If you were wondering what's just been added to the list of the best 0% Rotten Tomatoes movies, well, let's just say: Amazon's new War of the Worlds stinks. Starring Ice Cube and Eva Longoria, the movie, which retells H.G. Wells' classic through Ice Cube just sitting there and watching an alien invasion on his computer, is a modern disasterpiece that has taken the world by storm. And you don't need to watch it yourself to know it's bad: (as we hinted above) the thing has a rare 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, at the time of writing.
Eventually, someone will be the brave soul to post the first "this is so bad it's good, actually" review, breaking that pristine 0%, because that’s how the internet works. That is not us. But War of the Worlds is far from the only 100% rotten movie that graces the RT list that someone is willing to go to bat for. That someone, by the way, is us. Because of the 41 movies currently sitting at 0% on RT with over 20 reviews (War of the Worlds only has a mere 17 reviews at the moment), some of them are bad, but are also victims of having debuted pre-Rotten Tomatoes, meaning they have fewer reviews available to be counted.
So with that in mind, here are some of the "so bad they're good" movies that have 0% on Rotten Tomatoes that, tomatoes be darned, you should watch anyway.
5. Highlander II: The Quickening
Year: 1991
Director: Russell Mulcahy
Is this Christopher Lambert/Sean Connery fantasy/sci-fi action sequel hilariously incomprehensible? Yes. Is it fun to watch anyway? Also yes. Focusing on the Highlanders of the title, the concept is that these folks throughout time have to kill each other, and when they do (usually by chopping off each other's heads), they gain their powers. At the end of the day, there can only be one Highlander, so you know there’s a lot of head-choppin' coming your way.
Also of note? There is absolutely no need to watch the original Highlander to understand what's happening here, because it's very hard to understand what's happening, anyway. Mostly, it's a lot of bad fights, pre-CGI lightning, and Connery weaponizing his swishy Scottish scowl. If you want to watch the worst version, try to track down the original US release. Otherwise, you'll get the "Renegade" version that Mulcahy recut later, or the Special Edition, which mildly improves the effects. But come on, you want the worst version, right? Right. After all, there can only be one.
4. Police Academy 4: Citizens On Patrol
Year: 1987
Director: Jim Drake
Let's be perfectly honest here: Is any Police Academy movie really that much worse than the others? Sure, this is the fourth in a series of outrageous cop spoofs that hit the same beats over and over again. But can you honestly say Citizens on Patrol is a whole third worse than Police Academy 3: Back In Training (which has a 36% on Rotten Tomatoes)? Probably not, they're all dated and bad.
The final movie with Steve Guttenberg and the theatrical debut of David Spade, Citizens on Patrol, finds the cop characters working side by side with civilians to stop crime. There's non-stop gags, a hot-air balloon chase, and it's very, very dumb. What more do you want? Of note, every subsequent Police Academy movie has a 0% as well, so you can make a whole day of it if you want.
3. Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever
Year: 2002
Director: Wych Kaosayananda, aka Kaos
Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever holds two notable distinctions on this list. The first is that while most of the Rotten Tomatoes 0% rankers have 20-30 or so reviews, B:EvS is 0% with 118 reviews, making it, at least when it comes to RT, the worst-reviewed movie of all time. The second is that it had a Game Boy Advance game based on it that was created from an early version of the script, which came out a year before the movie and was excellently reviewed.
So Ecks vs. Sever isn't just the worst-reviewed movie of all time, it's also the worst-reviewed video game movie of all time (even if the game was technically based on the movie, and not the other way around). Anyway, Antonio Banderas is Ecks, Lucy Liu is Sever, and they're two elite agents who fight and then team up (you know the drill). It should be bland action fare, but instead it is incomprehensible nonsense. Pull out your Game Boy Advance and play the game while this is on in the background, and you'll have a better time.
2. Killing Me Softly
Year: 2002
Director: Chen Kaige
After winning the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1993 for Farewell My Concubine, director Kaige's English-language debut should have been a no-brainer. Based on a well-reviewed thriller by Nicci French? Check. Starring Heather Graham and Joseph Fiennes? Double check. Turning it into an erotic thriller? Homina homina!
Except this combo of elements somehow turned a no-brainer into a brainer, aka you'll feel like you're being brained with a hammer the whole time. Called "turgid" and "hilariously bad," Killing Me Softly will make you scream loudly for it to die, already.
1. Gotti
Year: 2018
Director: Kevin Connolly
Who would have thought a long-in-development biopic about notorious mobster John Gotti, starring John Travolta in heavy amounts of makeup, directed by the guy best known as playing "E" on Entourage, could have been so bad? Well, everybody, actually. Filmed in Cincinnati (standing in for New York), the movie was overly sympathetic to Gotti, which is weird on its own, but also poorly written, directed, and acted. It was a critical bomb, but also a financial bomb. The craziest part? The movie was put out by the ill-fated all-you-can-eat MoviePass, and naturally, most of the (scant) box office grosses came from MoviePass. Meaning the card was essentially cutting into its own profits.
That won't impact your movie-watching experience, though, so if you want to see Travolta do OKAY in a pretty bad movie, you gotta get Gotti. As a bonus, follow it up with Travolta's 3% sequel to Saturday Night Fever, the abysmal Staying Alive, directed by Sylvester Stallone, who stars in the 0% rated 2024 movie Armor. Wow, now your whole week is planned out. Thanks, Ice Cube!
For more actually good movies to watch on streaming, you can read our lists of the best movies on Netflix, the best movies on Amazon Prime, and the best movies on Disney Plus right now.
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