10 Most Pointless Films Since 2000

Just because a movie has a decent budget, some stars and a wide release doesn’t mean you’re in for a good time. Netflix is littered with films that promised the world and instead delivered Newark, New Jersey.

Take the Demi Moore vehicle Striptease (please), a movie with an A-list star, a director who’d worked with Mel Brooks, and a supporting cast that included Robert Patrick, Burt Reynolds and Ving Rhames. It should’ve been great. It wasn’t.

Part of the problem lay in Carl Hiaasen’s original novel, where a single mom turns to stripping and becomes involved with a corrupt Congressman, which was just a little too racy for mainstream America. So “compromises” were made, and most of the comedy gave way to soap opera-level drama.

Leonard Maltin described the resulting fiasco as “Not funny enough, or dramatic enough, or sexy enough, or bad enough to qualify as entertainment in ANY category.” And Striptease is by no means unique in that regard.

The greatest lie ever told by Hollywood is that nobody sets out to make a bad movie, making you wonder about Mannequin 2: On The Move or Xanadu, where Olivia Newton-John played “Kira, the roller-skating muse.”

The list is endless, and each new week sees another trainwreck. Here are 10 of the worst offenders. 

Annabelle is the prequel to The Conjuring that explains the origin of the eponymous doll, but as in Alien “prequel” Prometheus, it’s really a re-tread with boring characters and routine situations. Opening in 1969, expectant mother Mia (Annabelle Wallis) sees the still-at-large Manson Family on the news, and before you can say “foreshadowing”, she’s attacked by two Devil Worshippers.

Even though they appear to have wandered in from Blood Orgy of the She Devils, these bozos still manage to conjure Something Awful, which of course possesses Annabelle (the doll, not the actress), so it’s not long before our heroine starts hallucinating, hearing strange noises, walking down dark corridors etc. When The Local Priest proves unhelpful (what’re the odds?) Mia turns to kindly neighbour Evelyn (Alfre Woodard), who just happens to have an occult library that comes in useful when things start going bump.

Keeping things in the Insidious/Conjuring family, the cinematographer on those films, Mortal Kombat: Annihilation’s John R Leonetti, calls the shots here, following James Wan’s authorial voice as though directing episodic television and keeping everything moving steadily enough to make you forget how stale it all is. There’s The Doomed Priest, The Record That Plays By Itself, The “Leave The House Now!” Phone Call (which of course goes unheeded), and what self-respecting generic horror picture allows its Token Ethnic Character to survive?