The Worst Netflix Original Horror Movies, According To Rotten Tomatoes

For the horror heads among us, perusing a streamer’s genre page can be a goldmine of camp opportunities or disturbing folk horror to keep us up at night, but it can also be home to some of the most tedious stories put to film. Whether it’s an ill-advised continuation of a franchise or an adaptation in the wrong hands, even the mighty Netflix isn’t immune to acquiring, producing, and/or distributing some stinkers. In fact, they tend to excel at it.

While Rotten Tomatoes isn’t the be-all and end-all of movie criticism (and it almost seems to be trying to discredit it more and more), it can provide a quick temperature check to a movie’s well being — a helpful measure for all of us when considering how we want to spend our time rotting away on the couch. Mileage can vary on how much to trust the aggregated rating of a bunch of critics, but for these original Netflix horror movies, there’s a clear warning sign ahead: proceed with caution, because these movies kind of suck.

Beginning with the most rotten by a country mile, Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote’s “The Open House” failed to impress even a tenth of the critics that reviewed, sitting at a pithy 7% on the Tomatometer. The film follows a mother and son forced to move to a secluded mountain following the sudden death of their husband and father. Starring Dylan Minnette and Piercey Dalton, the two encounter strange behaviors and happenstances, eventually going head to head with the film’s villain, “Evil Boots.”

While the premise of “The Open House” is far from being terrible, it’s the execution of the film that sinks any positives. Andrew Wyatt at The Lens defiantly calls the movie, “Utterly insufferable and almost maliciously pointless.” While at Den of Geek, Alec Bojalad points to the “astonishingly bad ending” as the film’s most significant undoing.

Another directorial collaboration between the husband and wife duo Matt Angel and Suzanne Coote, “Hypnotic” follows a cruel hypnotherapist (Jason O’Mara) who engages his client, Jenn (Kate Siegel), in a chilling game which finds her at the mercy of a madman.

There may have been a time where a film like “Hypnotic” felt fresh and exciting, but Matt Fowler at IGN Movies notes that in 2021, the movie currently sitting with a 24% instead feels “very out-of-time and, subsequently, very inconsequential. It dilutes what could have been a rather diabolical and memorable story and delivers a disposable ride that ends with a stilted and safe re-entry.”

Taking a wider view, Nick Harley at Den of Geek sees “Hypnotic” as part of a greater problem saying, “Netflix original movies are like fast food; they’re cheap and easy to make, they’ll temporarily fill you up, have a passable taste that’s familiar and unchallenging, but you’ll either forget about the quick fix or regret it entirely.”

Following a car accident, a woman (Brenda Song) finds herself in the hospital with amnesia. Unsure of who she is, how she got hurt, or anything about her life, she’s told by the man at her bedside (Mike Vogel) that he is her husband and proceeds to show her pictures of their life together, seemingly filling in her memory gaps. As time wears on, she becomes increasingly wary of the stories she’s been told and slowly unravels her nightmarish reality.

“Secret Obsession” gives away the farm in its title and recalls the straight-to-video movies of the ’90s. While Pittsburgh Magazine’s Sean Collier humorously quips, “They don’t make movies like this anymore. And it’s good that they don’t,” Eddie Strait at The Daily Dot doesn’t even think “Secret Obsession” meets the standards of sub-par TV movies: “‘Secret Obsession’ is a soulless lump of generic mush that aspires to the cheese level of a Lifetime original joint but doesn’t come anywhere close.”

However, both Linda Holmes of NPR and Karen Han of Polygon take the view that while “Secret Obsession” is indeed worthy of its 28% rating, it does exactly what is says on the tin. Holmes writes, “This is a pretty bad movie, but it seems to be bad in the way it’s meant to be bad.” Adds Han, “‘Secret Obsession’ does pretty much exactly what you expect it to, and presumably what you want it to, if you watched the brief preview clip while browsing Netflix and then decided that, yes, you would like to hit play.”

Since 2008, the J.J. Abrams’ produced “Cloverfield” franchise has spawned a trilogy and a graphic novel to varying degrees of success. Undoubtedly, “10 Cloverfield” starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead and John Goodman has seen the most success, critically and commercially; although the same cannot be said for its successor, “The Cloverfield Paradox.”

Released on Netflix in 2018 and directed by Julius Onah, a considerable amount of hype was attached to the film based on the severe secrecy behind the production, aided by a since-deleted tweet from director Ava DuVernay hyping up the ending of “The Cloverfield Paradox” during the Superbowl that year. Sadly, even with a great cast, including Elizabeth Debicki, Daniel Brühl, David Oyelowo, Zhang Ziyi, and Chris O’Dowd, the third (and currently final) franchise installment fell flat.

Summarizing the movie’s 22% score perfectly, Alex Hudson at Exclaim! describes the film as “too silly to live up to its potential.” Recalling the pre-production madness that prompted the hype train, Cinema Sentries’ Matthew St. Clair says, “Unfortunately, the hype surrounding the super secretive and constantly delayed film turned out to be more interesting than the actual film itself.”

You can read our full review of “The Cloverfield Paradox” right here.

In a world where vesps, a flying reptile type creature, hunt humans by sound, a deaf teenager and her family seek out shelter and fight for their survival, all without making any noise. No, this isn’t “A Quiet Place,” it’s the Kiernan Shipka and Stanley Tucci led “The Silence” — a movie released a year after John Krasinski’s directorial debut and based on a novel published in 2015.

Similar to the coincidental releases of “Olympus Has Fallen” and “White House Down” in 2013, “The Illusionist” and “The Prestige” in 2006, and of course, “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact” in 1998, “The Silence” and “A Quiet Place” seem to be victims of time and space — though, moreso the former than the latter. Where “A Quiet Place” was lauded for its originality and Krasinski’s direction, critics were decidedly less enthused about “The Silence,” resulting in a 30% rotten rating and unfavorable comparisons aplenty.

Kristy Puchko at IGN Movies succinctly states, “Imagine ‘A Quiet Place,’ but deeply mediocre.” While Charles Bramesco at The Guardian takes aim at Netflix, “This is the most insidious type of knockoff: the one that sincerely expects you to believe that it’s the real thing. Leave it to Netflix to take the fun out of incompetence.”

Whether the timing was truly coincidental or Netflix attempting to capitalize off of a proven new horror trend, we can all agree that “The Silence” is aggressively forgettable.

For as legendary as Tobe Hooper’s 1974 “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” has become, as a franchise, it feels like they’ve been batting at or below the Mendoza Line for the better part of its nine-movie existence. In an effort to jump start and perhaps recapture the essence of the original film, David Blue Garcia’s 2022 film, “Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” takes place 50 years after Hooper’s, following the continuity that began in 1974, and in turn, forgoing the alternate timeline Millennium Films’ had previously set up (and concluded with 2017’s “Leatherface”).

“Texas Chainsaw Massacre” attempted to modernize the franchise by haphazardly including references to social media, trendy buzz words, and commentary on issues prevalent to the times. Lex Briscuso at Paste Magazine describes this effort as “trite,” concluding that the film rests “on topical concepts that it doesn’t know how to comment on.”

Contributing to the film’s 30% rating, Josh Korngut for Dread Central found some positives, but ultimately concludes that “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” didn’t live up to the reputation set by its original predecessor, commenting, “Even though a handful of violent scenes do breathe some life into the desecrated corpse of this legacy sequel, they in no way make up for the levels of disrespect faced by its characters and its audience.”

Quite simply: “Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2022)” is one of the worst films of the franchise.

Considered to be one of the worst live-action anime adaptations, “Death Note” currently sits at 36% on the Tomatometer. The original manga series that follows a high school student who discovers a notebook that grants him the ability to kill anyone whose name is written in the pages has proven to be incredibly successful around the world, selling millions of copies and spawning numerous animated television shows. The series raised questions surrounding morality and justice, while also being highly entertaining and thrilling at the same time.

Bringing together a wealth of emerging talent at the time, such as LaKeith Stanfield and Margaret Qualley, as well as screen veterans like Willem Dafoe, Adam Wingard’s adaptation and Americanization of “Death Note” just didn’t land with audiences or critics. Joshua Rivera at GQ simply states, “I’m not sure who ‘Death Note’ is for,” where Brian Tallerico at RogerEbert.com takes it a step further: “The ending will have you switching off your Netflix app in disgust. If you don’t die from boredom before you get there.”

Netflix, though, seems completely unbothered by the overwhelmingly negative reaction to “Death Note” and as of October 2022, plans are in place to give this one another go, this time via a live-action adaptation series with Halia Abdel-Meguid set to write and executive produce for “Stranger Things” creators Matt and Ross Duffer by way of their production company Upside Down.

A sci-fi, horror, action mash-up, “Extinction” stars Michael Peña as Peter, a man terrorized by a recurring nightmare that an alien invasion destroys the world. At first understanding these dreams to be the effect of an underlying psychological issue, Peter soon begins to believe that rather than nightmares, they’re premonitions of things to come.

What could have been an enticing thinkpiece on humanity and technology becomes a messy plot that clunks its way to the finish line, earning itself a 31% rating. Brad Newsome of the Sydney Morning Herald didn’t find the film altogether terrible, “The big twist is a good one, there are some decent action sequences,” however Newsome accepts that even with these positives, “there isn’t enough here to keep things from dragging.”

The general consensus of those who found the movie weak points to a movie that dreams big with little to show for it in reality. “Big Blockbuster aspirations but without much charisma or soul,” writes Meagan Navarro at Bloody Disgusting. While Nick Allen at RogerEbert.com calls the movie, “A B-movie with a blockbuster attitude, and not in a fun way.”

Of all the films on this list, the 2022 film “Old People” directed by Andy Fetscher intrigued me the most. Given society’s penchant for discarding our elderly when we’ve decided they are more burdensome than valuable members, the idea of “Pensioners Fighting Back” feels ripe for either campy entertainment or thoughtful commentary on our derisive impatience as a collective. To my dismay, “Old People” more than deserves its 33% standing.

“The genre isn’t known for its profundity, but Fetscher could have leaned into that more and given this movie the chance to become that horror rarity, a genuinely disturbing thriller,” comments Roger Moore at Movie Nation. In place of being a properly horrifying picture, “Old People” settles for being a tedious watch where, as John Sooja at Common Sense Media notes, “the worst offense is the writing that has characters often doing stupid things or making dumb decisions, which completely dissolves any suspension of disbelief.”

One of the most prolific authors of our time, Stephen King has had his fair share of work adapted to the big screen and of course, he has his favorites. It’s a safe assumption, though, “In the Tall Grass” isn’t one of them.

With only 36% on Rotten Tomatoes, “In the Tall Grass” suffers from a common problem among films but a comical one when adapting King’s work, even a novella: not enough source material to stretch across an acceptable feature film runtime. King is not a man of brevity and his novellas would be considered regular novels for most writers, but somehow Vincenzo Natali, who wrote and directed the film, struggled to fill a rather taut 90-minute runtime without fumbling.

At Cinema Axis, Courtney Small says, “Deep in the dense grass that surrounds the plot of Vincenzo Natali’s ‘In the Tall Grass’ is a spectacular horror film. Unfortunately, one gets lost trying to find it.” More to the point, Brian Lowry at CNN states, “Despite an uneven track record, ‘In the Tall Grass’ gives the lamest King adaptations a run for their money, as writer-director Vincenzo Natali labors to stretch out the story, which takes a wrong turn in more ways than one.”

There’s nothing sadder in film than to see a tremendous performer debase themselves with lesser than material. Such is the case in the 2021 film “Things Heard & Seen” written and directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, starring Academy Award nominee Amanda Seyfried.

The film takes us back to 1980 where Catherine (Seyfried), an art restorer living in Manhattan, moves to a spooky farmhouse in upstate New York for a career opportunity for her husband. As Catherine, her husband, and their daughter settle in, Catherine and her daughter begin witnessing and feeling a spirit in their new home. “Things Heard & Seen” is a classic ghost story in every sense, including being based on real-life events, but it’s one that flies every which way, never landing any of its attempts at tension or thrills. Trading in, instead, trite boredom.

ABC News critic Peter Travers colorfully quips, “You know a ghost story is a hot mess when it strands a stellar Amanda Seyfried and a top cast in a remote, country house haunted by toxic masculinity, dangling plot threads and nothing worth hearing or seeing.” Almost unanimously across the board, critics agreed that Seyfried shouldn’t be looped in with this mess of a film, as David Ehrlich at IndieWire says, “[W]hile Seyfried acquits herself and then some, an actor of her talent is wasted on a character that spends most of the movie just connecting the dots.”

I have to imagine that the 38% of critics who liked this film, only did so because of Seyfried.