10 Movies Which Insult Your Intelligence

When you're watching a movie, the last thing you want to feel is that the people who made it think you're dumb. Whilst most films treat their audience with the respect they deserve, sometimes a picture will come along that is so unbelievably stupid that it's hard to imagine how anyone thought it was a good idea.

Movies that "insult your intelligence" are typically ones where the plots are utterly outlandish, yet treated as completely feasible within the film's own universe, hoping the audience wouldn't notice. Sometimes, it's the characters that are insulting, as they are so underdeveloped or basic that it's impossible for anyone to take them seriously as real people.

This list isn't about pictures that are bad, per se. Some of these did get good reviews and have strong fanbases, it's just that there are elements of them that bugged people a little too much.

Basically, this list is about movies where there is a fundamental misunderstanding between creator and consumer. That relationship needs to be rock solid in order for a piece of fiction to work, so when it gets broken, bad things start to happen.

It only came out in February 2024, but Madame Web already has a reputation as being one of the dumbest big-name movies of all time. 

Starring Dakota Johnson as the titular Cassie Webb who has the gift of precognition, the film pits a group of seemingly normal women against a vicious killer who is out to stop them from becoming superheroes in the future. 

If only she had used her powers to see how badly this film would turn out to be. 

So much about Madame Web is a giant mess. The three characters Cassie is protecting - Julia, Anya, and Mattie - are barely individuals, amounting more to what a bunch of 50-year-old men think teenagers are. Asking the audience to care about such husks of people is an insult to begin with, but then there’s everything else.

The dialogue is so expository that even a seven-year-old would feel patronised by it, the heroes are completely inept and realistically should have been killed several times over, and the plot is so uninspiring that it can’t have taken any longer than ten minutes to think of.

It’s no wonder nobody enjoyed this.