It's hard well-nigh impossible to argue their value is anything like that of good movies, but there is value in watching bad movies. Sometimes they're so-bad-they're-good, and fun. Sometimes their productions are tales of hubris. Sometimes it's great for an aspiring filmmaker to have a good idea of what not to do.
According to IMDb's infamous Bottom 100, these are the 10 absolute worst movies in the history of the planet. Take whatever you can from these historically, unanimously panned dumpster fires.
10. 'Battlefield Earth' (2000)
Battlefield Earth is a notorious critical and flop that will forever live in infamy. It was a passion project for John Travolta, and if there's any redeeming value here (that's debatable) it's his scenery chewing. Based on the book by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, it's about an advanced alien species that ends up being no match for more primitive Earthlings.
Battlefield Earth is a record-breaking darling of the Razzies, among many dishonors. Plans for a sequel (hard to believe there ever were any) were scrapped.
9. 'Epic Movie' (2007)
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A craze of spoof movies launched in the very early aughts with Keenan Ivory Wayans' original slasher parody Scary Movie, a lowbrow but undeniably hilarious farce that was, for a time, the highest-grossing movie from a Black director. More "spoof" films, if you can even call them that, got lazier and lazier, bottoming out with a run of films from Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg that include Date Movie, Meet the Spartans and this artistically bankrupt mashup of scenes from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Harry Potter and other popular IPs of the time.
Epic Movie is so shapeless, so aggressively unfunny, so unpleasant, it makes something like, say, Scary Movie 2, look like Airplane!. There is exactly one element that isn't atrocious, and that's Jennifer Coolidge as villain "The White B*tch." The movie gives her less than nothing to work with, but this is an actor who can't not be funny.
8. 'Saving Christmas' (2014)
Growing Pains star and Golden Globe nominee Kirk Cameron's yuletide clunker has a surprisingly convoluted plot about a Christmas party, quarreling in-laws, and purging Christmas of materialism. Cameron has gone on record theorizing that the film's unanimously poor critical and fan reception was the result of a conspiracy.
It isn't fair to outright knock faith-based movies. 2021's American Underdog was a touching, well-acted hybrid of faith and sports film, and that's just one example. But Saving Christmas, like many faith-based movies of modern times, is cinematically anemic. The irony here, or at least some of the irony, is that a movie ostensibly about restoring Christmas spirit comes off as chilly and cynical. Depressing, even.
7. 'Son of the Mask' (2005)
Jamie Kennedy was very charming as hell as Randy in Scream, but he's no match for Jim Carrey in a sequel that frankly should never have been greenlit.
Son of the Mask is infamous for unattractive visuals, crude special effects and uninspired performances. It's a pale imitation of the Oscar-nominated original. Released the year that Carrey rose to unprecedented levels of stardom with Dumb and Dumber and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, the original film has aged very well.
6. 'House of the Dead' (2003)
Video game movies deserve their reputation for being cursed. For every Sonic the Hedgehog or Detective Pikachu (and there are, count them, two of those, and one Sonic sequel), there are seemingly innumerable game adaptations that offer nothing but numbing, lame action and ineffective fan service.
Arguably the very worst of the bunch, though it's got some competition from Alone in the Dark, also directed by Uwe Boll, is House of the Dead, a movie that's somehow more repetitive than the arcade rail shooter it's based on. House might ultimately have the edge as the worst of the genre for an infamous, excruciating creative decision to simply lay moments from the game over scenes from the film.
5. 'The Hottie and the Nottie' (2008)
In 2005, Paris Hilton appeared in Black Adam director Jaume Collet-Sera's House of Wax. Due in large part to Hilton's public image and notoriety at the time, that film, an uncommonly good slasher, received negative buzz it didn't deserve. The Hottie and the Nottie marks a big-screen return for Hilton (now in a starring role), and this one is, truly, a remarkable stinker.
With a title that obtusely presents truth in advertising, The Hottie and the Nottie is about an attractive twentysomething who refuses to go on a date until her less-hottie best friend finds a suitor. It's kind of like a modern-day fairy tale, gone to hell. The Hottie and the Nottie is as morally deficient as it is narratively inept.
4. 'Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2' (2004)
If Baby Geniuses was one of the worst movies of 1999 (and it was), the sequel is noticeably much worse, if you can believe it. Jon Voight stars as a nefarious madmen hellbent on controlling minds, opposite a cast of toddlers with unconvincing, Uncanny Valley talking effects.
Superbabies was reviled by critics in a way few movies ever have been. It's frequently ranked near the bottom of many all-time worst roundups.
3. 'Birdemic: Shock and Terror' (2010)
It's like The Birds, without Alfred Hitchcock... and it's terrible. Special effects that evoke a screensaver from a quarter-century ago, an unconvincing romance, and an environmental message are all ingredients in a would-be thriller that's been appreciated as a fun disasterpiece since its release.
It's a bad-movie-night essential, risen to infamy in the same era as The Room. It's not as unintentionally pleasurable as that, but this definitely is squarely in so-bad-it's-good territory. A sequel was released in 2013; a threequel is reported to be in development.
2. 'Manos: The Hands of Fate' (1966)
A classic of claptrap that's held up, or "held up," for all the wrong reasons for nearly six full decades, Manos: The Hands of Fate is a low-fi eyesore (and earsore) about a family that runs into a sacrificial cult after taking a wrong turn in Texas.
Manos: The Hands of Fate is hard to endure on its own, despite running just over one hour. With the right group of friends who love bad movies, it's a glacially-paced party. It's also, famously, the butt of the joke on one of the all-time best episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000.
1. 'Disaster Movie' (2008)
A movie placing atop this list could appear to suggest it's so-bad-it's-good. In the case of Disaster Movie, that simply isn't so. Another Friedberg and Seltzer mashup of dated references, without a single actual joke—ya know, set up and payoff, like jokes have always been—in sight. Here are 90 minutes of cultural hooliganism strung together with a plot about twentysomethings encountering disasters of nature and man-made origin. This is an uncomfortable, even grueling watch.
Whether Disaster Movie is truly the worst movie ever made is, maybe, debatable. But damned if it isn't at least worthy of consideration of that mantle of ill repute. This is where creativity goes to die.