There’s never been a summer movie season without a few turkeys to go along with all of the blockbusters. The summer of 2024 was no exception. After rebounding from a soft start in May, the movie studios had a very good summer at the box office. But now that the season is coming to an end, it’s time to look back at the five worst summer 2024 movies as well.
Some of our picks barely made an impression during their short stay in theaters. And the top two choices below only came out within the last two weeks before they immediately earned their respective places on this list. In fact, the line between the two worst movies of summer 2024 is so thin that swapping No. 1 and No. 2 wouldn’t be out of the question. Regardless, we stand by our rankings of the five worst summer 2024 movies.
5. Tarot
To be fair, Tarot would have been a terrible movie at any other time of the year as well. It just happened to come out during the first weekend of the summer. It’s essentially a low-rent Final Destination riff, as a group of attractive young friends, including Haley (Harriet Slater) and her ex-boyfriend, Grant (Adain Bradley), play around with some cursed Tarot cards. And the next thing you know, each member of the group is being stalked by a figure from the Tarot deck who has come to life.
This film can’t seem to find the energy to be either scary or interesting, and its comically inept at being a horror movie. And yet it still made a lot more money than either the top two films on this list could ever manage.
4. Harold and the Purple Crayon
Last year, Zachary Levi headlined Shazam! Fury of the Gods, one of the worst superhero flicks of 2023… and that’s saying something! Levi’s not having much luck in 2024 either, thanks to Harold and the Purple Crayon. This adaptation of Crockett Johnson’s classic children’s book cast Levi as Harold, as he enters the real world to look for his father/creator alongside Moose (Lil Rel Howery) and Porcupine (Tanya Reynolds).
The problem is that Levi’s man-child routine was already old in Fury of the Gods, and Harold and the Purple Crayon lacks the charm it needs to work as a real story. If Levi stays on this cold streak, then he won’t be getting many more leading roles after this.
3. Poolman
Chris Pine, don’t quit your day job… whatever that is. Pine starred in, co-wrote, and directed Poolman, a film that seems like it came into being when the actor saw the Coen brothers‘ The Big Lebowski and Roman Polanski’s Chinatown before deciding that he wanted to do that too.
Pine’s character, Darren Barrenman, is like an environmentally conscious version of Jeff Bridges’ Dude, who is thrust into an apparent land and water scandal in Los Angeles. It’s the kind of story that’s been told before, but this film lacks the tools to make this remix worthwhile on its own merits.
2. Borderlands
Who’s responsible for making such a mess out of Borderlands? Is it Eli Roth, the director of record? Or is it Deadpool helmer Tim Miller who came in to direct the reshoots? Either way, this is an awful movie that absolutely squanders a great cast including Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, and Jamie Lee Curtis. At least Jack Black gets a few funny lines as Claptrap.
Perhaps Borderlands could have worked as an R-rated film, as it was originally intended by Roth. As a PG-13 flick, it comes off as a seventh-rate Guardians of the Galaxy knock-off, which seems even more inferior when it ran up against Deadpool & Wolverine. It also doesn’t help that Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 came out just 15 months ago, so it’s not like the original model wasn’t fresh in our minds. If this movie had even been half as good as Marvel’s sequel, then we could have forgiven a lot of its flaws. Instead, it’s an epic box-office disaster that may lose somewhere around $100 million for Lionsgate and the rest of the production companies behind it.
1. The Crow
Somebody at Sony should send Lionsgate a fruit basket. Between Borderlands and The Crow, Madame Web is no longer the worst movie of 2024. In fact, it’s not even the worst comic-book movie of 2024 now that The Crow has desecrated the memory of the 1994 original movie. Remember how impressive the late Brandon Lee looked in his full Crow makeup? Can you recall how intimidating the Crow was when Eric Draven came into his powers? There’s none of that in this movie, and Bill Skarsgård looks like just another juggalo instead of a supernatural avenger of the night.
On paper, casting the star of Stephen King’s It sounds like a fantastic idea. Skarsgård was terrifying as Pennywise the Dancing Clown, and yet his incarnation of Eric Draven doesn’t even come off as the Spirit Halloween cosplay version of Lee’s Crow. It’s easily Skarsgård’s worst revenge epic of the year. Suddenly, Boy Kills World doesn’t look so bad by comparison.
As much as we’re harping on Skarsgård’s performance and appearance, it’s not all his fault. Director Rupert Sanders and the screenwriters own this colossal misstep that manages to drain the originality out of The Crow. Instead of a mortal villain, the bad guy, Vincent Roeg (Danny Huston), is literally someone who is sending souls to hell. And the movie stops dead in its tracks for an extended romance montage with Eric and Shelley (FKA Twigs) as if they’re completely oblivious about Roeg targeting her. There’s really nothing that redeems this movie, and it makes a strong case that The Crow should be retired again… maybe permanently.