10 Worst Horror Movies of All Time, According to Rotten Tomatoes

Right now, audiences are living in a golden age of horror. “Elevated horror” has been on the rise for nearly a decade, and over the past year or two, it’s become apparent that the beloved slasher movie is back with a vengeance. Also, as has always been the case, the reality is there are a ton of terrible horror films out there. Then, now, and forever.

Horror movies are cheap to produce and infamously profitable, so they’re churned out incessantly. So it makes sense that a relatively high ratio is pure junk. According to critics on Rotten Tomatoes, these are the absolute worst horror movies ever made, ranging from action films such as House of the Dead to Japanese movies like One Missed Call.

10 ‘House of the Dead’ (2003)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 3%

Uwe Boll will make more than one appearance on this list (and possibly many, many “worst” lists). One of his most maligned movies is this early-aughts adaptation of the rail shooter arcade game of the same name, which somehow feels less substantial than its source material. The movie illustrates a fictional island infested by zombies that forces its survivors to fight for a way out. Things go south when a group of college students travel to the mysterious island to attend a rave.

House of the Dead is most infamous for playing video game footage over its (headache-inducing, flatly staged) action sequences, surely one of the most remarkably lazy directing calls on record. It’s overall not a good zombie film, and it will surely (at least according to Rotten Tomatoes critics, anyway) go down as one of the worst in the genre.

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 3%

The uncertainty of the cyber world lends itself to terror (the Unfriended movies and especially Host mined this pretty well), and in 2002 it felt like the perfect time to jump on that. This William Malone movie follows detective Mike Reilly (StephenDorff) and Department of Health researcher Terry Huston (NataschaMcElhone) as they team up to uncover the cause behind four inexplicable deaths.

Unfortunately, aside from fleeting moments of stylishness, Feardotcom is ugly, blandly gruesome — and worse, boring. Although the dialogues are relatively bad and the editing is questionable, Malone’s film’s worst sin is arguably a total waste of brilliant character actors: Stephen Dorff, Natascha McElhone, Udo Kier and The Crying Game‘s Stephen Rea all have nothing to do, and appear flat-out lost.

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8 ‘The Haunting of Molly Hartley’ (2008)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 2%

Featuring stiff acting and, regrettably, a forgettable premise, the supernatural horror film The Haunting of Molly Hartley is about a young woman’s family’s pact with Satan, romantic rivalries, and actors who definitely aren’t teens playing teens who like to party. Despite its critical failure, it was a mild commercial success.

Long before roles in films like Thank You For Your Service, Cyrano, and Swallow garnered the talented actress critical acclaim, Haley Bennett starred in this oh-so-aughts, punishingly lame PG-13 horror flick opposite hunky Chace Crawford, the lone draw at the time whose star was on the rise thanks to Gossip Girl. The Haunting of Molly Hartley looks shot for TV, and it’s about as scary as a toothpaste commercial. This is a “horror” movie aimed at tweens.

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7 ‘Alone in the Dark’ (2005)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 1%

Starring Christian Slater in the lead role, Alone in the Dark is an action horror sci-fi that follows a paranormal investigator who uncovers a long-lost tribe called the Abskani. After discovering that they worshiped demons and these evil creatures are now attempting to break loose on the face of the earth, Edward must run against time to stop them with the help of archeologist Aline Cedrac (TaraReid).

Uwe Boll’s $20 million-budgeted (that seems modest, but the movie looks way cheaper) video-game adaptation is often ranked among the worst films of all time, a standout among the filmmaker’s less-than-critically-adored pantheon. Slater and Reid have negative chemistry, and the action scenes are stunningly inept. Alone in the Dark is astonishingly lacking, so it’s no wonder why it is often considered one of the worst horror movies of all time.

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6 ‘Beneath the Darkness’ (2011)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 0%

In addition to having about as generic a horror title as one can fathom, the Texas-set Beneath the Darkness stars Dennis Quaid, Tony Oller, and Aimee Teegarden in a derivative teen thriller plot about a murder and a cover-up. Furthermore, probably due to its unengaging premise that leaves out much to be desired, this 2011 flick was also a box office flop, earning a total of $23,998 all over the globe.

Though it aims for a similar tone, Beneath the Darkness is so vanilla and unremarkable it makes I Know What You Did Last Summer look like a masterpiece by comparison. Unfortunately, Martin Guigui‘s R-rated debut falls short of expectations and inevitably takes a place on this list.

5 ‘Homecoming’ (2009)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 0%

In Homecoming, Mischa Barton steps into the shoes of the stereotypical jealous ex-girlfriend who seeks vengeance after her former bae (Matt Long) returns to their hometown with a new girlfriend (Jessica Stroup). While poorly received by critics worldwide, though, Homecoming was somewhat of a box office success, grossing $8.5 million against a $1.5 million budget.

There have only been about a billion Fatal Attraction and Misery knockoffs (this is a little bit of both), but arguably none as instantly forgettable as this Morgan J. Freeman film. Critics dog-piled on Homecoming for wall-to-wall clichés, and a lack of entertainment value. It’s rare, though not unheard of, for a movie with subject matter like this to be genuinely good art. To not even be good nonsense is unforgivable.

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4 ‘The Disappointments Room’ (2016)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 0%

But seriously, who ok’d this title? What’s next, a horror movie called The Underwhelming Films Bunker? Kate Beckinsale is usually brilliant (this movie was released the same year as Love & Friendship, perhaps her best work to date), but she appears to be sleepwalking through this supernatural thriller movie (that is thrill-free) about a Brooklyn couple who discover a weird room in their new country house. And who could blame her?

The Disappointments Room was released in the wake of Relativity folding. Surely much of the talent involved would have rather it never saw the light of day. Director D.J. Caruso has made a crackling horror film in 2007’s Disturbia, but The Disappointments Room practically evaporates as you watch it — like its title suggests, audiences really are in for a disappointment.

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3 ‘Cabin Fever’ (2016)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 0%

Why, oh why is this film? An aggressively unnecessary remake of Eli Roth‘s 2002 original (which rests at a far more palatable 62% on the Tomatometer), Cabin Fever 2.0 simply retells the original story: it centers around a group of five college friends who succumb to an infectious, flesh-eating disease while staying at a remote cabin, only without the weird energy and humor that made the original movie what it was.

Roth surely has his detractors, but the Cabin Fever remake goes a long way in making Roth look good. In addition to not doing anything different from its source material, it is a gross horror movie without personality and a depressing experience; not in the cathartic way audiences sometimes want from a horror movie. It’s really just a bummer.

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2 ‘Jaws: The Revenge’ (1987)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 0%

How low can you go is the name of the game in this abominable third sequel to arguably the best suspense film ever made. The fourth and final film in the Jaws franchise shifted the focus to now-widowed Ellen Brody (Loirrane Gary) and her genuine belief that a white shark is seeking revenge on her family, especially when it kills her youngest son and then follows her to the Bahamas.

The Revenge is mostly unwatchably boring and unpleasurable, but there are so-bad-it’s-good assets, like the roaring shark (yes, a roaring shark). Michael Caine famously missed an Oscars ceremony where he won for Hannah and Her Sisters to film Jaws: The Revenge. Film critic Roger Ebert famously knocked him for it.

1 ‘One Missed Call’ (2008)

Rotten Tomatoes Score: 0%

Gore Verbinski‘s phenomenally successful retelling of Ringu accumulated a handful of mixed-to-negative critical notices (they were mostly positive). Compared to One Missed Call, which centers around Beth Raymond (ShannynSossamon) as she witnesses the deaths of two friends who hear horrifying messages through the phone, that film is Psycho, an untouchable peak of the horror genre.

The Ring starring Naomi Watts was a box-office leviathan and the beginning of a J-horror remake influx in Hollywood. The worst of these mostly terrible pale imitators of the solid Ring is this lame thriller about cursed voicemails. According to Rotten Tomatoes (based on 80 reviews), Takashi Miike’s piece of filmmaking is the worst horror movie, ever.

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NEXT:The Best Horror Movies of All Time, Ranked