10 Worst New Movies of 2021

According to: Selina

 

 
10 – Kandisha
 

Reviewed on: July 19, 2021
Genre: Horror
Rated: Unrated
Length: 85 minutes
Selina’s Rating: 3
Cat’s Rating: 2
 
IMDb Blurb: It's summer break and best friends Amélie, Bintou and Morjana hang together with other neighborhood teens. Nightly, they have fun sharing scary stories and urban legends. But when Amélie is assaulted by her ex, she remembers the story of Kandisha, a powerful and vengeful demon. Afraid and upset, Amélie summons her. The next day, her ex is found dead. The legend is true and now Kandisha is on a killing spree--and it's up to the three girls to break the curse.
 
Kandisha’s crime was mostly in being extremely basic. Aside from that, though, it painted most of the characters as unlikable. It became difficult to sympathize with just about anyone.
 
It did have a decent ending, but that wasn’t enough to save the whole project.
 
9 – The Little Things 
 

Reviewed on: February 3, 2021
Genre: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Rated: R
Length: 127 minutes
Selina’s Rating: 3
Cat’s Rating: 2.5
 
IMDb Blurb: Kern County Deputy Sheriff Joe Deacon is sent to Los Angeles for what should have been a quick evidence-gathering assignment. Instead, he becomes embroiled in the search for a serial killer who is terrorizing the city.
 
The Little Things was more mediocre than bad. If we’d had lower expectations, it probably wouldn’t have even been special enough to make this list. The only reason its here is because it was supposed to be something great.
 
It has a cast of people known to give 110% to all their projects, both in front of (and behind) the camera. So, the fact that The Little Things didn’t live up to even a mildly ok quality makes it unbelievably disappointing.
 
8 – Hunted 
 

Reviewed on: January 13, 2021
Genre: Action, Thriller
Rated: Unrated
Length: 87 minutes
Selina’s Rating: 2.5
Cat’s Rating: 3
 
IMDb Blurb: "The company of wolves is better than that of man." Once upon a frenzied time, Woman meets Man. Woman dances with Man. Man kisses Woman. Man grips Woman. Woman escapes Man. Man chases Woman - nothing new. Or is there?
 
The pacing in Hunted was some of the worst I’ve seen in a long time. It had a decent plot, and the end chase scene is one that still sticks out in my mind. It just took forever to get literally anywhere.
 
It felt like the creative team attempted to balance the graphic scenes with a slow build up in between. It didn’t work. It felt more like a meandering mess.
 
7 – The Superdeep 
 

Reviewed on: June 14, 2021
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Rated: Unrated
Length: 113 minutes
Selina’s Rating: 2
Cat’s Rating: 3
 
IMDb Blurb: A small research team went down below the surface to find out what secret the world's deepest borehole was hiding. What they have found turned out to be the greatest threat in history. And the future of humanity is in their hands.
 
There were whiffs of Resident Evil, The Last of Us, and Doom in The Superdeep. By this, I mean the games – not the films. With that kind of an epic pool to draw from, this film should have been special.
 
Never-the-less, it managed to keep me from completely investing in anything. There was just nothing special to set it apart.
 
6 – Spiral 
 

Reviewed on: May 24, 2021
Genre: Crime, Horror, Mystery
Rated: R
Length: 93 minutes
Selina’s Rating: 2.5
Cat’s Rating: 2.5
 
IMDb Blurb: A criminal mastermind unleashes a twisted form of justice in Spiral, the terrifying new chapter from the book of Saw.
 
I don’t think I could ever fully express just how much Spiral disappointed me.
 
Where the Saw series is concerned, I’m a huge fan. There are certainly weak films in it, but they all have one thing in common: they feel like Saw films. You could start any of them up in the middle and know what series you’re watching.
 
Spiral didn’t share that feeling.
 
As a stand-alone film, it wasn’t the worst. It’s only when the creators decided to try to smoosh it into a Saw box that the problems started.
 
They should have left Saw alone and given this flick a different twist.
 
5 – The Call 
 

Reviewed on: July 12, 2021
Genre: Horror, Thriller
Rated: Unrated
Length: 97 minutes
Selina’s Rating: 2.5
Cat’s Rating: 2.5
 
IMDb Blurb: In the fall of 1987, a group of small-town friends must survive the night in the home of a sinister couple after a tragic accident brings them to the couple's door.
 
The Call wasn’t the worst film, it was just disappointing. The story didn’t feel all that cohesive, and it felt a bit like Tobin Bell (Saw, The Sandman, Gates of Darkness) and Lin Shaye (Ouija: Origin of Evil, Gothic Harvest, Penny Dreadful: City of Angels) were wasted in their parts. Even when they added a bit of a scare to things, it didn’t land well.
 
So much of what happened in The Call felt like lazy writing.
 
The story should have been told from Shaye’s character’s perspective. Then we would have had something special.
 
4 – Agnes 
 

Reviewed on: August 3, 2021
Genre: Drama, Horror
Rated: Unrated
Length: 93 minutes
Selina’s Rating: 2
 
IMDb Blurb: Rumors of demonic possession at a religious convent prompts a church investigation into the strange goings-on among its nuns. A disaffected priest and his neophyte are confronted with temptation, bloodshed and a crisis of faith.
 
Agnes was a victim of bad advertising.
 
Coming attractions painted Agnes as an exorcism horror film – and it was not that.
 
After about a half-hour of exorcism-like storyline, everything flipped, and it became more of a drama based around loss of faith. At times, it even felt a bit preachy (in an abstract way).
 
Audiences were lied to. Plain and simple.
 
3 – The Kissing Booth 3 
 

Reviewed on: August 11, 2021
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Rated: TV-14
Length: 112 minutes
Selina’s Rating: 1.5
Cat’s Rating: 3
 
IMDb Blurb: It's the summer before Elle Evans is set to head off to college, and she has a big decision to make.
 
The Kissing Booth series started out decent. The first movie was not overly special, but it was cute. Then the second one came out and things got a touch more basic, the script became cringier. It was a case of sequelitis and I had hoped that the third one would bring things back to cute.
 
That didn’t happen.
 
The Kissing Booth 3 was awful. It was problematic, overdone, and completely unnecessary. It just took most of what happened in the second film and extended it.
 
I sincerely hope there’s no 4.
 
2 – Ankle Biters 
 

Reviewed on: November 12, 2021
Genre: Comedy, Horror
Rated: Unrated
Length: 91 minutes
Selina’s Rating: 1.5
Cat’s Rating: 2.5
 
IMDb Blurb: Four adorable little girls plot to murder a hockey player after they mistake an act of lovemaking as an attack on their mom.
 
There’s something unnerving about watching kids kill people. It serves up a feeling of wrongness like very little else can. If Ankle Biters was a single-genre horror, it would have been elevated by the concept.
 
Instead, the creators of Ankle Biters insisted on labeling it a horror-comedy, and that’s where things get hazy.
 
There was absolutely nothing comical about this flick. I’m not even sure which parts were supposed to be funny. As a lover of the horror-comedy sub-genre, I’m more than a little disappointed that this film is labeled as such.
 
1 – Dead & Beautiful 
 

Reviewed on: November 5, 2021
Genre: Drama, Horror, Thriller
Rated: Unrated
Length: 98 minutes
Selina’s Rating: 1
 
IMDb Blurb: A group of young and spoiled rich kids turn into vampires after a night out, changing the course of their lives and driving a wedge between them all.
 
Dead & Beautiful failed on nearly all levels. It was a vampire film that had nothing even remotely vampiric in it. It was a thriller with no thrills.
 
It tried to do what April Fool’s Day (1986) did but had no success.