You’ve read about the best movies of 2018 — IndieWire’s staff list is topped by “Roma,” followed by “First Reformed,” “The Favourite,” “Cold War,” and “Shoplifters” — but what about the worst? As they do every year, the fine folks at Metacritic have crunched the numbers and come out with a list of the most poorly received films to come out in the last 12 months.

Dinesh D’Souza’s “Death of a Nation” has the dubious distinction of coming in at #1, but it isn’t just the worst film of 2018 — it’s the worst film in the site’s history: “Out of the 11,819 films for which we have Metascores,” the list reads, “‘Nation’ ranks as #11,819.”

The full list:


  1. “Death of a Nation” (Metascore: 1)
  2. “London Fields” (Metascore: 16)
  3. “The Vanishing of Sidney Hall” (Metascore: 18)
  4. “Reprisal” (Metascore: 19)
  5. “Life Itself” (Metascore: 21)
  6. “The Clapper” (Metascore: 21)
  7. “211” (Metascore: 21)
  8. “Dark Crimes” (Metascore: 21)
  9. “Gotti” (Metascore: 24)
  10. “Stratton” (Metascore: 26)
  11. “Hell Fest” (Metascore: 26)
  12. “Terminal” (Metascore: 27)
  13. “The Happytime Murders” (Metascore: 27)
  14. “Winchester” (Metascore: 28)
  15. “Peppermint” (Metascore: 29)



IndieWire’s David Ehrlich began his review of “Death of a Nation” thusly: “Convicted felon Dinesh D’Souza presents film critics with two separate but inextricable dilemmas. The first is that any sincere effort to review one of D’Souza’s documentaries — he’s released a new one every other July since 2012 — fundamentally debases both the medium of film, and the act of criticism. The more insidious problem is D’Souza wants writers to pan his work and attack his person.” (He awarded the film an F, as he did D’Souza’s “America: Imagine the World Without Her” and “Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party.”)