Every year delivers a few cinematic masterpieces, a handful of surprises, and then… well, then there are the others. These are the movies that made us check our watches, doubt our life choices or wonder if everyone else saw a different cut. And in honor of these valiant misfires, it’s time for something new: Zombies In My Blog presents the 2025 Mid-Year Movie Missteps Awards!
Let’s hand out some hardware to this year’s most confusing, disappointing or unintentionally hilarious releases. Because if you can’t be the best, you might as well be the most memorably bad!
The COULDA BEEN A GREAT BLACK MIRROR EPISODE Award: Mickey 17
Bong Joon Ho. Robert Pattinson. Sci-fi cloning shenanigans. On paper, Mickey 17 sounded like an instant classic. In reality? It’s a ponderous, overdesigned thought experiment that forgot to bring a plot. Pattinson plays multiple versions of himself — and somehow none of them are interesting. The film asks deep questions about identity, mortality and sacrifice… then answers them with long stares and exposition dumps. It looks incredible, sure, but it moves at the pace of a dial-up modem trying to stream Interstellar (I literally fell asleep during the majority of the movie on my first viewing, and still felt it was drawn out too long). Could Mickey 17 have been a great Black Mirror episode? Absolutely. But a full-length movie? Not so much.
I’m still not convinced this feature film wasn’t AI-generated. The acting? Somewhere between confused and comatose. The CGI? I’ve seen better water effects in a PowerPoint transition. The plot? “Marine biologist tries to warn hot tub resort guests about aggressive prehistoric sharks that can swim up through plumbing and eat them.” I mean, come on. I admire the audacity, but this was less “so bad it’s good,” and more “so bad I had to pause three times to scream into a pillow.” Unforgettable, but for all the wrong reasons.
The WE GOT AVENGERS AT HOME Award: Thunderbolts*
Marvel’s big antihero team-up was supposed to be gritty, edgy and a fresh break from formula. Instead, Thunderbolts* feels like the MCU version of reheated leftovers — technically it’s still food but it’s not exactly satisfying. Despite a solid cast (Florence Pugh! Sebastian Stan! David Harbour, again!), the movie somehow manages to sideline everyone interesting in favor of long debates about government contracts and trust issues. It wants to be The Suicide Squad with heart but ends up more Pity Party: The Movie. No stakes, no spark and no reason to remember anyone’s name except Yelena, and that’s only because she is the one who does the most talking. It’s Marvel’s most ambitious shrug to date.
The LIFE FINDS A WAY TO SUCK Award: Jurassic World: Rebirth
They called it a “fresh new chapter” in the Jurassic saga. What we got was basically Jurassic World: Leftovers Edition. Rebirth promised a back-to-basics return to suspense and wonder — and then immediately gave us more genetically enhanced dino chaos, bland protagonists and a script that reads like it was fed through a fax machine from 1993. There’s a new dinosaur hybrid with a name like a rejected Pokémon, and of course, new Red Bull-fueled raptors. The movie keeps insisting “this time it’s different,” while doing the exact same thing for the seventh time. Jeff Goldblum once said, “You were so preoccupied with whether or not you could, you didn’t stop to think if you should.” Pretty sure he was talking about this sequel.
You know how I said Den of Thieves was basically Heat’s rowdy cousin who lifts at 3 am and quotes 300 unironically? Well, Pantera is that same cousin, after a midlife crisis in Europe. Gerard Butler returns, sweatier and angrier than ever, chasing thieves across oceans with a face that says, “I haven’t slept since the last movie.” There’s a Pantera in the title, but no one really explains what that means — unless it’s a metaphor for how loud, aggressive and strangely pointless everything feels. The action’s fine, but the plot twists are delivered with all the grace of a barbell to the chest. It wants to be Ocean’s Eleven. Instead, it just made me want to watch that film, instead.
The FULL MOON, HALF EFFORT Award: The Wolf Man
Universal dusted off its horror icons for another reboot, promising a bold, terrifying new take on The Wolf Man. The studio even teamed up with Blumhouse, a production company known for some great horror films. What we got instead was moody lighting, endless dramatic pauses and a werewolf that looks like it wandered off the set of a cologne commercial. The monster barely shows up, and when he does, it’s edited so quickly it might as well be Bigfoot footage. The human drama tries to be Oscar-worthy, but it mostly feels like a werewolf movie that’s ashamed to have a werewolf in it. This reboot had all the ingredients but forgot the full moon — and the fun.
And finally, the coup de grace for the biggest misstep of 2025, so far…
The HOW DID THIS COST $250 MILLION? Award: Captain America: Brave New World
And here it is. The big one. The multiverse of meh. Brave New World was supposed to be the moment Sam Wilson took full command of the shield, the franchise and our collective excitement. Instead, we got a movie so aggressively mediocre it makes The Falcon and the Winter Soldier look like, well, The Winter Soldier. The plot meanders like it’s looking for directions. The action scenes feel like rejected cutscenes from a mobile game. And poor Anthony Mackie is stuck doing his best, while being suffocated by a script that feels like it was written by a very tired intern and editing by committee.
Harrison Ford is here, technically. The Red Hulk might be here, possibly (if you try to truly believe it’s there and not some lousy CGI render). But everything exciting is buried under a sea of tonal whiplash, bizarre editing choices and reshoots you can see from space. It’s not offensively bad — it’s just shockingly dull. Which somehow makes it worse.
Marvel promised a brave new world. What we got felt like a mandatory meeting that ran too long and could have probably been done in an email, instead.
Nobody sets out to make a bad movie (unless you are the mind behind Hot Spring Shark Attack, maybe). But somewhere between the greenlighting and the CGI explosions, something gets lost — maybe the script, maybe the plot, maybe just basic common sense. And while I love celebrating cinematic greatness as much as the next overcaffeinated film nerd, sometimes it’s the glorious trainwrecks that stick with you the longest.
These films didn’t just miss the mark — they drop-kicked it into the sun, lit it on fire and tried to convince us it was a bold, creative choice. But hey, at least they gave us something to talk about, meme and — if nothing else — honor with a completely fake and deeply petty award.
To the studios: thank you for trying. To the actors: please cash those checks. And to the rest of us? Let’s keep watching, keep roasting and keep hoping the next reboot/sequel/remake will at least try a little harder.
Let’s see what the next six months bring. I’ll bring the popcorn. You bring the lowered expectations.
Jason Kittrell
Jason Kittrell is a member of the Music City Film Critics Association and he's also active within the horror community.
