June 17, 2022 Alex Jeffries

So Bad It's Good: Where To Find The Best Bad Movies

As we cruise on from movie award season into the season of summer blockbusters, you may find yourself looking for something slightly different.

After all, you’ve just binged through all of 2021’s best films. You’ve had your fill of culture.

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And you’re now seeing trailers for all of 2022’s biggest films, with Dr. Strange from Marvel, a new Top Gun, another Jurassic Park movie, and Buzz Lightyear’s solo epic.

So much quality. So much grandeur. So, whatever happened to… badness?

There comes a time in every movie watcher’s life when they stumble on a bad movie.

It used to be on cable while you were flipping through movies (what’s cable?). Or maybe you had a sleepover with friends and someone brought a VHS they’d heard about.

And lo and behold, a movie so bad, whose effects were so atrocious, whose script was so laughable…

That it became good.

You may even be familiar with the trend of movies so bad they’re good. The Room, widely considered one of the defining movies of this strange genre, now has regular screenings throughout the country.

And it’s not alone. Joining together to watch these movies with friends can be altogether more enjoyable than just watching a merely good movie.

Our chances of stumbling upon a bad movie aren’t as good as they used to be. So more and more people are seeking them out. Still, with so many bad movies and so little time to watch them, how do you find the right bad movie for you?

After all, these aren’t good movies. You know what you like in good movies - your favorite director, your favorite writer, your favorite actress.

To help you pick out the right bad movie, we’re breaking down 4 best-of-bad-movie lists by how they define bad movies. After all, if you’re going to pick a bad movie, you might as well do a good job, right?

The Best Lists Of The Best Bad Movies

Rotten Tomatoes’ Worst Movies Of All Time - Let’s start with the site that has become the critical film arbiter of our times. Every once in a while you hear of a movie getting a 1% or 0% score. Well, here they are. With 39 movies that received a 0% with at least 20 votes, and only one movie above 5%, you’ll have your pick of the all-time worst reviewed movies.
Complex’s The Best Bad Movies Of All Time - Though lacking some of the numerical rigor as the other lists here, Complex excels here by explaining each movie’s legacy as a good bad movie alongside the critical reception at the time. If you’re looking to pick the right bad movie for you and your friends, this has just the right amount of context to deliver.
IMDB’s Best Bad Movies - While the other lists provide some context - context which may actually make the movies more watchable - IMDB’s list is filled with both well-known and obscure movies that have received plenty of negative reviews. To add to the intrigue, 24 of these movies don’t even have MPAA ratings. Viewer beware, but if you’re looking for a truly bad experience, picking from this list should do the trick.
The Ringer’s 50 Best Good Bad Movies - For a great explanation of what makes a good bad movie (they didn’t try to make it bad, its badness is its attractive quality, and it had to be a critical failure when released) that gets a solid, scientific treatment, this list is unmatched. Their formula for determining good badness takes in cultural relevance, the Rotten Tomatoes score, and public opinion to reveal a final Good Bad Score. All the usual suspects are on the list, but it’s the top (bottom?) 10 that deserves a *chef’s kiss.*

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Whether they’re so good, they’re bad, or so good they coulda been contenders, this is one pack of movie-watching achievements that will have you saying, “You had me at IRLA.”

With unlockable movie achievements ranging from “watching 1 film widely considered to be ‘so bad it's good’” to “choose a director and watch their entire filmography,” you’ll have plenty of material for movie night.

Before you go, we have to know - do you have a go-to Bad Movie?

A guiltiest guilty pleasure? For me, it is and may always be Deep Blue Sea.