12 Worst Movie Moments Of 2025

2025’s cinema scene was, as the saying goes, “the best of times, the worst of times.” High points were plentiful this year, particularly when it came to high profile, foreign-language imports. Filmmakers like Jafar Panahi, Eva Victor, Ryan Coogler, Park Chan-wook, Dea Kulumbegashvili, and so many more delivered works rife with creativity, exemplifying an artistry only cinema can realize. There were also extraordinary performances that will go into history books as all-time greats. However, paired up with all these creative peaks in the best movies of 2025, there were also frustrating artistic craters.

The latter was reflected in the worst movies of 2025, which often crumbled thanks to (among other faults) deeply cynical storytelling choices. Littered across these underwhelming titles were the absolute worst movie moments of 2025. Much like the worst movie moments of 2023, these scenes are memorable in all the wrong ways. Some of these movies had scenes suffering from subpar writing. Others were hindered by miscalculated visual impulses. Still other motion pictures made the unwise decision to let Gal Gadot rap. Whatever went haywire here, these 12 especially dreadful 2025 movie moments will go down in infamy.

Eventually, “Love Hurts” gets around to detailing what on Earth is going on with lead character Marvin (Ke Huy Quan) and Rose (Ariana DeBose), a woman from his past who’s upending his tidy realtor status quo. The reveal comes in the form of a flashback showing Marvin, back in his assassin days, refusing to kill Rose and letting her go free. The trouble is, though, this revelation arrives at an awkward point in “Love Hurts.” This is the kind of sequence that opens a motion picture as a prologue to properly set up character dynamics. Here, though, it just awkwardly stumbles into existence almost midway through the flick.

The inopportune timing of the flashback solidifies why “Love Hurts” is incapable of getting audiences invested in these individuals. Not helping matters is that this sequence is badly staged and written. Awkward cuts abound while Marvin and Rose share tin-eared dialogue with one another. Audiences finally understand what happened that cemented their strained relationship, but it means sitting through inept filmmaking and writing. In every respect, this “Love Hurts” scene is a misfire. It especially comes up short, though, in terms of where it transpires in the larger film. Screenwriters take note, this is the opposite of how backstory should be doled out.

After visiting his injured superhero partner Joaquin Torres (Danny Ramirez), “Captain America: Brave New World” protagonist Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) steps outside of the hospital to get some air. He soon realizes he’s not alone. The film’s main villain, Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson), is standing outside with his (laughably) mutated skull exposed. The two men chat as authorities close in on Sterns and prepare to arrest him. Though his incarceration is now inevitable, Sterns had a purpose for this appearance. It’s through his taunting that Wilson realizes President Ross (Harrison Ford) is in danger of turning into the Red Hulk.

On paper, this sounds like a simple enough expository sequence between hero and villain. In execution, “Brave New World” turns it into a punchline, all thanks to its presentation. Wilson and Sterns are depicted largely through tight close-up and medium shots. They’re never in the same image. Sterns, meanwhile, has been green-screened into the hospital backdrop to a comically obvious degree. Everything about this scene’s editing and camerawork choices is visibly baffling, even to casual filmgoers. They’re the kind of shortcomings that suggest these two actors were never on the same set when they shot this dialogue.

Instead of accentuating a tense atmosphere before “Brave New World’s” finale, this scene exudes incompetence. It’s staggering to see a big-budget blockbuster deliver imagery this cheap.

Writer/director Alex Scharfman’s “Death of a Unicorn” has ambitions of being a bleakly funny satire about rich people getting slaughtered by a unicorn. These ambitions are reinforced by its title card getting cued up by lead character Elliot (Paul Rudd) blasting a shotgun at a wounded unicorn. However, “Unicorn” devolves into tidy sentimentality ensuring the feature doesn’t rattle the sensibilities of mainstream moviegoers. This comes in the form of the deceased Elliot getting suddenly resurrected by the film’s magical unicorns. In the pantheon of cinematic moments where magic brings characters back from the dead, “Pokemon: The First Movie” and, especially, “Tangled” did it better.

Giving the unicorns these powers is a clumsy deus ex machina, but more gravely, it undercuts “Death of a Unicorn’s” grim aesthetic. The best unhinged genre movies criticizing the bourgeoisie (like “Sorry to Bother You” and “Society”) keep the unpredictability going well into the end credits. It’s all mayhem, all the time. In contrast, Elliot returning to life so he can reconcile with his daughter, Ridley (Jenna Ortega), is a standard narrative route to take. What should feel like unbridled chaos instead culminates with charmless narm. Failing to commit to death accentuates the film’s larger problems. The whole production is too timid to commit to its principles.

Unlike in the original 1937 animated classic, 2025’s “Snow White” gives the nefarious Evil Queen (played by Gal Gadot) a song to sing. This original tune, entitled “All Is Fair,” is something to behold — in all the wrong ways. For starters, it suffers from the plodding camerawork plaguing every single musical number in this version of “Snow White.” Despite his experience helming the pilot episode of “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” and countless music videos, filmmaker Marc Webb is terrible at coordinating the musical performances here.

The song is also littered with unimaginative lyrics. A villain tune should be the place where the writers cut loose with delightfully devious phrases. Instead, they deliver verses packed with an incredibly limited vocabulary. While classic Disney songs introduced kids to words like “fractals” and “decapod,” “All Is Fair” is content to rhyme “done” with “fun” and call it a day. Topping it all off is Gal Gadot’s dreadful performance. The same lifelessness permeating her infamously flat delivery of important dialogue (creating one of the DCEU’s most cringeworthy moments) amplifies all of the song’s inherent problems.

Gadot boasts no stage presence or gusto that could imbue this tune with personality, villainously delicious or otherwise. A section of the tune where she raps is nothing short of suffering. There were tons of dumb things people couldn’t ignore in “Snow White.” The “All Is Fair” musical number is its creative nadir.

As “Jurassic World Rebirth” barrels towards the finish line, the mercenary Duncan (Mahershala Ali) prepares to make the ultimate sacrifice to ensure his comrades and a family can escape a dinosaur-populated island alive. With the terrifying D-Rex descending, Duncan grabs a flare and commands the creature to focus on him. He then runs in the opposite direction, diverting the dinosaur from all the other surviving “Rebirth” characters. While Zora Bennett (Scarlett Johansson) protests Duncan’s sacrifice, everyone else piles up into a life raft and quickly leaves Île Saint-Hubert.

When “Rebirth” viewers last see Duncan, he’s stuck in water with his flare flickering out and the D-Rex towering over him. The camera cuts away before moviegoers can witness what happens next, which presumably entails Duncan becoming this critter’s lunch. Just a few minutes later (if even that), though, one of the lifeboat’s occupants notices something on the horizon. Somehow, it’s Duncan, waving his friends down to pick him up. This moment is baffling on many levels. For one thing, how on Earth did he get away from the D-Rex? 

For another, why did director Gareth Edwards and company so severely imply his grisly demise only to undercut it immediately? With this execution, neither Duncan’s passing nor his surprise resurrection has any impact. It’s one of many “Rebirth” moments that underwhelm thanks to their slipshod execution and peculiar screenwriting choices.

In the final segment (of three) of “A House of Dynamite,” Idris Elba’s unnamed President of the United States is grappling with the reality that Chicago is about to get hit by a nuclear warhead. Who launched it and why is unknown. As he sits on a plane stewing over the terrible choices he’s preparing to make, he remarks a nearby colleague that “I listened to this podcast” where someone used the phrase “a house filled with dynamite” to describe the United States of America’s fixation on stockpiling nuclear weapons. It’s a scene that gives this Kathryn Bigelow directorial effort its title. It’s also a sequence that’s laughably written.

The intimate gaze of Bigelow’s camera and the scope of the script here mean there’s nothing else in this scene beyond dialogue between characters. That puts tremendous pressure on words to carry the day and, despite having an actor of Elba’s caliber, Noah Oppenheim’s script isn’t up to the task. The phrase “I listened to this podcast” is extremely clumsy. The deployment of the “house filled with dynamite” phrase, meanwhile, merely rehashes a theme that the movies been hammering home plenty up to this point. There are no thematic revelations here nor insights into these people as characters.

All audiences can stew in during this “House of Dynamite” segment is inept screenwriting, and the POTUS stewing over his favorite podcast as the apocalypse approaches.

Edward Berger’s “Ballad of a Small Player” is a grim gambling drama. Harkening back to superior motion pictures like “Leaving Las Vegas” and “Uncut Gems,” among others, this adaptation of a Lawrence Osborne novel of the same name follows gambling addict Brendan Reilly (Colin Farrell). He’s struggling to pay off his debts in Macau, and his facade of a British gentleman is crumbling. Eventually, an encounter with a woman named Dao-Ming (Fala Chen) changes his life forever, albeit with drastic and devastating consequences. Berger and screenwriter Rowan Joffé’s execution of “Small Player” is a mixed bag, but at least these artists seem committed to weaving a bleak tone for the entire project.

Such a tone comes crashing down with a useuless mid-credit scene. If there’s any movie that doesn’t need a credits bonus, it’s “Ballad” and its grim saga about addiction. However, Berger cuts the credits around Reilly and Cynthia Blithe (Tilda Swinton) sharing an extravagant, fiery dance together. This pays off two earlier moments involving Reilly promising Blithe a dance. However, there’s no way any viewer was on the edge of their seat hoping for closure on what were clearly throwaway moments. 

More gravely, this inexplicable set piece negates the film’s downbeat ending. Audiences shouldn’t leave this movie tapping their toes. A mid-credit scene for this particular feature sounds like a bad idea on paper, and it was even worse in execution.

Once Ares (Jared Leto) enters the real world of his own accord, he grabs Eve Kim (Greta Lee), hops into a car, and tries to get to Encom’s home base before he vanishes from our reality. In one of the worst moments in “Tron Ares,” Ares channels Margot Robbie’s Barbie and Will Ferrell’s Buddy the Elf in his obliviousness as to how the real world works. Needless to say, Leto is nowhere near as good at this kind of material as Robbie or Ferrell. This sequence reminds audiences how little personality Ares actually has. Between Leto’s lifeless performance, and screenwriting that makes him derivative of more beloved cinematic icons, Ares is a total wash as a character.

While on this car ride, Ares, fumbling through radio stations, encounters a Depeche Mode song. Suddenly entranced by what he’s hearing, Ares develops an immediate fondness for the band’s tunes. This cutesy moment is eyeroll-worthy and even tees up later terrible “Tron: Ares” moments involving Ares professing his adoration for this musical entity. Worst of all, “Past Lives” veteran Greta Lee is forced to deliver so much terrible expository dialogue during this ride. This includes an awkward reveal that Kim is planning to leave her job, a plot detail previously not even hinted at in Jesse Wigutow’s screenplay.

Everything in this “Tron: Ares” car ride is graceless and tedious. The worst, lengthiest road trips with a judgy parent would be preferable to sitting through this scene again.

“The Home” writer/director James DeMonaco (who penned the movie’s script with Adam Cantor) has a lot of information to get through in this horror movie’s opening sequence. Lead character Max’s (Pete Davidson) childhood with his adopted parents is shown; ditto the fateful night he was informed his older foster brother had perished. These glimpses into yesteryear are spliced with footage depicting an adult Max as a slacker living in a messy apartment, constantly lounging, and with a penchant for leaving graffiti. Max doesn’t just spray paint obscene words, though. His artwork is politically conscious, raising awareness for issues like climate change. It doesn’t stop him from getting arrested.

The entire kick-off scene in “The Home” suffers from terrible editing and extremely cumbersome dialogue. However, what’s really cringey about this prologue is DeMonaco and Cantor’s clear uncertainty over how “bad” to make Max. He’s a criminal, but not one who technically hurts people. He vandalizes places, but for good causes. There’s a hesitancy about committing to a really messed-up protagonist, and it signals the safe, tepid screenwriting plaguing the rest of the motion picture.

Daddy issues keep cropping up in Universal’s “Wolfman” movies, including in the 2010 reboot that starred Benicio del Toro. 2025’s “Wolf Man” kept the tradition alive with lead character Blake’s (Christopher Abbott) complicated and dark dynamic with his father. Early on in the film, he’s informed that his dad has passed away. This devastating development inspires him to go to his wife, Charlotte (Julia Garner), and break the news. The pair go on to discuss their marital problems and what’s next as a family.

Writer/director Leigh Whannell has exhibited many talents over the years, but dialogue has always been something they’ve struggled with. That problem crops up here in an intimate sequence that’s all about raw, personal discussions. Blake and Charlotte trade words lacking in individual personality. There’s no power or tragic weight to their talking about their fraught rapport. Instead, it just sounds like both individuals are reading aloud an outline of their respective character arcs. 

Compounding the monotony of this scene, Whannell lends an uninspired visual framing to this critical discussion. It’s all tight close-ups, with no specificity to the camera’s position or the environment surrounding the characters. As a slasher movie prologue establishes a killer’s bloodlust, this early “Wolf Man” sequence ominously teases what’s in store for viewers. The inert drama and imagery consumes the rest of the film’s runtime.

Writer/director Sophie Brooks hinges “Oh, Hi!” on a terrific concept. Iris (co-writer Molly Gordon) and Isaac (Logan Lerman) go away to a secluded farmhouse, where they engage in some BDSM intimacy. After learning Isaac isn’t looking to make their connection a long-term thing, the devastated Iris decides to keep him cuffed to the bed. It’s a fresh premise that could easily spiral into juicy, unpredictable disarray. Especially with talented actors like Gordon and Lerman leading the charge.

Unfortunately, “Oh, Hi!” careens towards an underwhelming finale where Iris and an injured Isaac just talk about their respective issues in the woods. All of this grim comedy and a dark premise result in an incredibly rudimentary capper. Familiarity wouldn’t be a problem, though, if Brooks and Gordon’s script could nail the dialogue. Instead, Iris and Isaac speak in flat and didactic verbiage as they outline their respective character defects. The deeply specific concept sparking “Oh, Hi!” fizzles out into yet another indie movie ending where white people talk about their feelings in the woods. 

Laughs are absent, as is any sense of interesting volatility. Even Gordon and Lerman’s performances aren’t especially memorable in this scene. Taken as a standalone sequence, the scene is generic and forgettable. In the context of this film, though, it’s an insultingly uninspired finale for something that started with so much potential. 

After an evocative marketing campaign (not to mention the presence of producer Jordan Peele), it’s certainly worth asking if the 2025 horror movie “Him” is worth watching. The answer to that question, though, is a definitive no. This saga of aspiring football icon Cameron “Cam” Cade (Tyriq Withers) is a yawn-worthy slog, shockingly light on either memorable scares or searing social commentary. The entire endeavor sends audiences home on an unsatisfying note with its finale, which depicts Cade confronting a slew of high-profile football management figures (including his own), who are all ready to use demonic forces to make Cade a football legend.

Our protagonist refuses and instead proceeds to brutally slaughter everyone who’s been orchestrating his life. The climax of “Him” should be a cathartic burst of gory chaos. Instead, this key moment is tepid, thanks to director Justin Tipping keeping most of the R-rated film’s slayings off-screen. 

Instead of witnessing these wealthy villains getting their just desserts, audiences see digital geysers of blood or hear sound effects implying their respective demises. This approach robs the plot of both a grand finish and entertaining spectacle. In other words, “Him” fumbled the ball just before the touchdown line.