Here are the worst movies of each of the last five decades, according to Rotten Tomatoes.
To be clear, we’re going decade by decade, to give you one film from each decade. Make sense?
Here we go. But first…
How We Tracked the Worst Movies of the Last Five Decades, According to Rotten Tomatoes
It was all quite simple, as someone might say in a bad movie.
We simply looked at Rotten Tomatoes‘ list of the 100 Worst Movies of All Time, then selected the top film from each of the last five decades.
Rotten Tomatoes compiled the list by aggregating critics’ reviews, and then ranking those that have at least 20 reviews, to make sure there’s a general consensus that these are the worst movies.
Here we go, starting in the ’80s with…
1980s: Bolero (1984)
We’ll say this for the 1980s: You have to scroll pretty far down Rotten Tomatoes‘ list of the worst movies ever to get to any films of the decade.
The list is dominated by films from this century, which probably reflects the boom in online critics after the turn of the millennium. Traditional critics tend to be a little more measured in their critiques than the ones online.
But there are exceptions to that rule, like Bolero. Basically a vehicle to showcase Bo Derek’s beauty, and directed by her husband, John Derek, Bolero holds the distinction of being the oldest film with a zero on Rotten Tomatoes. It is ranked No. 26 on the site’s list of the 100 Worst Movies of All Time, which, honestly, isn’t that bad.
The film shares a title with one of Maurice Ravel’s best compositions, which, weirdly, enjoyed a resurgence because of a different Bo Derek movie, 1979’s 10.
1990s: Return to the Blue Lagoon (1991)
Starring a then-16-year-old Milla Jovavich, who would go on to great success, Return to the Blue Lagoon is basically a rehash of the original 1980 film Blue Lagoon.
It’s rated the 15th worst film of all, and has the highest (meaning worst) position of any film of the pre-internet era.
Congratulations, kids.
Where Are the Worst Movies of Yesteryear?
Why aren’t there any movies from before the ’80s on this list? Great question. You can choose from any of the following options:
One, movies were better in the good old days;
Two, critics were kinder then, perhaps because movie studios had greater pull in the era of newspaper advertising;
Three, our digital era has failed to preserve the heinous reviews of days past, which has led to recency bias on Rotten Tomatoes’ list.
And now, onto the next decade.
2000s: Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever (2002)
This is, according to Rotten Tomatoes, not just the worst movie of the 2000s, but the worst movie of all time. And, rubbing salt on the wound, it came from the studio responsible for one of the all-time best movies.
It helped kick off what is arguably also the worst decade for movies: Half of the movies in the Top 10 of the site’s list of the 100 Worst Movies of all Time came out in the Aughts.
The clumsily named Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever stars Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu as rival assasins and may have incurred such wrathful reviews because critics expected more from both stars — and both did indeed go on to much better things.
The year after Ballistic came out, Liu was phenomenal in Kill Bill. And Banderas earned an Oscar nomination in 2019 for his work in Pain and Glory.
As we’ve noted before, Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever holds the sad honor of having the most reviews of any film with a zero on Rotten Tomatoes, which helped it secure the No. 1 spot on Rotten Tomatoes’ list of worst movies.
2010s: Left Behind (2014)
Based on the extremely successful book series about the Rapture and the people who remain after it occurs, Left Behind is Rotten Tomatoes‘ choice for the third worst movie overall, and the worst movie of the 2010s.
It stars Nicholas Cage, one of our all-time favorite actors, as the improbably named Rayford Steele, an airline pilot with marital issues who notices that a lot of the people on the plane he’s piloting keep disappearing.
Critics be damned, the film did well enough to earn a sequel, Left Behind: Rise of the Antichrist, which sadly did not feature Cage.
The sequel came out in 2023, by which time Cage was far along in a career resurgence that included the 2022 meta comedy The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. In our cover story about the film, Cage told us about taking on a lot of roles during the period that included Left Behind to get out of financial difficulties.
“There are two truths. The one truth is, yeah, I was going through an incredible financial strain that lasted for 13 years. I made the very clear decision: I’m not going bankrupt. I’m going to work my way through this mess. And, lo and behold, I did, and I’m proud of that,” he told us. “But I never took a role that I didn’t think I could bring something to, and I turned down a lot of roles. That’s the story people don’t see. I was working my way out of something.”
2020s: The Last Days of American Crime (2020)
Let’s be honest: We haven’t seen a single one of these movies. Something about the universally bad reviews turned us off.
But we’re intrigued by the logline of this film, which is, frankly, cool: “Two men and a woman plan the heist of the century before a government-broadcast signal wipes out crime forever.”
So we certainly aren’t hating on The Last Days of American Crime, or any of the films on this list. We’re just the messengers.
For the other side of the movie spectrum, we recommend this list of The Best Movies of Every Decade, According to Rotten Tomatoes.
And we also invite you to follow us for more stories like this.
Main image: Bo Derek in Bolero. Cannon Film Distributors
