6. Assassin’s Creed
Though carried by a selection of top notch hollywood actors (Jeremy Irons, Michael Fassbender) and significant budget, the Assassin’s Creed movie emerged very much as what it was intended to be by corporate producers; a bland money making CGI cringe fest. The main appeal of the games is discovering uncharted ancient worlds, yet the movie lingered too long in the present day to its detriment, feeling slow and heavy-handed. An, at best, mediocre attempt at porting one of the most successful gaming franchises to the cinema. To give it its due, it isn’t the worst adaptation we’ve seen.
5. Postal
Taking one of the most controversial games ever released and adapting to the big screen was always going to be a gamble. However, the Postal movie doesn’t even try to negate any potential criticism and reeks of misogyny, cultural insensitivity, and cringe-inducing attempts at humor. Propping itself up with the more humorous, yet dark, elements of the game also fails miserably with the satire feeling directionless and cheap.
4. Super Mario Bros.
Super Mario Bros. is the sort of movie so bad it transcends is own awfulness to become good in a weird over the top early 90s kitsch kind of way. Very much in the same vein as The Room, Super Mario Bros. is a hilarious mess of bad acting and questionable plot devices. Purests often pick holes at how the movie diverts quite drastically away from the feel of the source material, notably the depiction of Bowser as a bipedal shape shifting creep and his army of shuffling oafish small-headed reptiles. But, the surreal take and the appearance of Bob Hoskins are what make the movie so endearing. It’s still terrible though.
3. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
A straight to DVD release is always a bad sign. If your going to get one thing right when making a martial arts movie based on a fighting game it’s getting the fight scenes down to perfection. Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li fails even at that, without talking about the drab plot and forced dialogue, which completely misses the point of the Street Fighter games. It’s like putting on the wrong wash cycle, and watching your favourite sweater get destroyed very, very slowly and not being able to do anything about it.
2. Bloodrayne
Inspired by the horror hack and slash game of the same name, the movie Bloodrayne offers a decent cast and a good basis for a gripping plot. In reality, it’s excruciating to watch. Director Uwe Boll seems to have had all the pieces for a decent movie at his fingertips, but side steps and misuses them at every turn. Someone, somewhere thought it wise to make two sequels, which are only marginally more palatable than the first.
1. Alone In The Dark
Taking inspiration from the seminal survival horror series, which is arguably responsible for the genre’s sustained popularity, Alone In The Dark not only takes the crown as the worst video game movie, but is possibly one of the worst movies of all time. Starring what can only be described as b-list actors, the movie tries to be scary, but falls at the first hurdle with the horror scenes inducing laughs rather than sheer terror. The story can’t really be called a story and the special effects belong in a movie made 10 years earlier. And oh yea, it’s made by Uwe Boll. Who let this guy make so many movies?
