For every Oscar-worthy horror film released, around 10 poorly-received ones also come out to tip the scales once again. Suffice to say, there are more critically bad horror films than there are good ones. Because like comedy, what's scary for people varies a lot and how the filmmakers translate their ideas into the horror film can vary a lot from their expectations.
This decade is no exception. Since certain horror films like Get Out, Babadook, A Quiet Place, or It Follows have raised the bar quite high for relevant horror films; that's probably why the worst horror films of this decade didn't get a fighting chance. Now, we did the unholy task of finding ten of the worst horror films of the decade, according to Rotten Tomatoes' critic score. There was no need to include their rating; they were all zero, meaning no critic liked them. Such is life.
PORTALS
Portals is a horror movie centered around black holes and since no one fully understands those monstrous things just yet, you can bet the film botched its handling for the inspirational material. Some crazy scientists managed to create an artificial black hole and introduced a bunch of randomly appearing portals to the world.
This portal then takes everyone to an alternate reality which turns their brain into an omelet, and some of them come out all bloody but physically safe. Despite the promising hook and bait, the film never actually explores the alternate reality any further and just settles for gore. You could replace the portals with anything else and the result would still be the same, perhaps even better rated.
THE GALLOWS ACT II
It's amazing how they made a sequel for this film; turns out not many people even remember the first The Gallows movie. Anyway, this film's story revolves around a social media vlogger girl who supernaturally got trapped in a horrific stage playbook re-enactment called "The Gallows" which was cursed.
It's also in found footage format and utilizes the exhaustive trope of careless teenage kids conjuring an evil big bad. Replace the stage playbook with an Oujia board and you still get the same results and the movie might even make more sense. Despite the terrible critical reception, The Gallows Act II is well-liked by the audience.
I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE 2
The first I Spit on Your Grave was a revenge controversial horror film about a girl seeking revenge against her violators; it has since been remade in 2010 and somehow even got a sequel despite mishandling its socially relevant subject matter. Hence, I Spit on Your Grave 2 was hated by both the critics and the regular people who watched it.
I Spit on Your Grave 2 is nothing more than a torture movie. After being assaulted by several men, the protagonist musters up her rage and malevolence and rounds them up to torture them. If anything, it seems as if the target audience of I Spit on Your Grave 2 are the very men similar to the ones being tortured in the movie.
FADING OF THE CRIES
Since we're featuring utterly bad horror movies in this list, there is bound to be at least one of those "so bad, it's so good" B-movies. Well, we present you Fading of the Cries, a fantasy horror film which puts high school project videos to shame-- which isn't exactly an achievement.
It's a film so cheaply made with abysmal CGI, unconvincing lighting, and a gobblygook plot that it makes the likes of Sharknado look decent enough. It even looks as if all the actors in this film are being held on set against their will. But hey, if you like watching The Room for odd entertainment value, do give this one a try.
LOST BOYS: THE THIRST
Not many things in Lost Boys: The Thirst makes sense but here goes the story: an alpha vampire wants to take over the world by turning everyone undead, so he disguises vampire blood as a designer drug in order to turn everyone into his minions.
Only two brothers can stop them: the Lost Boys, they call themselves, because apparently, the government and their military are nonexistent. Seriously, that's the whole movie and all of it is conveyed through cheesy acting and dialogue that it looks like a Key and Peele sketch or a Rick and Morty interdimensional cable joke.
WORLD OF THE DEAD: THE ZOMBIE DIARIES 2
As you might have guessed, World of the Dead: The Zombie Diaries 2 is a zombie apocalypse flick. The problem is that the filmmakers think it's still the 1980s and that people like a zombie film that takes itself too seriously. So, what you get in this film is a poorly though-out zombie movie with questionable plot and logic.
The film chronicles the exploits of a band of soldiers who survived a zombie outbreak, wiping out 99.9 percent of the human population. They fortified themselves in a military base with a really tall fence, a generator, a ton of firepower, and only two gates-- but somehow, the moronic zombies still managed to get inside.
DARK TIDE
Oh boy, a shark movie featuring Halle Berry, what could go wrong? It's hard to fathom why Berry even accepted this role, being an Academy Award winner and all, but then again, she was also the lead in 2004's Catwoman. That isn't to say that everything in Dark Tide is bad; in fact, it has good production value and the filmmakers look like they didn't cheap out on anything.
What earned the critics' ire was the boring plot and the equally one-dimensional characters. That and shark horror movies have already been done to death ever since Spielberg made a film whose title rhymes with "paws."
PLAYBACK
The surprising thing about Playback is how critics hate it but the regular moviegoer actually likes it. It has a decent audience score of 76 percent despite having a whopping zero percent in the critical reception. That was probably due to how derivative it was; most people compared it to The Ring.
It involves a person possessed by an evil spirit who can attack its victims through video playbacks, hence the film's title. Apparently, that idea could have been explored a lot better; Playback definitely has the ambition, it's just that the filmmakers executed the whole thing quite awfully.
STRANDED
Now here's a movie that almost nobody likes, Stranded. It only has an audience score of nine percent, so nothing's saving this film. It's about an isolated military moon base that got bombarded by a meteor storm, effectively stranding them in the place.
Oh, and to make matters more interesting, the meteors that bombarded them also came with alien spores... then these spores manifested physically into a shapeshifting and inhuman creature stronger and deadlier than anyone. Gee whiz, now where have we seen that plot and shapeshifting monster trope before?
BUTCHER BOYS
Apparently, this movie was made by the creator of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, so it also involves cannibals, as the title implies. A rowdy, hormonal, and unlikeable gang of young adults happen upon the slaughterhouse of The Butcher Boys, international predators who literally believe that "you are what you eat," so they only eat humans.
If you manage to make it through the first half of the film, just stop there since the second half completely ruins the whole thing. Sadly, not many things can salvage the film despite the filmmakers taking an ending page out of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre.