20 cult movies critics hated

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20 cult movies critics hated

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1/21 SLIDES © 20th Century Fox / Hughes Entertainment

20 cult movies critics hated

Can a film succeed despite poor reviews? The 20 movies on this list are proof that they can. Slammed when they were first released, each is now considered a classic.

2/21 SLIDES © Brandywine Productions

Alien (1979)

In 1979, Ridley Scott's Xenomorphs were not to everyone's liking. One New York Times critic warned audiences not to expect “the wit of Star Wars or the metaphysical pretensions of 2001[: A Space Odyssey]. It's an old-fashioned scare movie about something that is not only implacably evil but prone to jumping out at you when (the movie hopes) you least expect it.” This wasn't the only suggestion that Alien was simply a pale imitation of a 1950s horror movie. A critic writing for The Guardian stated that viewers wouldn't “see anything very original anywhere,” only “artifice.”

3/21 SLIDES © Universal Pictures

Back to the Future (1985)

At its release, critics gave Back to the Future generally favourable reviews...except in France. According to Libération, the film was one of the most appalling flops ever produced by the Spielberg gang. Première declared that it was little more than a glib exploitation of rock’n’roll imagery and (again) a naive glorification of America. Did French moviegoers see the same film as the rest of the world?

4/21 SLIDES © Warner Bros.

Barry Lyndon (1975)

So many of Stanley Kubrick's films have received lukewarm reviews that he alone could easily claim half the spots on this list. The Los Angeles Times called Barry Lyndon “the motion picture equivalent of one of those very large, very expensive, very elegant and very dull books that exist solely to be seen on coffee tables.” The New Yorker declared that Kubrick had “taken a quick-witted story, full of vaudeville turns [and] controlled it so meticulously that he’s drained the blood out of it.”

5/21 SLIDES © Warner Bros.

Blade Runner (1982)

Before attaining its current status as a science-fiction masterpiece, Blade Runner was a commercial failure and critical disaster. The French science-fiction magazine Métal Hurlant claimed that the author of the book from which Blade Runner was adapted was the one who had been killed. Several critics found the movie too slow. Others didn't like the characters. Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), for instance, was described as an Aryan android straight out of a Wagnerian nightmare.

6/21 SLIDES © Warner Bros. / Seven Arts

Bonnie and Clyde (1967)

Bonnie and Clyde may seem rather inoffensive today, but in 1967, the shootouts and characters' attitudes were perceived to glorify violence. Critics refused to pull their punches. Bosley Crowther, of The New York Times, wrote that the film was “a cheap piece of bald-faced slapstick comedy” whose “blending of farce with brutal killings is as pointless as it is lacking in taste.” Crowther unleashed a debate in the newspaper that ended in his departure.

7/21 SLIDES © RKO Radio Pictures / Mercury Productions

Citizen Kane (1941)

Considered by many to be the best film of all time, Citizen Kane was well received by critics, but with some interesting exceptions. Writer and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre thought Citizen Kane was a film in which everything was dead and that its technical inventions were not meant to depict life. Writer and essayist Jorge Luis Borges remarked that it was “a labyrinth with no center.” His critique concluded with “I venture to guess, nonetheless, that Citizen Kane will endure as certain […] films have “endured”—films whose historical value is undeniable but which no one cares to see again. It is too gigantic, pedantic, tedious. It is not intelligent, though it is the work of genius—in the most nocturnal and Germanic sense of that bad word.”

8/21 SLIDES © Universal Pictures / Rhino Films

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998)

While Fear and Loathing became a cult classic over time, it began as a commercial failure. Negative critiques complained of its hyperactive camera work and visual effects. L'Express accused director Terry Gilliam of doing too much unconvincingly, lamenting that despite repeated reports of the film's cult status in the United States, once seen, it was difficult to figure out why.

9/21 SLIDES © New Regency Productions / Fox 2000 Pictures

Fight Club (1999)

In 1999, hardly anyone went to see this film described as a “witless mishmash of whiny, infantile philosophizing and bone-crunching violence” by The Los Angeles Times. Télérama agreed, stating that Fight Club serves up a diluted sub-Nietzschean syrup spiked with gratuitous violence. Figaroscope even warned that the film could be dangerous, declaring that Fight Club was simply an anarcho-noxious and disgusting film and a talent-subsidized danger.

10/21 SLIDES © 20th Century Fox / Hughes Entertainment

Home Alone (1990)

How can you not love Kevin McCallister's clever pranks? Entertainment Weekly seems to have taken them a bit too seriously, though, describing the film as a “sadistic festival of adult-bashing.” The famous critic Roger Ebert enjoyed the parts in which Kevin has fun alone at home, but was quickly disappointed, writing that “they're the kinds of traps that any 8-year-old could devise, if he had a budget of tens of thousands of dollars and the assistance of a crew of movie special effects people.” For him, the story of a forgotten child was so implausible that he found it difficult to care about what happened to him.

11/21 SLIDES © TriStar Pictures / Amblin Entertainment

Hook (1991)

Bad Steven Spielberg films do exist, but are rare. Could Hook be one of them? Several critics thought so at its release, including The New York Times, which called out the film for trying to “be all things to as many people as possible” and for its unnecessarily complicated structure. Rolling Stone voiced a similar opinion, adding that “it will take more than pixie dust to fly this overstuffed package into our dreams.”

12/21 SLIDES © Liberty Films (II)

It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)

To say that critics didn't like this Capra classic would be an exaggeration, but given the film's present-day veneration, its tepid reception is somewhat surprising. The New York Times called the movie's sentimentality its greatest weakness. A critic from The New Republic believed that the story underestimated its audience's intelligence, an audience who failed to show up in 1946. In fact, the film made less money at the box office than it cost to produce.

13/21 SLIDES © TriStar Pictures / Interscope Communications

Jumanji (1995)

When a sequel to Jumanji was announced in 2017, the public reacted as if a sacred cow had come under fire, but what did the critics think? Not much if the Metacritic score of 39% is to be believed. Among the movie’s detractors was Roger Ebert, who lambasted the film for possibly traumatizing young children with its orgy of terrifying special effects and “grotesque images, generating fear and despair.”

14/21 SLIDES © Universum Film (UFA) / Paramount Pictures

Metropolis (1927)

The New York Times described Fritz Lang's masterpiece as “a technical marvel with feet of clay,” adding that it was also “soulless,” similar to the female robot around whom the story centres. Science-fiction author H.G. Wells offered his opinion on Metropolis, saying, “I do not believe it would be possible to make one sillier. […] It gives in one eddying concentration almost every possible foolishness, cliché, platitude, and muddlement about mechanical progress and progress in general served up with a sauce of sentimentality that is all its own.”

Psycho (1960)

It's difficult, in 2021, to imagine how far Psycho pushed the limits of 1960 cinematic acceptability. Kinder critics complained that the film was nothing but artifice (“plainly a gimmick movie”) and skewered it for a lack of subtlety. Others went much further, like veteran critic for The Guardian and The Observer C.A. Lejeune. She not only left the theatre before the end of the film, but also tarnished her career with her statements. According to Lejeune, Psycho contained “one of the most disgusting murders in all screen history. […] It might be described with fairness as plug ugly.”

Pulp Fiction (1994)

Quentin Tarantino's second film radically divided critics. Some saw the film as “a spectacularly entertaining piece of pop culture,” while others saw it as “empty,” and made by a director who “doesn’t seem to know anything at all about real life, and maybe he has no interest in it either.” Others outright accused Tarantino of living “exclusively in a boy’s fantasy world, where women and any semblance of reality are only intruders.”

Scarface (1983)

“Scarface has a few brilliant scenes, but it's dismayingly empty.” That's how a New York Magazine critic described Brian De Palma's creation at its release, and he wasn't alone. The film received devastating reviews. The Chicago Reader wrote that the film was simply one “hysterically overplayed sequence” after another, “a comic nightmare,” and “a lumbering, self-important, arrhythmic downer of nearly three hours.”

The Exorcist (1973)

Described as “religious p***” by Rolling Stone, The Exorcist received its share of scathing criticism. The New York Times said that the film was “practically impossible [...] to sit through” and that it “establishes a new low for grotesque special effects.” It remains to be seen if Exorcist II: The Heretic, a notorious flop, inspired more appreciation for the first instalment.

The Shining (1980)

The list of things critics hated about this film seemed endless. From the acting (“The crazier Nicholson gets, the more idiotic he looks. Shelley Duvall transforms the warm sympathetic wife of the book into a simpering, semi-retarded hysteric.”) to Kubrick's directing (“too banal to sustain interest, while the incredibly slack narrative line forestalls suspense”) and the special effects (“we're never drawn in by them, mesmerized [...] we're not frightened, because Kubrick's absorption in film technology distances us”), everything simply fell short for reviewers.

The Thing (1982)

Could The Thing be “the most hated movie of all time?” That's what niche magazine Cinefantastique wondered in 1982. In fact, the film received numerous bad reviews. The New York Times called it a “depressing, overproduced movie that mixes horror with science fiction to make something that is fun as neither one thing or the other.” Starlog, another specialized magazine, claimed that The Thing had “no pace” and that its characters were “totally devoid of either warmth or humanity” before concluding that John Carpenter lacked the talent for such a film, but would be perfect for directing “traffic accidents, train wrecks and public floggings.”

Vertigo (1958)

In 2012, the magazine Sight and Sound placed Vertigo at the top of its list of the best movies of all time, but critics weren't so complimentary in 1958. Not only was it “misogynistic” and “macabre,” they wrote, but the film suffered from a plot that “fails to work.” Other publications found the film “too slow and too long” with a nonsensical story that “bogs down in a maze of details.”