3. Airborne
Director: Dominic Burns
The simple reality that Airborne somehow isn’t wrapping this list up at the number one spot makes me want to grab a barf bag in disgust, as this would easily be in contention for overall “Worst of” glory any other year – but this year, Dominic Burns’ horror travesty was saved by even more inept filmmaking, despite the fact his film took a nosedive harder than a plane without engines carrying 1,000 elephants.
Mark “Luke Skywalker” Hamill was dangled by marketing teams to promote Airborne, hoping people could find happiness in a familiar face, but not even Jedi mind tricks are powerful enough to convince even the simplest mind there exists even an iota of entertaining cinema flying around Burns’ film. What starts as a weak premise turns into a completely mishandled claustrophobic “possession” type “horror” film with zero intensity or tension, never clever nor thrilling enough to raise even the slightest hair on a viewer’s body. I’ve honestly never seen such mediocre work fumbled so mightily, making Airborne not even worth a forced in-flight movie viewing you don’t even have to pay for. Leave the headphones unplugged and deal with the screaming babies, you’ll thank me on that one.
Director: Todd Lincoln
The Apparition – horror movie, or terrible PSA about making contact with the dead? Surely it couldn’t be the first choice, because there wasn’t a single drop of horror to even be found!
Sexy stars Sebastian Stan and Ashley Greene are forced to challenge the existence of an evil force who takes pleasure in Paranormal Activity type activities that upset our couple, and Tom Felton shows up to complicate things and piss off some ghosts along the way – without stringable logic or tactful handling of course. The Apparition features one of the weakest malevolent beings I’ve ever witnessed, having no set rules or regulations for his actions. One minute he can only be seen with a heat detecting device, the other he’s manifesting himself as a contortionist.
Oh yeah, and Sebastian Stan’s character is easily one of the most perplexing horror movie boyfriends in history, doing things even Micha from Paranormal Activity would consider moronic. That, my friends, is the lowest of insults.