The Worst: Chaos Walking
The fact that Chaos Walking is so bad is a genuinely impressive achievement. Based on Patrick Ness’ beloved YA sci-fi trilogy, directed by Edge of Tomorrow’s Doug Liman, starring two of the last decade’s hottest young actors in Daisy Ridley and Tom Holland, it should have been a winner. Instead, the film was so bad that Lionsgate executives reportedly called it “unreleasable,” forcing the project into extensive (and expensive) reshoots. If those reshoots helped, they didn’t help enough—Chaos Walking is an appropriately chaotic mess of unrelated scenes, one-dimensional villains, and way too much walking. Even the story’s most unique conceit, that it takes place on a planet where males’ thoughts take visual form, somehow gets pushed to the side for more dull action. Everyone involved in Chaos Walking just should’ve walked away.
