It is the goal of nearly every cinematic experience to be a worthwhile experience for the audience, whether it be through exciting and enthralling thrills or compelling storytelling. There is nothing quite like a film being able to completely capture one’s full attention while it delivers a captivating and exceptional viewing experience that audiences won’t soon forget. However, for every film that has a major impact on audiences, there are also films that accomplish the exact opposite, being so boring that they are often forgotten about as soon as they end.
It makes for an especially dismal and underwhelming film experience to be overwhelmingly boring, as even some of the worst films of all time have some unintentional entertainment value from their lack of qualities. By comparison, these egregiously boring films offer next to nothing in terms of a viewing experience, quickly losing the attention of the audience and failing to provide anything interesting in their storytelling. While some of these are far from the worst films ever made, they are certainly in contention for being among the most forgettable.
10
‘Thor: The Dark World’ (2013)
Directed by Alan Taylor
While the Marvel Cinematic Universe has released several of the most entertaining and acclaimed blockbusters of the 21st century, it has also released its fair share of notorious duds, none more boring than Thor: The Dark World. While both the previous film and even the sequels find ways of making the most out of the creative fantasy setpieces and excitement of Thor as a character, Thor: The Dark World completely wastes the potential of the character.
Between the underwhelming and uninteresting story, action and pacing that proves to be a direct downgrade from the previous film, and one of the most generic and underwhelming villains in the entire MCU, Thor: The Dark World feels purposefully made to be as underwhelming as possible. Over a decade after the film’s release, it easily stands as one of the most forgotten and lowest quality entries in the entire MCU, especially compared to the exceptional sequel, Thor: Ragnarok.
9
‘Diary of a Mad Black Woman’ (2005)
Directed by Darren Grant
Few filmmakers are as widely divisive and contentious in their body of work as Tyler Perry, with his long-lasting Madea franchise especially having as many long-time haters as it has vehement defenders. However, Perry’s first cinematic debut as the character, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, doesn’t have nearly the alluring nature of later entries, instead primarily being an underwhelming and sometimes problematic romantic drama. Even Perry debuting as Madea as a side character isn’t enough to save the film’s sluggish pacing and bare-bones storytelling.
The lackluster storytelling and uninteresting nature of the majority of the film, combined with its nearly 2-hour runtime, makes Diary of a Mad Black Woman a highly dull and cumbersome experience. It certainly doesn’t help that, after an hour of next-to-nothing interesting happening, its attempts to actually do something during the climax prove to make the character deeply unlikable and unfun to watch. Whether the later Madea films are objectively better is up to debate, but they’re certainly more entertaining, for better or for worse.
8
’65’ (2023)
Directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods
While the prospect of a sci-fi action film where a futuristic Adam Driver takes down dinosaurs on a prehistoric earth seems like a lot of fun, 65 severely butchers and flounders on the potential of its goofy premise. The film sets itself up to be an over-the-top action film with constant encounters and battles with dinosaurs featuring future technology, yet the vast majority of the film doesn’t feature any dinosaur action whatsoever. Instead, most of the film focuses on the main character’s connection with the only other surviving human on the planet and mental turmoil with his past and family back home.
Even when the film decides to actually provide some dinosaur action during the climax, it is far beyond the point of interest, made worse by the action itself being largely underwhelming and generic. The awful sci-fi film has nothing to add to the genre in terms of effective storytelling and doesn’t even have the decency to be entertaining with its goofy premise, instead being one of the most forgettable films in Driver’s entire filmography.
7
‘Paranormal Activity 4’ (2012)
Directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman
The filmmaking of the Paranormal Activity franchise has always been defined by a slow and methodical nature, being a feature-length buildup of tension before having genuine, realistic scares in its final act. However, while this approach proved to be effective for the first few entries, it can only be effective so many times before it gets dull and tiring, with Paranormal Activity 4‘s lack of changes making it a complete bore to sit through.
The once groundbreaking and tension-fueled filmmaking style of the original film has been completely drained of any effectiveness by this fourth entry, making the film a test of patience more than anything else. The characters simply aren’t as interesting or compelling as previous entries, making the simmering attempts at horror come across much more as a bore when audiences are completley in-tune with the franchise’s formula by now. While later entries would attempt to experiment more with the formula, Paranormal Activity 4 still stands out as one of the most boring and forgettable horror movies of the era.
6
‘The Titan’ (2018)
Directed by Lennart Ruff
While The Titan presents a relatively unique and exciting premise for a sci-fi thriller, its slow pacing and underwhelming hooks prove to make the entire film an absolute slog to sit through. The film takes place in a bleak, near-apocalyptic future, where, in an attempt to save humanity, soldier Rick Janssen (Sam Worthington) becomes the test subject for a radical genetic transformation that will allow him to survive and preserve humanity as a whole. However, Rick’s wife begins to elicit concerns that he is losing a sense of his human-self, becoming more creature than man.
While there is inherent potential and thematic resonance with the topic of forced evolution and losing touch of humanity, akin to a David Cronenberg film, The Titan only brushes up against these compelling themes. Instead, the poorly written sci-fi film is more focused on meandering around and wasting as much time as possible as it moves towards its inevitable ending at a snail’s pace. The goofy design of the creature that Worthington turns into at the end is the only thing in the film that leaves a discernable impact, as the rest is as forgettable and boring as it gets.
5
‘The Turning’ (2020)
Directed by Floria Sigismondi
One of the most important facets of effective horror movies is the constant balancing act between tension, scares, and storytelling to make for a thrilling and effective experience. However, when a film focuses too much on scares without any effective tension or storytelling, it can quickly turn into an annoying and aggressively boring experience. One of the most prominent modern horror films that fails in this regard is The Turning, whose cheap scares and laughably bad pacing have garnered it a reputation as one of the worst horror movies of recent memory.
The film follows Kate (Mackenzie Davis), a young woman who has quit her teaching job to become the private tutor and governess for a duo of wealthy young children. However, the old mansion that the children live in proves to be home to a wide array of strange occurrences, as Kate begins to suspect that there is much more beneath the surface. If the genetic story and painfully ineffective scares weren’t bad enough, the notoriously bad ending cements the film as a worthless viewing experience with nothing to offer aside from boredom.
4
‘Leonard Part 6’ (1987)
Directed by Paul Weiland
More than any other genre out there, comedy movies are most directly hurt and impacted if they come across as boring and uninteresting, as without an array of effective and entertaining jokes, the film has nothing else to offer. Even many of the worst comedies out there have at least some level of inherent allure that stops them from being boring, yet this does not apply to the notoriously terrible spy parody, Leonard Part 6. The film’s complete lack of effective comedy timing makes its short 85-minute runtime feel like an eternity, as well as making the entire experience feel hollow and unwatchable.
The film sees Bill Cosby as Leonard Parker, a former spy who found himself quitting the business to be the owner of a famous restaurant, now dealing with the complications and chaos of family life. As his relationship with his wife and daughter continues to dwindle, the government continues to harass and ask Leonard to return to the world of espionage in order to save the world again. The film was already a notorious critical bomb when it first released, yet it has only grown to be more boring and painfully unfunny with age, being easily one of the worst comedies of the 80s.
Leonard Part 6
- Release Date
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December 18, 1987
- Runtime
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85
- Director
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Paul Weiland
3
‘The Last Airbender’ (2010)
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
Considering just how impactful and entertaining the original Avatar: The Last Airbender animated series is, it makes it all the more painful that this live-action blockbuster adaptation is so boring from beginning to end. The Last Airbender faces the majority of its problems from attempting to shorten down an entire season of television into a single 100-minute feature-length film. In able to accomplish this bafflingly stupid decision, the film cuts all the personality, flair, and entertaining parts of the original show and leaves only a hollow, soulless array of bad effects and even worse performances.
What were once characters filled with charm and life as they went on various ventures and had seamless chemistry with one another have been transformed into boring templates with little-to-no personality to speak of. Even when director M. Night Shyamalan attempts to provide his own signature quirks as a directive into the film, they actively clash with the tone and style of the original story, making the entire experience even more underwhelming and ineffective.
2
‘Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey’ (2023)
Directed by Rhys Frake-Waterfield
Playing against expectations is one of the most important prospects of any film, as if a film is so predictable that audiences can pick up on what they will experience before the film even begins, then the entire film becomes much more boring. Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey proves to be not just one of the most predictable and obvious horror films out there, yet it manages to disappoint at even the lowest of expectations with its complete lack of compelling kills or horror antics.
The appeal and allure of a children’s mascot being a sadistic killer is only effective for so long, as the fun of the premise quickly wears off when the killer versions of Pooh and Piglet feel interchangable with any number of horror villains. Without a twisted comedic edge that makes use of the character’s past, it simply comes across as an especially boring slasher with no personality or charm retained from the characters whose likenesses they’re banking on.
1
‘Finding Jesus’ (2020)
Directed by Jason Wright
Even the worst films of all time can at the very least say that there is something happening on-screen, no matter how boring or poorly executed it may be, that asks for the attention of the audiences watching it. Finding Jesus puts in the absolute bare minimum when it comes to bringing a story to a visual medium such as film, coming across less like a cinematic experience and more of an extended wallpaper with an hour of dialogue attached. The film only has about 5 minutes of original animation, repeating the same looping scenes as its characters talk about Christianity for 69 minutes.
With the film quickly running out of original or even different animation to use after the 5-minute mark, the rest of the film quickly becomes a test of patience and excruciating boredom. If the actual dialogue were interesting, there’s a chance that the film would garner some attention, yet it constantly repeats the same marks and boring conversation points to where audiences will tune it out within minutes. One would genuinely gain more entertainment from watching a fish in a fish tank for an hour instead of watching Finding Jesus.
- Release Date
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December 29, 2020
- Runtime
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69 minutes
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KJ Schrock
Professor Shark / Boo Cakes / Mr Sushi (voice)
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Angie Gillespie
Narrator / Joy (voice)
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Victor Merchan
Henry (voice)
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Sarah Taylor
Muggles / Delfi / Scales / Snaps (voice)
