A Dwayne Johnson-shaped lump of coal rolls out of cineplexes only to fail upwards on the streaming charts

On June 25, 2024, the first trailer for Red One — the latest entry in the Dwayne Johnson slush pile — descended upon Earth, and everybody was mostly certain that it was going to be dreadful. On Nov. 15, 2024, Red One released in theaters, and it proceeded to bomb at the box office since, presumably, it was exactly as dreadful as everyone suspected.

And on Dec. 12, 2024, not even a month after beginning its theatrical run (which, depending on where you are in the world, hasn’t even ended yet), Red One threw in the towel and cannonballed straight onto Prime Video. Less than a day later, it quickly ascended to the top of the charts for precisely the same reason that it only raked in a fraction of its budget at the theater; it’s inconsequential slop whose majority of viewings could only ever be prompted by the vague nihilism that has taken root in so many living room couches these days.

Indeed, per FlixPatrol, Red One is sitting without a care in the world at the top of the United States’ Prime Video film rankings at the time of writing, no doubt enjoying its time in the spotlight before natural selection inevitably confines this one to the fringes of history.

The film stars Johnson as Callum Drift, head of security at the North Pole who’s tasked with making sure Santa Claus (J. K. Simmons) is protected from harm at all times. When the evil Christmas witch Grýla launches an assault on the North Pole and kidnaps him, Callum must team up with naughty-lister Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans) to ensure his safe return.

For a man who quite clearly consumes more calories in a day than most of us probably see in a week, it’s quite incredible how devoid of nutrition Johnson’s latest is here. There is admittedly something mildly amusing about how seriously Johnson plays Callum whilst being surrounded by anthropomorphic bad-cop polar bears, portals in toy stores, and killer snowmen that someone was allegedly paid to animate, but it’s not the sort of amusement you enjoy.

No, there is a massive, unspoken difference between laughing at something that’s creatively tuned to tension and human emotion, and laughing at something because we’ve descended into the DEFCON Brainrot level of consumerism that aims to suck the landscape dry of sincerity and package our precious remaining dopamine in varying shades of meaninglessness and irony that we nevertheless give into, because what else is there to engage with?

Red One, in case I lost you there, is an example of the latter, and it hardly even pretends not to be. Even with holiday-themed goons and monsters, Callum’s weaponization of children’s toys, and a premise that practically screams “Please, for the love of God, just have fun with how goofy this all is,” it still settles for unceremonious meandering that only very occasionally pretends to care about anything that occurs during its two-hour runtime.

Luckily, despite the dark picture I painted for you two paragraphs ago, there’s actually plenty of fantastic, joyful, and moving films being made every single day, and making a choice about the art we choose to engage with is just one way that we can all fulfill our very human responsibility of operating from a place of sincerity and radical love. So, toss on something like The Holdovers, Past Lives, The Fall Guy, or It’s a Wonderful Life; so long as we stop enabling nonsense like Red One, it’s a win.