2023 was a great year for movies; easily the best year for movies so far this decade. And even better, it was a good year for movie theaters. After a long, painful stretch where it looked like multiplexes were in serious trouble, I saw so several movies in 2023 in packed theaters. Even with a strike, Barbie, Oppenheimer, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Taylor Swift, and others kept auditoriums full all year long.
(I’ll never forget going to see a press screening at a New York City multuplex on a Monday night in late July — not usually the busiest time for theaters — and having to push my way through a sea of moviegoers, all outfitted in hot pink.)
Of course, it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows at the movies in 2023. Despite an above-average year for cinema overall, we still had some out-out-and stinkers this year as well. That includes screwy sequels, bad biopics, awful action films, blockbuster blunders, and one of the worst and most shameless cash-ins on a respected and recognizable children’s brand I have ever seen in my entire life.
Below, I have ranked the 15 worst movies I personally saw in 2023. Plenty are big theatrical releases — a couple were contenders for the biggest budget movies of the year — but a couple bypassed theaters entirely for the vast and unreliable world of streaming, where the movies are often bad but the cost of viewing is low — unless you measure cost in the precious moments of your life you lose watching a crappy rom-com starring Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher.
Here now are my picks for the worst movies of 2023, ranked from almost watchable to borderline pestilential…
The Worst Movies of 2023
Of the hundreds of movies I watched in 2023, these were the worst of the worst.
READ MORE: The Worst Sequels and Remakes Ever Made
The Best Movies of 2023
ScreenCrush’s editor and critic picks the best films of the year.
Gallery Credit: Matt Singer