Oh, boy. This may be just my third week of doing this column but already I have wasted a total of 20 hours watching movies that have turned my brain to mush. You see, I love movies and it annoys me that some of my colleagues would call me pretentious in my tastes.
Just because I over analyse every film I watch, sprinkle in the occasional ‘ennui’ into my descriptions and enjoy the Quixotic elements of 1950’s Italian neorealist cinema, particularly Federico Fellini’s oeuvres, doesn’t make my film tastes pompous.
I can enjoy your Transformers with a knowing wink, and the way that series about the furiously fast has embraced postmodern tropes makes me positively giddy.
The problem is the following aren’t laugh-out-loud awful movies, but 'sit in silence and slowly weep' awful movies. They just aren’t fun to watch, believe me.
Watching them is an endurance and I have endured. So, without further ado, let me tell you the tale of Adam and Eve and that famous time they met some cannibals.
Adam and Eve Meet The Cannibals
The Premise: Adam and Eve just want to live a normal, care-free life but pesky prehistoric monsters and flesh-eating cannibals keep getting in the way.
Adam and Eve Meet The Cannibals is a film that pretty much sticks to the Bible retelling of Adam and Eve... with some small caveats. For instance, in this movie version Adam is born out of a disgusting meat sack, while Eve magically appears from the sand thanks to some special rain. Then there's the bit where Adam, naked, plays with a tiger cub while Eve, naked, watches wistfully from behind a bush.
So far so Biblical then, half an hour in, everything changes. Both Adam and Eve eat the forbidden fruit, have ferocious sex (watched by a snake), Eve then steals an egg from a pterodactyl and then the cannibals come. All of this is shot through a lens so smeared in Vaseline that you fear for the camera person's itchy skin.
Best watched when: you have an essay due last minute for your theology class and you want to get the absolute truth about the story of Adam and Eve all in under two hours. *snigger*
Zombies Have Fallen
The Premise: Zombies have fallen and it's up to a woman with psychic powers to get them back on their feet again.
Zombies Have Fallen… asleep more like, amirite? This low-budget Brit flick focuses on a psychic woman who may hold the key to stopping a big zombie outbreak.
What ensues is a lot of exposition by angry working class men with shooters and then a lot more exposition by angry posh men with shooters. There’s also a scene where a shop assistant reads Shooter magazine. This all culminates in this angry viewer shooting – sorry – shouting at the screen ‘Just show me the bloody zombies!’
When they do arrive, they look less like zombies and more like someone who accidentally got a bit of ketchup on their chin. At least the zombies have a reason for the slow shuffling, slurred speech and vacant look in their eyes - which is more than can be said of the other ‘actors’ in the movie.
Best watched when: some zombies have eaten your brains. And your eyes.
The Adventures of Food Boy
The Premise: A boy develops the superpower of creating foodstuff from his bare hands. Yup, that's the actual plot.
We would all love superpowers - the ability to fly, have superhuman strength, x-ray vision… but what if you were given superpowers and those powers meant you could make food appear out of your hands? Well, that’s the premise of The Adventures of Food Boy, an atrocious film that will give anyone who watches it a food intolerance. There’s a bit where Ezra, the boy who has the special power, is in his school bathroom and starts to shoot meat from his hands. Meat. From his hands.
I’m sure this is meant to be some sort of me(a)taphor but the whole thing is so excruciating to watch, the movie is beyond explanation.
Best watched when: you are in a food coma, or any other coma for that matter.
The Late Bloomer
The Premise: After a tumor is removed from his body, a 30-year-old man experiences puberty for the very first time.
JK Simmons is in this. The JK Simmons that won an Oscar for his portrayal of terrifying music instructor Terence Fletcher. The JK Simmons who won a BAFTA for his work on The Closer, who embodied the role of J Jonah Jameson in Spider-Man and who is currently Commissioner Gordon in the Batman movies.
Given that the multi-award-winning JK Simmons is inexplicably in a film about a man who doesn’t reach puberty until the age of 30, there’s no denying that by starring in The Late Bloomer he dropped the ball(s) on this one.
Best watched when: someone you love is held for ransom and the only way to get them back is to watch the full back catalogue of JK Simmons movies. And even then we would ask yourself: do you really love them that much?
Marc Chacksfield is a former film journalist (and TechRadar's global managing editor) who is already regretting agreeing to watch terrible movies for the sake of his column Not On My Watch.
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