To be honest, it’s been a pretty poor year for films. To my mind, the year has been full of disappointments, from minor [The Cabin In The Woods ‘look at me, I think I’m so clever but actually I’m not, I’m pretty dumb’], Skyfall ‘I’m not much like a Bond film so the critics must think I’m the best’,] to major [The Hobbit ‘I’m Peter Jackson but you may have to start calling me Peter Lucas’, Prometheus ‘nothing needs to make sense because we can say there will be a sequel’]. Very few visits I have had to the cinema have been especially fulfilling. Saying that though, there haven’t been that many truly bad films either. The majority of this year’s stuff has been just….well…meh, average, a reasonable time waster but not much more. I also tend to avoid going to see films I think will be crap. Keith Lemon for example; you couldn’t pay me to see that. The following ten cinematic ‘masterpieces’ – well, the first two are actually not too bad really and I could probably sit through them again one day. The rest? Well, there is a chance that number seven may improve I suppose, a film which seemed to divide people even more than The Cabin In The Woods, but you won’t catch me buying the DVD to find out. The others? I doubt I’ll ever want to see them again, and at least two of them looked really good.
10/ GONE
REVIEW – https://horrorcultfilms.co.uk/2012/04/gone/
Truth be told, Gone is not that bad. It’s a perfectly professional piece, but you could find its like on TV every evening. Films like this irritate me, because they smack of blandness. There’s nothing especially bad about it, and I certainly know that bad movies can sometimes be fun, but there’snothing especially bad about it either, it just annoying sits there while you wait for it to get good, which it never really does. As the climax approaches, it does finally seem like some thrills are about to come, but no, sadly they don’t, and it just ends. Really lazy filmmaking, witha plot that timidly avoids delving into stuff that could be….you know….interesting.
9/ HAYWIRE 
Bat’s slightly more favourable review – https://horrorcultfilms.co.uk/titles/haywire/
You never really know what you’re going to get with a Steven Soderburgh film, but this one is certainly one of his failures. His supposed ‘take’ on the action movie is burdened by a muddled script that pretends its simple story is actually complicated, a total lack of tension, a dreadful performance by its lead star, cardboard characters and self-consciously stylised direction that is at odds with the trashy material. At least the meagre fight scenes are good, and shot so you can see what’s going on. Otherwise, if you want to see an arty action film, see Hanna.
8/ PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4
Matt Wavish’s review – https://horrorcultfilms.co.uk/2012/10/paranormal-activity-4-2012-out-now-in-cinemas/
The first one was almost beautiful in its simplicity, its distilling of horror into the most basic elements, and it was bloody scary. The second and third instalments managed to, surprisingly, keep up the quality. This fourth film….well, I sat there in the cinema screen waiting….and waiting….and waiting to be frightened. The story failed to build up the interesting things thrown up by number three and was just content to rehash bits and pieces from all three previous films. As lazy a sequel as you can get.
7/ PROMETHEUS
review – https://horrorcultfilms.co.uk/2012/06/prometheus-the-hcf-alternative-review/
Matt Wavish’s more favourable review – https://horrorcultfilms.co.uk/2012/06/prometheus-2012-out-now-in-cinemas/
For many years, I’ve thought that Ridley Scott had been outdone by his sadly departed brother Tony, and Prometheus confirmed that to me in no uncertain terms. Alternating between boredom and hilarity [including the year’s funniest death scene], resolutely unimaginative in design, and saddled with an atrocious script that is little more than a random collection of incidents, it seems little more than a set-up for a series. It can’t even decide where it wants to stand in relation to the Alien series. Now you’ve pissed on Alien Ridley, I dread to think what you’re going to do with Blade Runner.
6/ THE IRON LADY
review – https://horrorcultfilms.co.uk/2012/01/the-iron-lady-in-cinemas-now/
You would expect a film about Margaret Thatcher to be fascinating and even incendary. However, this tedious film puts the interesting stuff to the sides and concentrates on her dementia, resulting a depressing and unfuriating experience that I found unpleasantly exploitative even though I personally couldn’t stand the old cow. Meryl Streep is absolutely fantastic in the lead role, but it’ s all for nothing. What a shame.
5/ THE DARKEST HOUR
review – https://horrorcultfilms.co.uk/2012/01/the-darkest-hour/
Matt also has this on his list, and actually it is the first of three movies we have both included, proving both their low quality and that we do occasionally agree on something. One of the scribes partly responsible for Prometheus was responsible for this, so you know it ain’t going to be good. Hilarity abounds, such as the funniest scene involving a mobile phone this year, but sadly despite Ed Wood-style stupidity throughout it all mostly boils down to lots of dull wondering about.
4/ GHOST RIDER: SPIRIT OF VENGEANCE
review – https://horrorcultfilms.co.uk/2012/02/ghost-rider-spirit-of-vengeance/
The first, because it had to have that obligatory ’12’/’ PG-13′ certificate, seemed to constantly chicken out on the intriguing aspects of its premise, but at least it was enjoyable. This total mess of a sequel, mixing stupid plotting with unintelligable action [this has been an awful year for properly-filmed action, you know, stuff that you can actually see], is [perhaps appropriately] an abomination, with Nicolas Cage doing his usual tedious yelling and pulling faces schtick we’ve seen many times before and are getting sick and tired of. Go back to acting school, Nic.
3/ THE WATCH
review – https://horrorcultfilms.co.uk/2012/08/the-watch-in-cinemas-now/
A more perfect example of the tedious, dislikeable, aimed-purely-at-immature-teenage-boys Modern American Comedy is probably harder to find. Co-writer Seth Rogen’s [is there is a less talented actor and writer about?] usual obsession with penises replaces real laughs and the cast just tediously go through the motions with their obnoxious characters, except for Richard Ayoade who seems to be wondering what the hell he’s doing in the movie. You’ll find more laughs going to a funeral than watching this crap.
2/ THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN, PART TWO
review – https://horrorcultfilms.co.uk/2012/11/the-twilight-saga-breaking-dawn-part-two-in-cinemas-now/
Well for me one of the best things about this year was that this abysmally acted, appallingly written and mind-numbingly boring franchise, a franchise that may have done more damage to the good name of vampirism than stakes, garlic and crosses, is finally over, though it seems that new productions are being readied to fill the holes that the millions of heart-broken Twi-fans now have in their lives. Me? I would like to condemn Stephanie Meyer, Melissa Rosenberg, Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, and everyone else involved with flooding the world and contaminating the minds of teenage girls with this garbage, to the ‘gift’ of immortality, being forced to watch what they have created over and over again until they REPENT, REPENT, REPENT.
1/ THIS MEANS WAR
review – https://horrorcultfilms.co.uk/2012/03/this-means-war/
For some reason I thought this movie would be amusing, silly fun, but then many things seem like a good idea at the time. Ten minutes into it, I realised I was watching the most offensive, annoying film in some time, a film where we are supposed to find two psychotic stalkers cool and funny, where we are supposed to find a heroine so dumb that a Barbie doll is more intelligent some kind of role model, a film which replays the same situation over and over again until you want to scream, a film that has action so ineptly crafted it looks like it was shot by blind people, a film which should tell McG once and for all that he should just give up on directing films, a film which actually made we wish I was watching Twilight. I find it extremely worrying that this film, in a year where the BBFC have totally lost their way and think sex, violence and bad language is pretty much suitable for young kids, is not only considered acceptable viewing for under 12s as long as they have supervision, but for anyone with more than one brain cell.
And…..before I leave you waiting with baited breath as to what odd choices will make up my top twenty films on 2012, a special mention for something that I hated so much I almost walked out of the film it was in. I’m talking about, of course, Hans Zimmer’s score for The Dark Knight Rises, an absolute piece of often ear-destroying [I still have that endlessly repeated taiko drum loop inside my head and it won’t go away ] crap that any ten year old could have programmed [I hesitate to use the word ‘composed’] on their computer in about ten minutes.
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