The 10 worst movies of 2020 made a bad year even harder to take
Photo by Clay Enos
Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures
Photo by Justina Mintz
Photo courtesy of Neon
Photo courtesy of Hulu The year 2020 was a double-edged sword for movie lovers. On one hand, the pandemic brought the vast majority of releases straight to streaming or video-on-demand options, giving plenty of options at viewers fingertips. On the other hand, those movies could be a crapshoot, with no guarantee of quality in a year when many studios were just trying to find ways for their movies to be seen. These are the 10 movies that might have been better off not seeing the light of day.
Gif: Allison Corr
Don’t trust anyone who says it’s impossible to make a best movies list in 2020. There were plenty of films to like and even love over this dark, strange, unprecedented year. Just ask the 12 contributors to
The A.V. Club’s list. Each made a ranked ballot of their 15 favorites of 2020, and while there’s certainly overlap on all of them, you’ll also find passion picks sprinkled throughout: the movies that spoke, powerfully and singularly, to one critic in particular. We call those the outliers the films that appeared on one ballot and no others and they’re among the five superlatives affixed to each individual list. Keep reading to get a look behind the scenes of our best-of process, a sense of how our contributors aligned and diverged in their tastes, and maybe a few extra titles to add to your catch-up list as 2020 cycles over to 2021.