STX Entertainment
2018 has been a great year for films that has reinvigorated the box office. But every year comes with the obvious duds at the cinema, and this summer is no exception.
That statement is especially true for August, which saw an unusually high number of films that were torn apart by critics and bombed at the box office (thanks goodness for “Crazy Rich Asians”). This August was just a dumping ground for bad films.
We gathered the 10 worst films of summer 2018 according to critics (six of which were released in August) and ranked them from bad to worst, based on this list from review-aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.
They range from a Melissa McCarthy R-rated puppet comedy to one of the worst-reviewed films of Mark Wahlberg’s career.
Below are the 10 worst films of the summer, according to critics:
10. “A-X-L”
Global Road Entertainment
Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 27%
Release date: August 24
What critics said: “From the poster, ‘A.X.L.’ looks like one of the fake films Vinny Chase would star in on Entourage, which might lead you to believe that it’s a good choice for a night of getting drunk and laughing at a bad movie with your friends. It is not.” — Katie Rife, AV Club
9. “Breaking In”
Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 27%
Release date: May 11
What critics said: “Just in time for Mother’s Day, ‘Breaking In’ gifts moms everywhere with a thrill-free, home-invasion thriller about a mom (Gabrielle Union) who’ll stop at nothing to keep four bad guys from killing her two kids. That’s the plot, folks. It never goes any deeper than that, or gets any less predictable.” — Peter Travers, Rolling Stone
8. “Overboard”
Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 25%
Release date: May 4
What critics said: “The initial premise, so self-consciously silly in 1987, seems even more implausible in the internet age. Wouldn’t it be national news that the playboy son of one of the wealthiest men in the world and heir to his company has gone missing and/or died in a shark attack, which his vengeful sister tries to claim in order to get control of her ailing father’s company?” — Lindsey Bahr, Associated Press
7. “The Happytime Murders”
“The Happytime Murders”STX Entertainment
Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 22%
Release date: August 24
What critics said: “The idea of Jim Henson’s son appropriating the Sesame Street aesthetic for a nihilistic blood- (or stuffing-) bath rich in F-words and ejaculatory (literally) gags is, on an Oedipal level, tantalizing. But The Happytime Murders turns out to be a stupefyingly sh—y puppet movie.” — David Edelstein, Vulture
6. “Mile 22”
Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 21%
Release date: August 17
What critics said: “‘Mile 22′ is an artless and incoherent wannabe blockbuster that follows a CIA paramilitary caravan as they try to escort a high-level informant out of a collapsing Southeast Asian country. The film does such a poor job of explaining its plot that — at the 30-minute mark — John Malkovich has to stop the movie in its tracks and literally reiterate everything that’s happened so far. At its essence, ‘Mile 22’ is part ‘Sicario’, part ‘The Raid’, and all deeply terrible.” — David Ehrlich, Indiewire
5. “Action Point”
Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 17%
Release date: June 1
What critics said: “The story goes that the crew behind ‘Action Point’ had to build the whole thing in South Africa, and that Knoxville did all of the stunts himself, of course. Watching Knoxville and his team design some of these truly life-threatening rides and conceive the stunts would probably be more interesting than the movie that resulted from them.” — Brian Tallerico, RogerEbert.com
4. “The Darkest Minds”
Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 17%
Release date: August 3
What critics said: “There is no resolution for any of the story lines haphazardly dangling like electrical wires. The central villain is not defeated, main plot points are not untangled. When the credits roll, there has been no catharsis for the 90 minutes of movie preceding it, which makes it all feel like a protracted introductory sequence for a sequel that, god willing, will never come.” — Dana Schwartz, Entertainment Weekly
3. “Show Dogs”
Global Road Entertainment
Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 17%
Release date: May 18
What critics said: “That its canine cast’s one-liners are groanworthy is a given, but what’s odd is that there’s little about ‘Show Dogs’ you could even call cute, which, frankly, seems odd for a movie so sure of its dog-powered pizzazz that it has a chihuahua make the winking crack that nobody makes talking-animal films anymore.” — Robert Abele, TheWrap
2. “Slender Man”
Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 7%
Release date: August 10
What critics said: “One of the most boring wide-release horror flicks of recent years, Sylvain White’s ‘Slender Man’ attempts to make a conventional feature out of an internet phenomenon whose appeal seems to rest largely on its folkloric amorphousness. Older audiences that know nothing of the meme (which has inspired countless bits of fan fiction and even been associated with acts of real-world violence) will find nothing here to explain its popularity.” — John DeFore, Hollywood Reporter
1. “Death of a Nation”
Rotten Tomatoes critic score: 0%
Release date: August 3
What critics said: “The facts don’t matter; only the showbiz addiction of the fight matters. That and the chance to let viewers get their rage-fueled rocks off. That’s how brainwashing works in a nation that has begun to distort reality from the top down. And it’s the way that Dinesh D’Souza has always worked, going back to his campus days as a red-meat-dweeb conservative at Dartmouth.” — Owen Gleiberman, Variety
