In the petrifying world of horror, you have Hereditary and Candyman on one end of the spectrum and your One Missed Calls and Cabin Fevers on the other. Essentially, there are exemplary horror films that transcend masterful terror puppetry and have revolutionized the genre, then there are the worst offenders for completely destroying the rapport that cult-classics like John Carpenter’s Halloween built with scarefest fanatics.
On Reddit, u/maesterofwargs sparked a controversial debate regarding the singular horror film that audiences regret watching. As paraphrased from the original post, these are films that — even years after their release — completely mislead viewers with a “good review” and duped them with such a horrendous flick or implicated a “curiosity killed the cat” moment.
Regardless of the circumstances, Reddit weighed in on the eventful debate. From what the comments initially indicate, it seems that Andrew Paquin’s 2010 psychological horror Open House has earned the most criticism; some Redditors even went so far as to call it the “worst horror movie” they’ve ever seen.
Another well-received suggestion pointed the finger toward Slender-Man (2018) and The Bye Bye Man (2017), one of which was a live-action adaptation of an infamous Creepypasta (horror-related fictional legend) entry and the other was a conspicuous rip-off of Candyman (1992). The Bye Bye Man was apparently based on the chapter “The Bridge to Body Island” in Robert Damon Schneck’s book The President’s Vampire, and Slender Man was based on the supernatural mythical character created by Eric Knudsen.
The original Creepshow — starring Stephen King as Jordy Verrill — is a shameless ’80s guilty pleasure. Its sequel, Creepshow 2, which released five years later, starts testing the boundaries of downright stupid horror. However, Creepshow 3 (2006) takes the cake for “most outrageous installment” in the Creepshow anthology. It was, for lack of a better word, awful. There can be no denying it, especially when the critics panned it as ruthlessly as they did.
Interestingly, Scott Cooper’s Antlers (2021) was among the many unsightly horrors lined up for the chopping block. Based on the urban folklore of a malevolent and cannibalistic spirit known as the Wendigo, Antlers was adapted from writer Nick Antosca’s short story “The Quiet Boy” and feeds into the outrageous myths surrounding the supernatural flesh-eaters. What promises to be a suspenseful and educational visualization of a well-known superstition falls flat on its face at the first hurdle and loses all hopes of enticing its viewers from then on — and Reddit wholeheartedly agrees.
Trey Edward Shults’s It Comes at Night may not be perceived as the “worst” horror film of all time, but it certainly doesn’t top the charts. Rather, it sits comfortably in purgatory; you either love or hate it. Many Reddit comments called Shult’s psychological horror “underwhelming” and “blame the marketing department” for its subsequent failure — both commercial and critical.
Although they weren’t explicitly mentioned, the original Reddit thread contains tons of candidates for the worst of the worst; The Fourth Kind, Jeepers Creepers 3, The Forest and Human Centipede 2, to name a few. If it wasn’t painfully obvious, there are simply too many shockers to choose from.
