Director: Peter Bogdanovich

Film purists would probably prefer to not be reminded about Illegally Yours, assuming that they’ve even heard of it in the first place. That’s because Peter Bogdonavich, its ill-fated director, is widely recognized as one of the top auteurs to emerge from Hollywood’s golden era of the 1970s. Coming up under mentor Roger Corman, Bogdonavich transitioned from 1968’s visceral and underrated Targets into 1971’s teen angst masterwork The Last Picture Show. By 1974, he’d blessed cinephiles with three more stellar flicks: What’s Up, Doc?, Paper Moon, and Daisy Miller.

Save for 1985, though, when the critically adored Mask hit theaters, no subsequent year treated Bogdonavich all that well, and 1988 was the worst of all. Squandering all of the goodwill earned from Mask, Bogdonavich foolishly attached himself to the idiotic screwball comedy Illegally Yours. It’s the kind of painfully unfunny and inept flick you’d expect from one of these guys, but not someone who once rivaled the likes of Martin Scorsese and Robert Altman.

Director: Ridley Scott

Ridley Scott directed the following genre knockouts: Alien, Blade Runner, and Black Hawk Down. And the first time Scott teamed up with Russell Crowe, the formidable duo created Gladiator, one of the ultimate “man’s man” films that captures both the director’s grittiness and star’s hulking presence brilliantly.

So why, in the name of all that’s butch, did Scott and Crowe decide to make a sappy and woefully vanilla romantic comedy like A Good Year? Seemingly unconcerned with matters such as a compelling story or conflicts worth caring about, A Good Year serves no purpose other than pointing out the breathtaking scenery found in the Provence region of France. Basically, it’s a live-action, $35 million-budgeted postcard.

Director: Brian De Palma

In 1990, you couldn't ask for a starrier Hollywood threesome: Tom Hanks, Bruce Willis, and then-three-time Golden Globe nominee, and one-time winner, Melanie Griffith. And who was behind the camera while that trio flexed their comedic muscles? Brian De Palma, he of Carrie (1976), Blow Out (1981), Scarface (1983), and The Untouchables (1987) notoriety. It seemed like a match made in cellulose heaven, especially because De Palma and Griffith had previously worked together for one of her Golden Globe-nominated performances, 1984's Body Double.

Costing around $45 million, a huge budget at the time, The Bonfire of the Vanities was a serious bomb, only grossing $15 million domestically on its way to proving that ticket-buyers aren't that dumb. Hoping to properly adapt author Tom Wolfe's best-selling novel of the same, De Palma showed his inadequacies in translating the book's acute social satire against Wall Street sharks. The dark humor isn't funny and the novel's richly defined characters are downgraded into poorly acted caricatures. So much for that starry cast.

Director: Wes Craven

Some bad movies are worth a look simply for the inadvertent laughs; Deadly Friend is so rotten that only 40 seconds of horror icon Wes Craven’s (The Hills Have Eyes, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Scream) silly debacle work on that level.

In perhaps the greatest cinematic use of a basketball, the movie’s villain, dead girl turned homicidal robot Samantha (Kristy Swanson), throws an orange roundball at Anne Ramsey, a.k.a. Mama Fratelli from The Goonies, causing her head to explode like a watermelon struck by a sledgehammer. Then, her body walks around the room like a drunken bar-rat trying to find an exit.

Delete the basketball-to-the-face scene from Deadly Friend and you’d be left with a horrifically acted and overly complicated marriage of horror and sci-fi.

Director: John Landis

To put it simply, John Landis is a master of big-screen comedy. Just check the resumé: National Lampoon's Animal House, Spies Like Us, Trading Places, Coming to America. Actually, Landis isn't only a master, he's one of the greatest comedy film directors of all time. But even titans fall every now and then, and in 1991, Landis unwisely thought that Sylvester Stallone deserved another shot at comedic acting, after 1989's critically panned action-comedy Tango & Cash. Definitely not one of the director's smartest ideas.

An anemic, insulting spoof of mob movies, Oscar stars Sly as a Chicago don named, get this, Angelo "Snaps" Provolone. Which, if you think about it, is slightly better than, say, Vito Mozzarella, but not at all funnier. To Landis' minimal credit, Oscar isn't the worst Stallone comedy of all time; that honor goes to Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot, by a longshot. Cheap solace, no doubt, but it's Landis' own fault.