A 2008 made for television movie that features a raft of low-rent and no-name stars getting themselves involved in a ridiculous hybrid of Indiana Jones-style adventure and horror-tinged sci-fi shouldn’t really be held to any sort of high standards, but even then, The Lost Treasure of the Grand Canyon managed to be worse than anyone imagined.
Set in the late 19th Century, Stargate SG-1 veteran Michael Shanks and Shannen Doherty head up a team of researchers who uncover a lost Aztec city that was only rumored to exist in legend. Of course, there’s a reason why it was shut off from the rest of the outside world, with evil spirits and a deadly serpent god doing their best to ensure nobody ever encroaches on their turf again.
A Rotten Tomatoes user rating of just 15 percent coupled with a 3.6/10 average on IMDb feels generous, because it’s hard to tell whether the CGI or the acting is the weakest part of The Lost Treasure of the Grand Canyon, and they’re both abominable even by the low barometer of a Starz original feature that initially aired almost 15 years ago.
Proving themselves gluttons for punishment once again, though, streaming users have opted to take a punt on a truly horrendous piece of cinema for reasons known only to themselves. As per FlixPatrol, The Lost Treasure of the Grand Canyon has become one of the top-viewed titles on ad-supported platform Freevee, inexplicably soaring as high as ninth place in the United Kingdom for good measure.
Making Noah Wyle’s Librarian franchise look like high art is no easy feat, but this unmitigated stinker pulls it off with aplomb.