The Most Disappointing Horror Movies Of 2023
The state of horror in 2023 is strong. Familiar names such as Brandon Cronenberg and Eli Roth returned with "Infinity Pool" and "Thanksgiving" and so did "Re-Animator" screenwriter Dennis Paoli, writer of "Suitable Flesh," his first realized feature script in over 20 years. Old franchises returned, too, with "Evil Dead Rise" and even "Saw X" doing well critically and commercially. Less established filmmakers have also made an impression, namely Nahnatchka Khan, director of "Totally Killer," and Danish debut filmmaker Gabriel Bier Gislason, who helmed "Attachment."
But away from "M3GAN," "When Evil Lurks" and the numerous other highlights, there were still some disappointments that were lackluster, recycled, underplayed, overplayed, or in one or two cases, just underwhelming in almost every aspect of production. There is little pleasure to be had in chronicling such disappointment, but it is a service any critic must provide at one time or another. So let's dig into some of the most disappointing horror movies of 2023.
Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey
I grew up near the Ashdown Forest, the home of Winnie the Pooh, and I can confirm that the ancient woodland is under attack by two cynical cash grabs: one by the local council's new parking fees near the best dog walking routes, and the other by a ludicrous slasher film called "Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey," which appropriates the much loved bear and turns him into Leatherface from "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre."
Winnie the Pooh — or Honeyface, as you might call him — has turned from a diminutive bear into a large anthropomorphic beast. Pooh is consumed with vengeance, since Christopher Robin left for university, and when the naive young man returns, he must reckon with Pooh's trauma. Meanwhile, a group of young women check in to a nearby holiday let, because this movie needs a bodycount.
How did filmmaker Rhys Frake-Waterfield get away with this? Well, he kept an eye on A.A. Milne's original 1926 novel and waited for it to enter the US public domain, which it did in January 2022. After raising just $100,000, the film was shot over 10 days in the Ashdown Forest and released in early 2023.
"Blood and Honey" could have been a bit of fun, but the film is so badly made that it amounts to little more than a cynical business venture. The camera thrashes around and fails to capture anything the viewer might want to see, namely the kills, which are often glimpsed at in a shadowy, chaotic blur because the filmmakers have neither the means nor the ability to show what is actually happening. The dialogue is woeful, the plotting is a mess, and the performances range from barely competent to aggressively bad.
Cast: Nikolai Leon, Craig David Dowsett, Maria Taylor, Natasha Rose Mills, Amber Doig-Thorne
Director: Rhys Frake-Waterfield
Rating: R
Runtime: 84 minutes
Where to watch: Peacock
Children of the Corn
"Children of the Corn" has never ranked among the horror genre's best franchises. The original 1984 film has a Rotten Tomatoes critic score of 39% and its sequel, "Children of the Corn II: The Final Sacrifice," is nine points lower at 30%. The other seven films of the original series — all of them direct-to-video — scored below 15%, with three getting 0% and two getting no reviews at all.
The series returned in March with "Children of the Corn," the franchise's second reboot. The first, released in 2009, bombed with another 0% score on Rotten Tomatoes, and while this new film has received more attention and slightly better reviews, the consensus is as damning as ever — "Bereft of a single kernel of fear or excitement, this Children of the Corn suggests the franchise is irrevocably lost in a maize of sub-mediocrity."
That's a pity, because the plot, which pitches sickle-carrying kids against their GMO-peddling parents, isn't as lazy as it could have been. Kate Moyer's performance as Eden, the proverbial "Village of the Damned" child, can't be faulted either.
Cast: Elena Kampouris, Kate Moyer, Callan Mulvey
Director: Kurt Wimmer
Rating: R
Runtime: 92 minutes
Where to watch: AMC+, Shudder
Five Nights at Freddy's
The fan service of "Five Nights at Freddy's" may have earned almost $300 million at the box office and a score of 87% among Rotten Tomatoes users, but most of those unfamiliar with the video games that inspired it were left very cold. "I felt like I was on the outside looking in," wrote critic James Berarnadelli, whose son was far more invested, "I was more bored than scared... the narrative is dumb and the writing cringe-worthy." Many critics joined Berarnadelli in this appraisal, with the movie earning only a 31% critical score at Rotten Tomatoes.
Still, this won't bother Blumhouse, the buzzing independent production company behind "Paranormal Activity," "Split," and "Get Out." "Five Nights at Freddy's" earned more than those films and any other project in the company's history, so Fangoria's report of a three-film contract is all but confirmed. Parents and guardians will just have to grin and bear it.
Cast: Scott Cawthon, Seth Cuddeback, Emma Tammi
Director: Emma Tammi
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 109 minutes
Where to watch: Peacock
Bunker
"Bunker" adds a supernatural element to the First World War but forgets the scares. Well, it remembers to at least try, but in doing so director Adrian Langley smothers scene after scene with an overbearing score that flattens every jump and all suspense. The performances do little to pick up the slack because they are varying degrees of stiff and stagey. Most memorable is Patrick Moltane with his "Blackadder" routine as Lieutenant Turner, who leads a group of men with an unconvincing cutglass authority.
Turner is a cliche surrounded by cliches, such as the nervous boy soldier and the war weary drunk. Mercifully, the film's opening doesn't wallow in mud-and-blood conventions for too long; Lt. Turner calls his curiously small team together — the budgetary constraints are clear — and leads them over the top toward an empty German trench. There, they find a mysterious tunnel system with a crucified enemy soldier at its center. Then, bewildered by such ritualistic self harm, the men head for the exit only to be struck by artillery, blocking their way and sealing them in the labyrinth, which slowly reveals its secrets to them. This may sound good and creepy but there is an unerring flatness to it all. Langley never strikes the right pitch — it's stiff, stagey, and both overplayed and underplayed.
Cast: Eddie Ramos, Patrick Moltane, Julian Feder
Director: Adrian Langley
Rating: R
Runtime: 108 minutes
Where to watch: Amazon, Vudu, Microsoft, Apple
The Exorcist: Believer
Thanks to the new "Halloween" trilogy, David Gordon Green has become the industry's Head Horror Reboot Officer, but this latest effort crashed with critics, who attacked its lack of scares and new ideas. Chief among its detractors is British critic Mark Kermode, who has a highly emotional relationship with the "Exorcist" franchise. He has seen the 1973 original over 200 times and considers it the greatest film ever made; however, "The Exorcist II" is the "worst film" ever made, "The Exorcist Dominion" is the "most boring" film ever made, and "The Exorcist: The Beginning" is the "stupidest" film ever made.
Fortunately, there are no such superlatives in Kermode's review of "Believer," although he did conclude his detailed and extensive critique with, "It's as bad as it could have been and then some." The Rotten Tomatoes consensus may have agreed with Kermode, but audiences generated box office receipts of some $136 million (via The Numbers). Still, an IMDb score of 4.8 suggests that the 2025 sequel — "The Exorcist: Deceiver" — may not enjoy such revenue.
Cast: Leslie Odom Jr., Lidya Jewett, Olivia O'Neill
Director: David Gordon Green
Rating: R
Runtime: 111 minutes
Where to watch: Peacock
The Black Demon
Can the essence of "Jaws" ever be recaptured? No, not by "The Shallows," not by "47 Meters Down," and certainly not by "The Black Demon." It begins adequately with oil executive Paul Sturges (Josh Lucas) and his family visiting a small town in Baja California, where Paul's wife, son and daughter are supposed to stay while he evaluates an off-shore oil rig. However, when the locals turn hostile, Paul's family flee to join him on the oil rig, where they and Paul find further torment not by locals but by an enormous, 70-ton megalodon shark known as "el demonio negro" — the black demon.
All of this B-movie silliness is established in a serviceable manner, but the light entertainment cannot be sustained when we see more of the titular black demon, which barges through the water in a series of highly unconvincing CGI sequences. When we realize that the film cannot deliver the monster movie spectacle we had hoped for, "The Black Demon" plummets in interest, despite the chemistry between the leads.
Cast: Josh Lucas, Fernanda Urrejola, Julio Cesar Cedillo.
Director: Adrian Grünberg
Rating: R
Runtime: 100 minutes
Where to watch: Prime Video
Hunt Her, Kill Her
The frank title suggests a slasher of real blunt force and that is, in fact, what "Hunt Her, Kill Her" succeeds in being, only with an effect that leaves a rather bad taste in your mouth. The plot is high concept: Karen (Natalie Terrazino) is a modest cleaner stuck in a warehouse seized by murderers. If "Under Siege" is "Die Hard" on a battleship and "The Rock" is "Die Hard" in Alcatraz, then "Hunt Her, Kill Her" is "Die Hard" in a warehouse and a slasher film.
This is a problem, because slasher films are derivative enough without bearing the DNA of an action film. Derivation can be fun, of course, but there are few good times to be had in "Hunt Her, Kill Her." Terrazino brings an everywoman credibility to her performance, but her enemies are nondescript to the point of being NPCs and their deaths, improvised by our resourceful heroine, are often just plain ugly rather than cathartic. When all the bludgeoning and bloodletting is over, you wonder what the point was.
Cast: Natalie Terrazzino, JC Oakley III, Ed Bailey
Director: Greg Swinson, Ryan Thiessen
Rating: R
Runtime: 89 minutes
Where to watch: Amazon, Vudu, Microsoft, Apple, DirecTV
Scream VI
Last year's "Scream" reboot was disappointing, and so was "Scream VI," aka "Ghostface Takes Manhattan." One should always be suspicious when a franchise does the "same thing, different place" routine because it suggests, or rather declares, a lack of fresh ideas. Unfortunately, no amount of NYC establishing shots can distract you from just how rinsed this franchise has become.
The self-aware genre talk was novel 27 years ago, now it's just annoying. The quips are irksome, too, especially when mixed with the incessant profanity (I like four letter words, but please, remember some wit). Then there are the bouts of maudlin emotionality that linger between the kills and pad the bloated 122-minute running time. How can anyone find empathy in a slideshow of murder and winking irony?
Critics who deride slasher films as recycled installments of cheap violence and throwaway characters will be vindicated by "Scream VI," but with a box office haul of $168 million against a $35 million budget (via The Numbers), Paramount Pictures isn't pulling the plug just yet, even if the franchise has an uphill battle.
Cast: Melissa Barrera, Jenna Ortega, Jasmin Savoy Brown, Mason Gooding, Hayden Panettiere and Courteney Cox.
Director: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett
Rating: R
Runtime: 122 minutes
Where to watch: FuboTV, Paramount+
El Conde
After capturing the lives of Jackie Kennedy and Princess Diana with his chilly, deliberate aesthetic, Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larrain took aim at the fascist dictator who once ruled his country, Augusto Pinochet. "El Conde" takes a surreal turn from the director's previous biopics, though, for it depicts Pinochet not just as a military dictator but also a vampire capable of flight and consumed by a lustful appetite for blood from victims across the world (English blood tastes the best, we're told).
A macabre, deadpan humor runs through the film and Larrain casts a gothic monochrome palette over it, mixing grayscale locales with oily blood and gore. The effect is striking and offbeat, but Larrain's vampiric-political conceit that fascism nourishes the leader and not the people cannot sustain the film's near two-hour running time. "El Conde" thus becomes a quite dull and one note caricature that would have likely been more powerful if Larrain had used his typical, mature brand of storytelling.
Cast: Jaime Vadell, Gloria Münchmeyer, Alfredo Castro
Director: Pablo Larrain
Rating: R
Runtime: 110 minutes
Where to watch: Netflix
Renfield
It is a blessing that Nicolas Cage is both maniacally idiosyncratic and obsessively prolific. 'If I don't have a job to do," Cage told the Guardian, "I can be very self-destructive." The actor's need to be busy has taken his career in some dubious directions, and while "Renfield" does not reach the lows of "Kill Chain," "Jiu Jitsu" and a dozen other faceless projects, it falls short of "Vampire's Kiss." With the hammy Peter Loew in mind, I had hoped for another scenery-chewing showcase from Nicolas Cage as not just a vampire, but full blown Count Dracula. But one should note that this film is called "Renfield," not "Dracula," and that the screen time is distributed accordingly.
Renfield (Nicholas Hoult) is Dracula's servant and familiar, which affords him bug-fuelled super strength that he must use to harvest victims for Dracula's bloodlust, replenishing him from a grotesque, shuffling beast into a dapper, pasty-faced Count, much like Frank Cotton's bloody rehabilitation in the original "Hellraiser" film. This transformation means that Renfield is the active character for much of the movie, searching for blood and getting caught up with a New Orleans crime family in a nonsense plot full of elaborate fight sequences that are choreographed like "John Wick" and its numerous imitators. Cage enjoys himself when given the chance, but it's nothing on the Patrick Bateman-meets-Nosferatu craziness of "Vampire's Kiss."
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Nicholas Hoult, Awkwafina
Director: Chris McKay
Rating: R
Runtime: 93 minutes
Where to watch: Prime Video