Most Mediocre Movies of 2024

There were a lot of incredible films this year, there were also a lot of terrible films this year. But most movies filled the space in the middle. Not groundbreaking or award worthy, and not so terrible that you’ll never stop complaining about them. In fact most of the movies that came out this year were very good, they just weren't great. These are not the movies we are talking about today. Today we are talking about the films that are so mediocre you just forgot about them, or they were just a point or two away from being absolutely horrible or absolutely fantastic. These are the most mediocre movies of 2024, in no particular order.

First up is M. Night Shyamalan's Trap. It is one of those film that could have been really great IF it knew when to stop talking. One of my biggest film pet peeves is movies that are great until the third act. You get super invested and your into it and then the film just shits the bed in the last 30-40 minutes. That is what happens with a lot of M. Night movies but especially this one. Had it ended 15 minutes earlier it would have been on a very different list.

Twisters. This one feels obvious and a few people had this on their best of lists on letterbox and those are people I will never take recommendations from or talk to at all. It was mediocre at BEST. Anthony Ramos’ face is annoying he really isn’t a very talented actor and the story was so thin. Also Glen Powell is the most run of the mill, middle of the road Hollywood man. I am not sure why anyone thinks he has the talent and skill to be an A-lister but the industry is trying so hard. It was fine. The movie is fine.

Moving on to Damsel. Damsel is what happens when you throw a bunch of film tropes into Chat GPT. That was the film's downfall; its entire purpose seemed to be subverting outdated tropes; it forgot that stories need an actual plot. And fantasy films need actual worldbuilding.

Next is IF, yeah you probably forgot about this one. Now in concept it didn’t suck, everyone loves Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends. And the actual story was everything that Harold and the Purple Crayon should have been. The mediocrity came from the actual execution. The casting was really the problem and what actually held this movie back. Ryan Reynolds was the most incorrect choice. Chris Hemsworth would have been 8000X better but here we are. Ryan is just incapable of playing anything but himself and that’s not what this role needed.

This is probably the last one for the ones that won’t piss people off. Longlegs. It was creepy, it had a delightful lack of Nicholas Cage but they story itself was really poorly developed. The main character was really flat and it was just kind of Meh.

Okay now I’m gonna make some people mad and I apologize, no this isn’t rage bait I promise. If you want details I have linked all of the in depth reviews in the description but objectively analyzed these movies were not as good as the internet seems to think. That doesn’t mean you can’t like them. The internet seems to think I am slinging personal attacks if I criticize the things that you like but that’s not what’s happening here. Okay…Civil War. I know a lot of people had this on their best of lists too but UGH. The third act was so rushed and we already talked about this, also you can’t call a film Civil War and not actually show or explain the Civil War. It was horribly underdeveloped and poorly executed.

I’m so sorry but the next movie is Challengers. I think it was perfectly cast, the acting was incredible. The story was…not. I think my biggest problem was the pacing, the way it moves through time was not done very well and I think it hindered the relationship building. I also didn’t care about any of the characters enough to care about their outcome. The best scene was the final sequence, I just think they could have hit some things a little harder like her living vicariously through her husband's success. I think the fact that she hurt herself because her head wasn’t in it because of a relationship fight was a poor decision. If you’ve ever been a high level athlete you know that shouldn’t have been enough to shake her focus. It also just wasn’t as impactful as it would have been if she had gotten hurt going all out, or something more tennis related other than just being during a match. It felt lazy.

Okay Furiousa, I can feel the anger at me from the future. Here's the thing, when you are contributing a film to a franchise especially a prequel or sequel you are BEGGING your audience to compare your film to the film you are building off of. It is not possible to properly analyze the film as a complete individual entity when is it using not only the name but the style of the last film. Fury Road is one of the best action movies of all time. Furiosa simply does not live up to that. One of the best parts of Fury Road is it's lack of dialogue, it truly tells its story through action, Furiosa doesn't. Second of all it was just unnecessary. Fury Road is Furiosa’s story so there was really nothing new to get out of this one. It was still a beautiful movie and the casting was perfect. It was just the worst way to assemble all it's pieces. It could have been phenomenal with an entirely different structure or perspective.

Okay last but not least and I’m not really sorry about this one, Deadpool and Wolverine. Look I liked seeing Hugh Jackman in the classic suit as much as the next person, loved the cameos, a good third of the jokes were actually funny and Channing Tatum’s Gambit was the best part of the movie. But the story was nowhere near as emotionally connected as the first two films, the MCU’s influence was felt in the worst way, and the decision to officially fridge Vanessa was a bad one and I will not be hearing any defenses for that because you're wrong. And again the worst part is that it could have been better, if the writing was better. But it was so surface level and shallow that there was no emotional weight to anything that happened.