However, that doesn’t mean that they always get it right. Sensing an opportunity for a movie to be heralded as a critical masterpiece or commercial gold does not necessarily guarantee you have read the room correctly, and there has been a whole ream of pictures that have not just slightly missed the target but completely destroyed the town three miles left of the target.

Whether it is poorly delivered biopics, unwelcome sequels, or desperately crafted ideas from the depths of a director’s creative soul, some movies manage to miss their intended audience and leave themselves hanging for future movie-pickers in the hope of becoming cult classics.

10 movies that desperately missed the mark:

Back To Black (Sam Taylor-Johnson, 2024)

Music biopics are a controversial genre. In some cases, they do the artist justice, pleasing fans and even introducing a new generation of viewers to a musician they might never have listened to otherwise. In many instances, however, music biopics feel like Oscar bait – nothing more than a cash grab that profits off the suffering of another person who is likely no longer alive to prevent the project from going ahead. Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Back to Black fits into the latter category, doing a terrible job of presenting Amy Winehouse’s life with respect and nuance.

It’s well known that Winehouse was frequently scrutinised by the media, which routinely embarrassed and ridiculed her, leading to the worsening of her pre-existing mental health conditions and substance abuse. The film cashes in on all of Winehouse’s pain with a lack of adequate care, making a caricature of a woman who was so much more than her suffering. It’s an insulting, cringeworthy piece of cinema that immediately upset most Winehouse fans upon its release.

Blonde (Andrew Dominik, 2022)

Like Back to Black, it’s hard to know who Blonde was made for. Fans of Marilyn Monroe certainly didn’t get any enjoyment out of Andrew Dominik’s biopic on the iconic Hollywood star, which focused heavily on her pain and suffering. With Ana de Armas in the lead role, people had high hopes for the black-and-white drama, but instead, the reviews were overwhelmingly negative – and rightly so.

The film repeatedly shows Monroe naked in the most painfully gratuitous nude scenes in cinema history. She is shown being sexually assaulted and treated like dirt, and in one scene, her unborn baby has a conversation with her that comes across as anti-abortion propaganda. It’s bizarre and disgusting, and the fact that Dominik was even allowed to release the final cut is shocking. Why did he think that this is what fans of the star would’ve wanted to see?

Sex and the City 2 (Michael Patrick King, 2010)

Sex and the City was one of the biggest TV shows to emerge from the 1990s, and its legacy still lives on strong. Carrie and her three best friends took on New York with refreshing honesty, exploring women’s issues, sex, friendship, motherhood (or choosing not to have kids), love, and careers over the course of six seasons. The series was so successful that it spawned two movies and a spin-off show, And Just Like That, but none of these have lived up to the genius of the original HBO show.

In fact, Sex and the City 2 is one of the worst pieces of cinema in recent years, managing to offend many with its story set in Abu Dhabi. In one shocking scene, Samantha’s bag breaks in front of a group of Arabic men, who shame her for carrying condoms. The women are then greeted in secret by some Arabic women who remove their burkas to reveal their ‘fashionable’ Western outfits. It’s tone-deaf and cringe-worthy, as is Liza Minelli’s ‘Single Ladies’ performance at the start of the film and the subplot featuring a big-breasted nanny who never wears a bra. 

Kids (Larry Clark, 1995)

Who did Larry Clark make Kids for? The film came to fruition after the photographer recruited a 19-year-old Harmony Korine to write something real about young people in New York. While Korine’s screenplay is raw and certainly says a lot about the state of America at the time, the finished result is an uncomfortable viewing experience that depicts various scenes that many consider to be borderline child pornography. Paired with the film’s cast of awful characters, like Telly, the only good thing that came from the film was Chloë Sevigny and Rosario Dawson’s acting careers.

The movie explores some hefty themes as the characters engage in acts like rape, racial abuse, stealing, and excessive drug-taking, with the main protagonists seeing sex with young virgins as a twisted kind of hobby. HIV is passed around, and these disgusting young men violate women – it’s hard to understand what Clark was trying to achieve with the film. Even worse are the stories from several cast members that suggest Clark took advantage of these largely inexperienced young actors, hardly paying them and, according to some, leaving them feeling “exploited”.

Men (Alex Garland, 2022)

If you fancy having the suffering of women explained to you from an incredibly male perspective, look no further than Men. Directed by Alex Garland, who has previously found success with titles like 28 Days Later, The Beach, Ex-Machina, and Annihilation, the film’s attempt to communicate the terrors faced by many women comes across as incredibly tone-deaf.

Pointing out that women have to be wary of men and that men can be abusive are facts we’re all familiar with, and Garland fails to offer a solid ending that offers real understanding, resolution, or a sense of justice. There’s nothing subtle about the film’s message, and the shocking ending just doesn’t feel satisfying. Garland says nothing new with his film – which has lots of potential – instead, he rehashes metaphors and communicates a message we’re all too familiar with. 

Paddington in Peru (Dougal Wilson, 2024)

Many film lovers describe the first two Paddington films as being masterpieces of British cinema, with global audiences falling for the loveable charm of the scruffy bear and his bizarre love for orange marmalade. However, while some people fell for this, I remained slightly cynical when Paddington in Peru was announced, and for good reason.

Paddington in Peru is one of the most tone-deaf films I have ever seen, with upbeat messaging about immigration in the United Kingdom and how this country celebrates diversity. Before the release of the film, the official Twitter account for the British Government proudly tweeted that Paddington had been awarded a new British passport. This felt outrageously insensitive, given our current political climate and the number of migrants who are dying on boats as they try to enter this country. But sure, give a passport to a fake bear.  

Bombshell (Jay Roach, 2019)

Bombshell was released after the arrival of the #MeToo movement and a number of public conversations about sexual abuse and harassment in the film industry. Apparently, the response to this was to create an empty and meaningless film about the Fox News scandal, with a host of unlikeable right-wing characters and directed by a man with no lived experiences of this specific dynamic.

It seemed as though the film was Hollywood’s attempt at lip service to temporarily boost their reputation and appear to care. However, it was a poorly written film that isolated its key audience by focusing on problematic women who were frequently making racist comments, which immediately made them harder to connect with and less easy to empathise with.  

Holy Spider (Ali Abbasi, 2022)

In recent years, many male filmmakers have exploited female pain in their stories as a means of entertainment. Whether it be Andrew Dominik and his abominable Marilyn Monroe biopic or Pablo Larrain’s highly debated work, plenty of directors view this as a way to advance their careers and capitalise on this trend. 

However, there was one that truly disturbed me above all the others, which was Ali Abbasi’s 2022 film Holy Spider. The film follows a serial killer who targets sex workers, with the director choosing to only show his warped and sick perspective. No humanity is shown towards his victims, instead lingering in the violence and showing graphic scenes of his abuse, creating a grossly gratuitous and predictable picture with nothing to say about misogyny or gender-based violence.

May December (Todd Haynes, 2023)

May December was one of the most highly-anticipated films of 2023, with the director Todd Haynes reuniting with Julianne Moore after working on titular classics such as Safe and Far From Heaven. Also Starring Natalie Portman and Charles Melton, the film follows a journalist who is investigating a married couple who once made headlines for their illegal and highly controversial relationship, leading to a nuanced and devastating tale about the legacy of abuse and Hollywood’s exploitation of trauma for entertainment. 

However, while it is a fantastic and superbly acted film, there was one aspect that completely fell through the net, with the creative team behind the project failing to ask the real-life couple that the story was based on for their consent. After its release, the couple came forward to share how the film had exploited their story without thinking of the real-life impact this would have on them now, describing how they had received a new wave of unwanted media attention and harassment. For a film that is about Hollywood’s exploitation of trauma, it is extremely poor that they fell into this trap and exploited real people for entertainment, making the commentary within it completely contradictory and disappointing.

The Woodsman (Nicole Kassell, 2004)

The Woodsman is one of those films that I am completely baffled about how it was greenlit. With Kevin Bacon in the lead role, the story follows a paedophile who is released from prison and attempts to reintegrate into society. However, his past becomes known, and he starts loitering around a kid’s playground, accidentally discovering another man who he suspects is also a paedophile.

It is completely baffling that a story could even attempt to make us sympathise with a paedophile and remains one of the most unnecessary and maddening exercises of human empathy. Controversially, I do not think this is a character that deserves our pity, even though the director attempts to paint him in this way.

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