10 Worst Sci-Fi Movies That Were Bad Ideas From the Ground Up
Science fiction has continuously proven to be one of the most versatile and wildly successful genres in filmmaking history. From massive blockbuster franchises like Star Wars and Dune to award-winning favorites like Everything Everywhere All at Once and Gravity, there are no limits to the successful storytelling that is possible with sci-fi. However, these high praise and intelligence levels do not apply to every sci-fi film created, as there are also a handful of films in the genre that completely drop the ball regarding strengths or intelligence.
Whether it be a lackluster execution of what would be an exciting and interesting concept or a premise so baffling that it seems impossible to make it work in the medium of film, there are many ways that a sci-fi film can be largely defined by a lack of intelligence. With a limitless amount of possibilities in the realms of technology and the vast cosmos at their disposal, it becomes all the more shocking when a sci-fi film completely botches its execution.
10
‘Cell’ (2016)
Directed by Tod Williams
While the writing of Stephen King has resulted in several wildly effective sci-fi films, such as The Mist and The Dead Zone, one of his most often forgotten and wildly reviled sci-fi adaptations is Cell. The film takes place in a post-apocalyptic future where large chunks of humanity have been transformed into mindless, enraged creatures caused by a frequency sent out on cell phones across the world. A group of survivors is forced to navigate the wreckage of the world left behind, with a lone father attempting to find a way home and find his family.
Even putting aside the film’s lazy and uninteresting surface-level exploration of themes and concepts like anti-technology and zombie-adjacent apocalypse, the jarring and stilted pacing proves to undercut any positives that the film has going for it. While the film has a relatively interesting setting connecting an overreliance on technology with societal downfall, it does nothing of interest with the premise aside from the most generic and barebones apocalypse story imaginable.
9
‘The Electric State’ (2025)
Directed by Joe and Anthony Russo
While the film had massive hopes of being a blockbuster success for Netflix, The Electric State is juggling so many different sci-fi ideas and concepts to a point where it all blends together into soulless and brainless mush. The film takes place in an alternate reality version of 1994, where humanity as a whole went to war with an uprising of robots fighting for their own freedom. However, when a young girl’s supposedly dead brother returns to her in the form of a robot, the duo must travel into the robot-filled wastelands in search of answers.
Different sci-fi films have tackled concepts like robot autonomy and rights, alternate reality versions of the world with more technological advancements, and widespread abandonment of culture in favor of virtual realities. However, The Electric State‘s loose implementation of these concepts gives none of them any time to truly impact, and when combined with blatant commercialization and product placement such as Mr. Peanut being a main character, the whole thing crumbles in on itself.
8
‘Theodore Rex’ (1995)
Directed by Jonathan R. Betuel
Often considered to be one of the worst dinosaur movies of all time, Theodore Rex combines the prehistoric past and a high-tech future together to create disastrous results. The film follows Whoopi Goldberg as a tough female police detective from the future forced to partner up with a talking dinosaur in order to find the culprit behind the death of various other dinos and prehistoric creatures. Their search finds them uncovering the plot of a mad scientist attempting to create a new Armageddon.
A buddy cop comedy taking place in the future with a dinosaur is the type of brainless, so clearly idiotic premise that it could almost manage to work if it leaned into its own absurdity. However, Theodore Rex isn’t even able to accomplish this, as it completely wastes the stupidity-fueled comedy of its premise to make for one of the most unfunny and uninteresting buddy cop movies imaginable.
Theodore Rex
- Release Date
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December 14, 1995
- Runtime
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92 minutes
Cast
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Armin Mueller-Stahl
Elizar Kane
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Whoopi Goldberg
Katie Coltrane
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Juliet Landau
Dr. Veronica Shade
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7
‘Subservience’ (2024)
Directed by SK Dale
Following in the footsteps of other recently successful AI horror films like M3GAN, Subservience dumbs down the premise to laughably moronic levels with the hopes that constant sex appeal would be enough to justify it. The film sees a struggling father bringing home a lifelike AI companion to help him raise his daughter while his wife is in the hospital. However, things take a sharp turn when the AI companion begins to do all it can to replace the mother’s role in the family, even going as far as to seduce the father and attempting to kill anyone in its path.
“M3GAN, except the robot is sexy, played by Megan Fox, and wants to have sex with the owner” is the type of hilariously stupid premise that feels like a poorly-thought-out sketch comedy premise as opposed to the premise of a feature-length film. The film fully delivers on the inherent chaos of its premise in the worst ways possible, having next to nothing to say about robotic autonomy or artificial intelligence and is only focused on being a barebones erotic thriller with sci-fi flavoring.
6
‘G-Force’ (2009)
Directed by Hoyt Yeatman
Some movie concepts are simply so blatant and transparent with their ridiculousness that they become impossible to ever truly take seriously, even as a comedy. Few sci-fi films are as prominent in this regard as G-Force, a mindless action film that attempts to combine a classic spy movie premise with a team of unnerving CGI guinea pigs. There could have been a chance of the film being half decent if it played into the inherent ridiculousness of its premise, yet it plays its premise entirely straight and is wholly worse off for it.
G-Force is the type of numbing and idiotic sci-fi experience that feels as if it’s lessening the impact of actually effective family spy movies, treating the medium as just an avenue for cheap toys and marketing cute animals. Even an array of A-list voice actors and Hollywood stars isn’t enough to save the film, as their very inclusion in the film manages to make the entire experience that much more baffling and confusing. Any film that attempts to make a Penélope Cruz-voiced guinea pig look alluring and femme fatale-esque deserves to be forgotten in the sands of time.
5
‘Mac and Me’ (1988)
Directed by Stewart Raffill
E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial is undeniably one of the biggest and most influential blockbusters, not only in terms of family-friendly science fiction, but the entire genre of science fiction as a whole. Such a monumental success was always going to create various knockoffs and copycats, yet few knockoffs in cinematic history have become as infamously reviled as Mac and Me. The basic plot is almost an exact copy of E.T., following a small alien finding a friendship with a human boy who sets off to help return the alien to his family.
The inherent charm and childlike wonder that has continued to make E.T. a timeless classic is completely barren from Mac and Me, replacing it with low-budget alien suits, McDonald’s product placement, and child murder. The film’s frequent and constant flaws have made it an icon of so-bad-it’s-good family movies of the 80s, as there is great humor to be found in its various failures. The only other true lasting legacy that the film has is from being a recurring gag used by Paul Rudd when appearing on Conan O’Brien‘s various talk shows.
4
‘iBoy’ (2017)
Directed by Adam Randall
Easily one of the worst Netflix original movies ever released by the platform, iBoy features one of the most bafflingly moronic premises ever devised for an original sci-fi thriller. The film follows a boy who, after a run-in with criminals, ends up being shot and having fragments of his cell phone lodged into his brain, finds himself to have received superpowers from the fragments. Now harnessing the ability to tap into the internet and electronics with his mind, he sets out to take down the criminals who were tormenting him and his friend in the first place.
Even after experiencing the film, the laughably bad premise of iBoy simply doesn’t feel real, as it’s difficult to comprehend that a group of people thought that this idea was passable in the modern day. What makes matters worse is not only the fact that the film plays its goofy premise completely straight, but it has the gall to attempt and tackle deeply serious subject matter such as sexual assault and abuse. It paints a dour and sickening feeling over what should be a goofy and nonsensical time, making it feel outwardly vile and amplifying its idiotic nature.
3
‘Battlefield Earth’ (2000)
Directed by Roger Christian
An infamous sci-fi box office bomb that finds its origins and funding from the Church of Scientology, Battlefield Earth transforms an already mediocre story into a cinematic travesty with its poor execution. The film takes place in the far off year of 3000, where all of humanity has been enslaved by a vicious race of aliens known as the Psychlos, mining the Earth for its various resources. With the remains of humanity having been devolved to a primitive state, it becomes up to a rogue human known as Tyler to save mankind from the Psychlos.
If the cheesy and over-the-top performances from John Travolta and Forest Whitaker weren’t enough to make Battlefield Earth an unintentional laugh riot, the constant Dutch angles and unnerving camerawork push the film over the edge of lunacy. When half of the film is shown at a stilted 45-degree angle, it’s difficult to take any of its sprawling sci-fi story seriously, especially when none of the characters are interesting or relatable in the slightest.
2
‘2025: The World Enslaved by a Virus’ (2021)
Directed by Joshua and Simon Wesely
Faith-based films and right-wing filmmaking as a whole are often widely persecuted and mocked for their blatant and unsubtle messaging, although egregiously terrible films like 2025: The World Enslaved by a Virus certainly aren’t making their reputation any better. The film comes across as conspiracy theory-fueled nonsense, taking place in a post-apocalyptic world caused by COVID-19 where the pandemic has managed to make Christianity illegal.
Even if the film came anything close to being based in a sort of reality, the shoddy amateur filmmaking and lackluster pacing prove to make the film a complete bore, even with its comically stupid messaging. The film is little more than a feature-length exploration of blatant fearmongering, straying away from any sort of critical thinking or intelligence and creating something tailor-made to enrage and motivate its audience. Although even among the audience that it’s supposedly catering to, the film’s constant failures have still made it one of the worst films of the 2020s.
1
‘Uglies’ (2024)
Directed by McG
Dystopian sci-fi films have become an engrained staple of young adult films ever since the massive explosion of franchises like The Hunger Games and Divergent, yet even the worst of these films are based on some level of plausibility and reality. Uglies not only creates one of the most unbelievable and comically idiotic setups for a dystopian future imaginable, but it presents itself as telling a powerful and timely message when it is instead relying on decades-old clichés at every turn.
While the film attempts to have good-faith messaging about the importance of inner beauty through a dystopian lens, the story’s combining of forced cosmetic surgery with forced lobotomy completely undoes the weight of its messaging. This is all on top of the majority of the film being the most generic, predictable, and formulaic young adult dystopian film that one can ever imagine, as not a single scene occurs that isn’t entirely predictable from miles away.
