Glorious Garbage: In Defense of the Terrible Movie Night

Let's be clear about one thing up front: we are not film critics here. Film critics watch bad movies and suffer. We watch bad movies and thrive. There is a difference, and it's the difference between a miserable evening and the best two hours of your group chat's collective life.

Bad movie night is a sacred American institution, and this year's crop of cinematic disasters deserves to be honored properly. Below, our rankings — from merely incompetent to transcendent catastrophe.

The Ranking: Worst of the Year, Best of Nights

5. The CGI Shark Sequel Nobody Asked For. Every year brings a new entry in the killer-shark genre, and every year the shark looks less like an animal and more like a screensaver with a grudge. The plot involves a shark, a storm, and a subplot about a lighthouse that goes absolutely nowhere. Perfect? No. Perfect for yelling at? Absolutely.

4. The Holiday Romance Where the Leads Clearly Met That Morning. Direct-to-streaming Christmas movies are their own art form, and this year's entry features two leads with the chemistry of roommates who split the electric bill. There's a snowball fight scene that appears to have been filmed in one take. There is a small town where every extra is visibly the same twelve people. It's beautiful.

3. The Action Movie Shot Entirely in One Parking Garage. A vanity project, apparently funded by a crypto adjacent company, in which a middle-aged leading man does his own stunts and it shows. The final fight lasts eleven minutes and takes place entirely within sight of the same concrete pillar. We have watched it twice. We will watch it again.

2. The Haunted House Movie Where Nothing Haunts Anything. A horror film so committed to atmosphere that it forgot to include scares, plot, or a second act. Characters wander a mansion, whisper about "the truth," and leave. The truth is never revealed. The truth is that someone got a tax credit for this film.

1. The Dinosaur Time-Travel Movie. We won't say the title, because we want you to experience it fresh. Dinosaurs. Time travel. A scene where a character explains time travel using a sandwich. A child actor who delivers every line like he's reading a hostage statement. It is, by any traditional measure, the worst film of the year — and the single greatest bad movie night pick we've encountered since the genre's all-time classics.

Why Hating Together Beats Loving Alone

Here's the psychology of it: a bad movie is a social object in a way a great movie often isn't. A masterpiece quiets the room. A catastrophe lights it up. Everyone becomes a commentator. Everyone has a theory about what the sandwich means. Everyone gets a turn being funnier than the movie.

There's real bonding in shared outrage. Psychologists have long noted that couples and friends who experience something absurd together report feeling closer than those who experience something pleasant. A bad movie is a controlled disaster — you can laugh at it, dissect it, rank its failures, and walk away unscathed. It's team building with a runtime.

How to Host One That Doesn't Flop

A few ground rules from years of field research:

• Pick something under 100 minutes if possible. Bad movies have a shelf life; past the 90-minute mark, even the funniest disaster becomes a chore.
• Know your audience. First-timers do best with incompetent-but-earnest films. Save the truly deranged stuff for veterans.
• Establish talking rights. At bad movie night, talking over the film isn't rude — it's the whole event. Announce this so nobody shushes anyone.
• Snacks are non-negotiable. You need something to throw. (Gently. We are not monsters.)
• Do a post-game. Fifteen minutes of debrief, best-line rankings, and a vote on next month's pick turns a movie into a tradition.

The Final Word

Cinema gives us two great gifts: the transcendent and the ridiculous. We spend so much energy chasing the first that we forget the second is sitting right there on a streaming menu, waiting, terrible and perfect. This year's worst movies are an embarrassment of riches.

Schedule the night. Invite the group chat. Press play.

You're welcome.