What Were The Worst Movie Trends of 2023?

+ four things I hope to stop seeing in 2024

Happy New Year! Before we get into movie business:

• I edited a zine looking critically at the career and contradictions of Taylor Swift — ten essays that cover a single lyric from each album. For die-hard Swifties, chronic haters, and the Swift-curious alike. Read it for free on itch.io, Google Docs, or DropBox.

• I also wrote about some of my favorite books I read in 2023 for book(ish) because, if you can believe, I spend almost as much time reading as I do watching movies.

The Worst Movie Trends of 2023

As a long time hater, I am often conflicted by the unpleasantness of meanness. It’s ironic that Morrissey, one of the music industry’s most pungent, once wrote the painfully apt lyric: “it’s so easy to laugh, it’s so easy to hate, it takes strength to be gentle and kind.” Yes, nothing is more boring than an easy dunk (see: the Razzies) or a laundry list of whining (see: YouTube.com). But what is more nauseating than the current landscape of fanboy “criticism”? What is more life-affirming than a fully-formed takedown? 

Still, this year I had a hard time getting my hackles up the way I did in 2022. Did 2023 produce fewer shameless cash grabs (Hellraiser) or nostalgia-gargling military propaganda (Top Gun: Maverick) — or did I just see less of them? Even the truly bad stuff felt pretty adventurous: if the worst movie you saw this year was spaceman Adam Driver killing dinosaurs (‘65) then how bad could it truly have been?

Instead of a ranking, I’ve decided to instead look at the cinema of 2023 as a whole and find out what unites some of this year’s dreck. Below are four things I’ll be happy to see left behind.

I Love My Dead Black Wife

Let’s say your big budget action movie is going to star an equally big white man, but you want the audience to know he’s not, like, one of those white guys. You want him to seem sensitive, but don’t want to weigh the story down with “dialogue” and “character development.” Insert the Dead Black Wife. How bad could our giant white man be if a pretty Black lady with 3C curls married him? Will she appear in anything besides flashbacks and phone videos? Will she have a first name? Who cares! The DBW also means that the protagonist can have one of the most valuable assets in the history of American culture: a visibly mixed race daughter (hopefully played by child star Chloe Coleman).

MVP of 2023, she deserves so much more  

Variations of the DBW appeared in Dungeons & Dragons, 65, The Last of Us, and The Exorcist: Believer. The Exorcist at least takes a variation in having the DBW married to Leslie Odom Jr., but loses points for being maybe one of the worst movies I have ever seen in my life.

I was going to include an image of one of the wives, but none of them were in their movies long enough to appear in a still

Movies Shot Like Television

Non-cinematic shooting is just one of the casualties of the growth in home viewing: the line between movies and television merge as it all just becomes “content you can watch in your living room.” American Fiction was one of the ugliest movies I saw this year with its clangingly stiff, unmoving camera. It reminded me immediately of the brightly-lit, poorly-shot dramas that dominate streaming services (thank you Boomer Watch for forcing me to watch so many of these).  

Hypnotic strikes again. No I didn’t put the Breaking Bad Mexico filter over it, it looks like this for real.

An interesting counterpoint to this trend is The Killer, a movie that barely got a theatrical release but showed that Fincher’s technical creativity has only continued to develop.

Hopeful trend of 2024: fair wages for VFX artists

Underusing Arian Moayed 

Arian Moayed played a small role in Succession but in his brief scenes one could clearly see the power and skill Moayed had at his disposal. So why, then, am I only seeing him for two minutes in a C-grade Liam Neeson movie (Retribution) and a glorified play that was in theaters for about six days (You Hurt My Feelings)? Maybe his time was occupied with his Tony-nominated performance in A Doll’s House but not all of us Moayed Heads can make it through three hours of Ibsen.

They couldn’t even iron my man’s shirt

And while Moayed is sitting on the proverbial bench, the progeny of Hollywood’s alleged A-List are in an unceasing competition for who can take the biggest dump on their parents’ legacy. John David Washington’s performance in The Creator is so uninspired I actually have started to admire it. It’s a bold choice to be the most artificial person on screen in a movie that is entirely computer generated (plot included). I did not watch enough of The Idol to judge whether Lily-Rose Depp’s low-effort acting was actually genius, though I remain entranced by the all-time lyric:  “I’m just a freak, yeah.” Has anyone been impressed by Maya Hawke, who had a small role in the already overstuffed Asteroid City? And are we still pretending Alexander Skarsgård can do anything other than stand around (Infinity Pool)?

There are some so-called “nepo babies” who delivered: Margaret Qualley in Sanctuary, Ben Platt in Theater Camp, Dakota Johnson in the Madame Web movie trailer.

Undefeated run of bizarre acting choices

Overcooked IP

There were two movies this year about Dracula: both were wretched. If this isn’t proof that we need water from some new wells, I don’t know what is — but yes I will be seeing Robert Eggers’ upcoming Nosferatu opening night!!