5 Movies To Avoid On Netflix

It's legitimately hard, at this point, to remember that Netflix was once a mail-order rental service for DVDs that let you have the full Blockbuster Video experience without leaving your house. (RIP to Blockbuster Video, by the by.) Now, Netflix is a streaming behemoth that creates tons of original content for us to parse through — arguably too much original content, if we're all being honest with ourselves — and as such, it makes lots and lots of movies for you to choose from and even potentially watch.

With that said, there are actually a lot of good Netflix original movies on the service. Both of Rian Johnson's "Knives Out" sequels, "Glass Onion" and "Wake Up Dead Man," exclusively live on Netflix, as does Alfonso Cuarón's personal masterpiece "Roma," Martin Scorsese's epic Robert De Niro vehicle "The Irishman," and Jane Campion's stark, moving Oscar winner "The Power of the Dog," just to name a few. (They've also made some particularly good original romantic comedies; "Set It Up" and "Always Be My Maybe" come to mind.) There are also a bunch of terrible Netflix movies.

When I say you should "avoid" the following five movies on Netflix, I mean that. You will wish for your minutes back; you'll wish you could actively unwatch any of these picks when they're done. These movies aren't just bad — their intentions feel downright sinister, whether they're trying to make a point about looks or race (poorly) or are just underbaked vehicles for, say, Ryan Reynolds, who shows up in two projects here. Without further ado, here are five Netflix movies you should avoid at all costs. (Presented in no particular order.)

I'll be completely honest and say that I can't personally imagine a Michael Bay movie that I would recommend, but his 2019 Netflix original "6 Underground" definitely wouldn't ever be one of them. One of the priciest Netflix original movies ever made with a budget of $150 million, "6 Underground" stars Ryan Reynolds as reclusive billionaire Magnet S. Johnson, who, after bearing witness to state-perpetrated horrors in the fictional country of Turgistan, decides to form a group of vigilantes to combat this. (Sure.) When he assembles them — a spy, assassin, thief, doctor, and getaway driver — Magnet gives himself the nickname "One" and asks all of them to renounce their pasts and take on numbered nicknames. Alongside spy Two (Mélanie Laurent), assassin Three (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo), thief Four (Ben Hardy), doctor Five (Adria Arjona), and getaway driver Six (Dave Franco), One sets out to, I guess, save the world ... and eventually, Seven, a veteran sniper played by Corey Hawkins, joins the gang known as "ghosts."

Putting aside the fact that this movie has a non-evil billionaire as its protagonist, "6 Underground" is a vapid waste of screentime and mostly fine actors (Arjona, Laurent, Franco, and Hawkins are especially wasted here) that has no story or clear message besides "look at this explosion!" Don't watch this. Please.

David Ayer and writer Max Landis' 2017 Netflix movie "Bright" tries to say a whole lot about both policing and race, but ends up saying very little at all ... and what it does say is honestly pretty stupid. This drama — which wants to be serious but just turns out silly — casts eventual Oscar winner and slap-happy star Will Smith as Los Angeles police officer Daryl Ward, who's just trying to do his job despite living in a fictional version of LA where humans exist alongside magical brethren like orcs and elves. When Daryl is paired up with the first-ever orc cop Nick Jakoby (a heavily disguised Joel Edgerton), he's initially angry because Daryl was previously shot by an orc and Nick failed to stop it. Basically, it's a dark cop buddy comedy, but one of them is ... an orc. Ultimately, though, the two have to learn to work together, especially when they end up in a hostage situation involving a young elven girl. 

I want to shout out here that YouTube essay queen Lindsay Ellis has a really great video explaining why the worldbuilding in "Bright" is so unbelievably lazy, and truthfully, I'd recommend you watch that video multiple times instead of watching "Bright." Smith is a phenomenal actor — as is Edgerton, and talented performers like Noomi Rapace, Édgar Ramírez, and Ike Barinholtz are also fully wasted in this project — but "Bright" has no luster at all, and its messages about racially divided societies are surface-level at best and extremely muddled at worst.

Welcome back to this list, Ryan Reynolds! (I will say something nice very quickly: Aviation Gin is pretty damn good.) In writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber's third movie with Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, which hit Netflix in 2021, Johnson is cast as debonair FBI profiler John Hartley, who's searching for a lost artifact ... specifically, a missing jeweled egg once part of a trio given to Cleopatra by Marc Anthony. As it turns out, infamous art thief Nolan Booth (Reynolds) is the one who stole the egg, and a game of cat-and-mouse begins between John and Nolan — interrupted only by Sarah "The Bishop" Black (Gal Gadot), a second art thief who lifts the egg from Nolan and frames John for the theft.

Gadot is just not a strong or charismatic enough actress to play a sultry, conniving, and brilliant thief, and despite Johnson and Reynolds' inherent charms, nothing can keep "Red Notice" from being an empty, vapid, nothingburger of a movie with no message, intent, or meaning. If this movie has any "message," such as it is, it's just that you should be content staring at Gadot, Johnson, and Reynolds without getting any story or substance along with their good looks. If you don't want to take my word for it, /Film's chief film critic Chris Evangelista didn't enjoy this movie either, and he's right.

Throughout the past several years, there's been a rash of television shows and movies that, in some people's opinions, lionize deeply evil and uniquely sociopathic serial killers in American history. A perfect example is Ryan Murphy's "Monster" anthology series, which has actively made viewers angry as it's covered the likes of Jeffrey Dahmer, Erik and Lyle Menendez, and Ed Gein. I'd argue that this trend actually predates Murphy, though, because of projects like the 2019 movie "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile."

Directed by Joe Berlinger and based on the nonfiction memoir "The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy" by Elizabeth Kendall — who dated the murderer in real life — "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile" stars Zac Efron as the infamous American killer Ted Bundy. As any true crime historian knows, Bundy used his good looks and innate charm to ensnare women and make them into his victims, which is sort of the point of this movie — in that we watch as Liz Kendall (Lily Collins) falls in love with Ted and creates a domestic life with him and her daughter Molly. "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile" earned some faint praise for Efron's central performance, but do you see the problem here?! Casting someone as handsome and frankly likable as Efron as Ted friggin' Bundy makes him seem a little cooler than he should and basically flatters the killer, so this movie definitely lives up to its title.

The 2024 Netflix original movie "Uglies" seems to want to say something beautiful about society, but it also lives up to its name ... in that it's a deeply ugly and straight-up bad treatise about transforming yourself to please others. Based on Scott Westerfeld's dystopian novel of the same name and directed by McG, "Uglies" stars Joey King as Tally Youngblood, a young woman growing up in a society where a world without basic natural resource somehow leads to a lot of human genetic modification. (In both the book and movie, I'm not sure I really grasp the throughline here, but sure — let's go with it.) Before you come of age, you're designated as one of the Uglies, at which point you get plastic surgery and become a Pretty and go to the "city."

Not only is "Uglies" a genuinely pathetic rip-off of other dystopian young adult fare — I don't even want to compliment it by comparing it to "The Hunger Games," so instead, I'll say it reminds me of "Divergent," which is not a good thing — but the story and performances are rough to boot. Even consummate actors like King, Keith Powers, and Laverne Cox can't make "Uglies" pretty, and its message about how you "should look" is completely twisted by its "happy ending." Please don't watch "Uglies." Go watch literally any "Hunger Games" movie instead.