CrypticRock Anniversary Part 1: Top Ten Worst Films

Just over a year ago, I caught a post on a friend’s timeline saying the website she was working for was looking for new writers. I took a gamble and applied and, after a quick check, got accepted. Since then, I’ve written about 80 articles for the website, largely reviewing films, but I also reviewed 2 books, and did a few retrospectives. It’s been quite fun, checking out the best, the worst, and everything in the middle. Even the baddest films can provide something to talk about, which is why I decided to do some quick rankings. There’ll be a Top Ten Best to come, but I figured I’d save the best for last. So, to start off, let’s go through the doyens of dodginess and sort out the chaff from the wheat. These aren’t arranged by review scores, but by comparison to all the other films I’ve reviewed, and whether I’d see any of them a second time or not. ’10’ would be a No, while ‘1’ would be a Hell No, basically. But first, let’s get through some…

Dishonourable Mentions:

Bible Black Episode 1- https://crypticrock.com/bible-black-episode-1-review/

It’s not actually a film, but a glorified motion comic based on J.Morvay’s poetry and short stories. They were adapted into an online series, though you’d be better off with the other, more notorious Bible Black. Yes, it’s a dodgy Japanese porn series, but it offers more entertainment value than 30 minutes of edgelord ponderings.

7 Guardians of the Tomb- https://crypticrock.com/7-guardians-tomb-movie-review/

Aka ‘Guardians of the Tomb’, or ‘The Nest’. This film puts former Australian Top Gear presenter Shane Jacobsen with Kelsey Grammar, and the former does a better performance than the latter! This Sino-Australian production went all-in on the budget, but not into the script.

Day of the Dead: Bloodline- https://crypticrock.com/day-dead-bloodline-movie-review/

Or ‘Borderline’ in this case as it just missed the Top 10 here. The direction is tighter than the 10th entry, and it kills off its worst actors before it gets going properly. It promised a ‘bold, new imagining’ of the original, but it forgot to include ‘good’ in the bargain. Still, as far as ‘Day of the Dead’ remakes go, it may be better than the first remake. You should stick with the original in both cases either way. Neither are worth bothering much with.

And now for the meat and the potatoes of this article, starting with;

10: Sightings- https://crypticrock.com/sightings-movie-review/

I feel kind of bad about placing this one here, as the director commented on the article and was a good sport about things. But I have to be honest and say this didn’t hit the mark. It’s about a local Texan sheriff Tom Mayfield (Boo Arnold) and his slow path to realising his brother-in-law Rickey (Chris Pratt lookalike Rawn Erickson) and cryptozoologist Rebecca Otis (Stephanie Drapeau) are right and that Bigfoot is real. Only Bigfoot is also an alien. The tagline says ‘they see you’, but you certainly can’t see them as the camera avoids putting them anywhere on screen. That poster might be as close as the audience gets, but the glimpses we see don’t resemble grey aliens at all. Less may be more, but this leaves too little in view.

9: Mortuary Massacre- https://crypticrock.com/mortuary-massacre-movie-review/

This one is a portmanteau piece- 3 horror shorts connected by a mortician called Mortimer King (Carl Crew) talking to Detective Giger (Todd Brown). ‘The Apartment’ is a shallow Shining reference with random shit and sounds thrown on the screen. ‘The Scrying’ inspired the poster above and has a ghost cowboy killing students with a hedge strimmer. Then ‘False Face’ features an actor seeking vengeance on a cocky, Sunset Riders-quoting rival. It sounds more fun than it is, as the random film scratches and tears added onto a clearly-digital film make it all the more messy and incoherent.

8: Parts Unknown- https://crypticrock.com/parts-unknown-movie-review/

This film features a cameo from Wrestling With Wregret host Brian ‘Zane’ Schiedel. It happens right at the start, so W3 fans can skip it after the first 5 minutes. The rest of it feels like the creators took two different ideas and smashed them together. Where a family of hyper-violent wrestlers called the Von Strassers become embroiled in serving a dark entity in the woods, offering it sacrifices by killing anyone unlucky enough to cross them. A parole officer comes back from the dead to become some holy avenger against the killer Von Strasser family. Sympathetic heroes turn into villains, and villains turn into tweeners. It’s the cinematic equivalent of a 1999 WCW PPV- a dodgy, poorly booked pastiche.

7: The Revenge of Robert the Doll- https://crypticrock.com/revenge-robert-doll-movie-review/

The first half is surprisingly strong, if only in comparison to its second half. The tale of the wife of an abusive Nazi trying to flee with a secret MacGuffin, only to get into deeper trouble held some promise. But alas one would’ve had to have seen its prequel Robert and the Toymaker to see how it connects to the second half- where the Toymaker has to escape 1940’s Germany by train with said MacGuffin. Said Toymaker wears terrible makeup, the cast have terrible acting, and editing magic turns a steam train into a modern electric one through one night-time transition. It could make for good riffing material, so long as it finds a good riffer. Otherwise it’ll be double the punishment for anyone daring to catch it.

6: Wastelander- https://crypticrock.com/wastelander-movie-review/

Ever seen Mad Max? Fist of the North Star? Turbo Kid or even Molly? Stick to those. Wastelander has the advantage of not looking like it was filmed at a Centerparcs resort like Molly. But it manages to look uglier with its rubbish camera angles and overexposed lighting. The story is a dull slog- where our ‘wastelander’ Rhynous (Brendan Guy Murphy) searches for his family and the lost world of Eden. It plays like it’s trying to marry Mad Max to the Fallout videogames, but it fails to unite the two with its stodgy action sequences.

5: The House on Elm Lake- https://crypticrock.com/house-elm-lake-movie-review/

Cheap, British take on The Shining & The Evil Dead, with a dash of the Amityville Horror. A family (Becca Hirani, Andrew Hollingworth and Faye Goodwin) move into a new house they got for cheap, unaware it’s where a ritualistic murder took place! And it awoke something demonic. Sometimes it threatens to play out better than its rivals. It could’ve been at #8 or #10, but its weak scares and dodgy plot twists couldn’t be saved by the extra $1,000 it took to turn the original short it was based on into a feature film.

4: A Twisted Tale- https://crypticrock.com/twisted-tale-movie-review/

I haven’t seen enough of Susan Engel’s cheap horror oeuvre to say whether she should stop or not. But if A Twisted Tale is the best of her work, then it’s bleak even for cheapo horror. There should be more women working in film production, be they directors, producers, screenwriters or more. But they’re more likely to get inspiration from the likes of Kathryn Bigelow, Jodie Foster or even Penelope Spheeris (of Wayne’s World fame). This Friday the 13th knockoff- troubled teens sentenced to attend a summer camp- with bad comedy and a ‘Fire Lady’ instead of a masked machete-wielder isn’t going to do much for them except make them cringe.

3: Dark Vale- https://crypticrock.com/dark-vale-movie-review/

Ghost Stories may have split some people, but you can do worse in British horror. Even worse than House on Elm Lake. Why? Because stuff actually happened in those films! This tale of a couple (Darren Randall and Cara Middleton) getting trapped in the titular Dark Vale by the ghost of Lady Lucy (Chloe Clarke) induces more snores than screams. It tells its more exciting scenes, preferring to show Randall wandering about and drinking water from a stream. It’s a glorified hiking holiday video, and just as boring as that sounds.

2: The Jurassic Dead- https://crypticrock.com/the-jurassic-dead-movie-review/

Some say a boring film is worse than an outright bad film, in that a bad one can offer some ironic joy. The Sharknado series wrung that fact drier than a case of cottonmouth in the Atacama desert. The Jurassic Dead tries to do the same through some shallow, stereotypical humour (settle down, chuds. You can find better shitty weed jokes and videogame references in an average online shooter session). There’s little to nothing to save it from its cheap effects, crap acting and dull story about students and a SWAT team fighting zombie dinosaurs. Its best scene happens right after the ending, but then it threatens to have a sequel. It offers nothing but cringes and headaches.

1: The Documentary- https://crypticrock.com/documentary-movie-review/

This is one of my earliest reviews, and it still hasn’t been beat in its awfulness. There have been contenders, but this one takes the cake. This tale of a faceless director (Aaron Bowden) toying with the lives of his star (Tristin Rupp) and her boyfriend (Jake Miller), stalking with them and installing security cameras in their home could be creepy. It plays out as a cobbled assembly of the director’s illicit footage, which is why it looks like guerilla filmmaking. Some of the films lower on the totem pole here have worse acting than this one, or even worse camera techniques. But it is at #1 because, taken as a whole, it’s a worse experience. D’s crap, ‘puppet master’ dialogue set to subtle-as-a-brick imagery makes any open eyes roll. The camera trickery and filters will make heads ache. Then the slow pacing and pointless sequences will send viewers to sleep. When it isn’t boring, it’s irritating, and when it isn’t irritating, it makes one long for better films on a similar subject. It lacks the interesting story of its old school forebear Peeping Tom, or the dark sense of humour found in Funny Games and Tragedy Girls. There are many better alternatives because, in over a year of reviewing, this remains at the bottom of the barrel, and will likely stay there.

Least I certainly hope so.

It wasn’t all doom and gloom though, as Part 2 will go through the Top Ten Best Films, alongside some honourable mentions. Keep an eye out for it soon.