We’ve hit the end of yet another year! As I have done annually since 2016, I marked the occasion by wading through the flood of “Worst Films of 2022” publications that bombard social media timelines this time of year. Instead of adding another unnecessary voice to the chorus in order to shout out the movies I most disliked over the past year, I conduct a tally of what everyone else is shouting about. In theory, this should provide a rough estimate of the movies that are *publicly perceived* to be the worst of the year. I’m not making any claims as to the quality (or lack thereof) of these films: I just report what I see. Think of this as a sort of public opinion measure rather than an expression of my personal thoughts.

As with last year, I made tallies from 22 articles published over the past month, which includes entries from outlets like The Chicago Tribune and Variety. For the full tallies, the spreadsheet I used is available here.

This year’s tallies included 107 different movies across those 22 published lists, which was a step up from the 100 movies in last year’s tally, but an overall smaller distribution than years before that. As with every year, there were some hot takes among them: otherwise positively received movies like Triangle of Sadness and Bones and All were mentioned in isolation. All of that said, there was quite a bit more agreement between the lists than I’ve seen in the past few years, with a pretty clear separation between the wheat and the chaff at the top and bottom. Even better, there were clear medalists this year! 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places were uncontested. However, as has always been the case, no movie was so unanimously loathed as to make all of the lists – this year’s leader was on 15 of 22.

Speaking of which, here’s the final leaderboard:

1. Morbius (15/22)
2. Jurassic World: Dominion (11/22)
3. Firestarter (9/22)
4. (Tie) The Bubble / Pinocchio / Amsterdam (8/22)
5. Blonde (7/22)
6. (Tie) Blacklight / The King’s Daughter (6/22)
7. (Tie) The 355 / Me Time / Moonfall (5/22)

Any surprises in there for you? How many of these movies did you catch over 2022? Personally, I don’t remember even hearing about movies like The Bubble or Me Time. I caught Morbius, Jurassic World: Dominion, and Blacklight, and wasn’t particularly surprised to see those in the running. Are there any that I should cover here on the blog?