15 Worst Movie Moments Of 2017
4. The Entire Third Act - The Book Of Henry
The Book of Henry seemed like it was going to be a sweet, affecting coming-of-age tale with great actors putting in fine work. Then it came out, revealing itself to be a flaming trainwreck of clashing tones, misguided performances and an awful two-hander of writing and direction from Jurassic World's Colin Trevorrow.
After Susan's (Naomi Watts) genius son Henry (Jaeden Lieberher) develops a sudden brain tumour and dies, he leaves behind a book, instructing her to kill their next door neighbour, Glenn (Dean Norris), a man who Henry has witnessed abusing his daughter.
This leads to a jaw-droppingly bizarre third act, in which Susan follows Henry's instructions, setting up a sniper rifle to kill Glenn and very nearly going through with it. She ultimately spares him, and after his abuse is finally exposed, he kills himself instead.
Things are arguably even weirder at the school's talent show that night, where Henry's younger brother Peter (Jacob Tremblay) puts on a magic show which ends with him showering the audience in "glitter", which may or may not in fact be his dead brother's ashes.
That Trevorrow plays these scenes as profound and sweetly affecting respectively is proof enough that he was rightly kicked off Star Wars Episode IX.
Some films are so bad they transcend awfulness and become genuinely fascinating, and The Book of Henry is frequently that uniquely awful.