Bomb squad: Why we love bad movies and you should too

Don’t hate on bad movies. They’re good for business; they can end franchises no one asked for. And hey, they’re low-key fun

Batman and Robin (1997). Ghost Ship (2002). Dungeons and Dragons (2000). The Human Centipede (2009). Love is in the Air (2023). What do these movies have in common? They all have low IMDb ratings, they got trashed by critics upon release, they show up on lists of The Worst Films Ever Made. But in a twist no one saw coming, they also make it to Reddit and Tumblr discussions about films that are so cringe, they surpass their genre and shine in a realm of their own. “Every second of it is fully entertaining and hilariously bad,” writes Reddit user, Phantom JB93, of The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift (2006). We’ve suffered through the tale of drift racing in Japan. We agree.

Irish Wish broke streaming records for February. It’s so bad, it’s good.

Cats (2019) gets A-listers such as Taylor Swift to prance about in ridiculous furry costumes.

Leave The World Behind (2023) got hate for its dull ending, but it was the perfect close.

Looks That Kill (2020) is about a “lethally attractive” boy. It’s aware of its own strangeness.