10 awful movies that surprisingly won an Oscar
The Academy Awards are supposed to celebrate the very best movies to be released in the year just passed, though the American association doesn’t always find it so easy to reach a consensus on the films worthy of praise. Such has led to countless controversial Oscar wins over the years, with fans and critics alike disagreeing with the supposedly informed view of the Academy.
Such controversies have seemed to increase in recent years after the Oscars were accused of poorly representing gender and racial diversity in their lineup of nominations. Online campaigns such as #OscarsSoWhite were set up as a result of this, and the Academy has only recently shown to be improving in such areas, but this doesn’t excuse generations of short-sighted decision-making.
Casting light on some of these awful decisions, we’ve gone back through almost 100 years of the Oscars to bring you a definitive list of ten awful movies that surprisingly won an Academy Award. Including shocking ‘Best Picture’ winners and multiple bizarre recipients of the ‘Best Makeup and Hairstyling’ award, our list is filled with a number of eyebrow-raising movies such as Crash, Pearl Harbor and Suicide Squad.
Take a look at our list below and explore some of the worst films ever to pick up a random Academy Award.
10 awful movies that surprisingly won an Oscar:
Bohemian Rhapsody (Bryan Singer, Dexter Fletcher, 2018)
The Freddie Mercury biopic Bohemian Rhapsody has long been criticised for sparking a new obsession with bad karaoke-style musicals, with many believing that Rami Malek didn’t deserve his ‘Best Actor’ Oscar win. Though this isn’t the only award that the film walked away with, winning technical awards for ‘Sound Mixing’ and ‘Sound Editing’ as well as ‘Best Film Editing’, despite the film displaying one of the worst examples of editing in modern cinema.
Hilariously mocked on social media, the scene in question has become a prime example of what not to do when editing your movie, using an incredible number of shots in its simple dialogue-driven scene.
Crash (Paul Haggis, 2004)
Competing against the likes of Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, Bennett Miller’s Capote, George Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck and Steven Spielberg’s Munich, somehow Paul Haggis’s 2004 movie Crash walked away with the ‘Best Picture’ statuette. Armed with a heavy-handed socio-political message, the film whacks you over the head with sentimentality and has since been deemed the most underserving ‘Best Picture’ winner of all time.
Not only did the film win the night’s biggest prize, but Crash also walked away with awards for ‘Best Original Screenplay’ and ‘Best Film Editing’, when, in a perfect world, it should have never got close to the Academy Awards.
Death Becomes Her (Robert Zemeckis, 1992)
American filmmaker Robert Zemeckis is used to taking on eclectic projects, with the director having taken on a sci-fi classic in the form of Back to the Future in 1985, a patriotic drama in 1994s Forrest Gump and the alien mystery Contact in 1997. One of his most curious releases came in 1992 with Death Becomes Her, a peculiar comedy that tells the story of a fading actress who seeks an immortality treatment.
Winning an Oscar for Best Visual Effects, this fantasy-horror-comedy hybrid starring Meryl Streep and Bruce Willis has been long forgotten for a reason.
The Ghost and the Darkness (Stephen Hopkins, 1996)
A peculiar film from the writer of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Princess Bride and All the President’s Men, William Goldman, there’s a reason why you may have never heard of the 1996 movie The Ghost and the Darkness. Starring Michael Douglas, Val Kilmer and Tom Wilkinson, this strange thriller tells the story of a bridge engineer and an experienced old hunter who begin to hunt down two lions.
Just as boring as the concept suggests, The Ghost and the Darkness isn’t an incompetent film, but it is certainly undeserved of an Oscar, even if that award came in the ‘Sound Effects Editing’ category.
The Golden Compass (Chris Weitz, 2007)
Popularly cited as one of the most disappointing movies of all time, Chris Weitz’s adaptation of Philip Pullman’s iconic novel The Northern Lights was something of a big-budget travesty that failed to capture the magic and spectacle of the original novel. Telling the story of a parallel universe where people are linked with animal counterparts, and the scheming of a mysterious organisation, Weitz’s movie fell flat in the view of both critics and audiences.
Starring Daniel Craig, Nicole Kidman and Dakota Blue Richards, the movie somehow managed to muster an Academy Award, taking home an Oscar for ‘Best Achievement in Visual Effects’.
Harry and the Hendersons (William Dear, 1987)
It doesn’t take a genius to see why Harry and the Hendersons was undeserving of its staggering award for ‘Best Makeup’ at the 1988 Academy Awards, with the Bigfoot character leading the movie looking more like a gorilla in a human suit. Sure, the effects may have been done by the iconic effects artist of Planet of the Apes and How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Rick Baker, but let’s be honest, Harry and the Hendersons does not compare to such movies.
Clearly, 1987 wasn’t a great year for cinematic makeup teams, with Harry and the Hendersons only facing up against one rival in the form of Robert Laden’s work on Happy New Year.
Pearl Harbor (Michael Bay, 2001)
It’s no secret that Michael Bay is considered to be one of Hollywood’s greatest punchlines, including vast explosions and scantily-clad women in pretty much any film he can. Such is certainly true of 2001s Pearl Harbor, a curious action-romance of sorts which tells the story of two lifelong friends and a nurse who are caught up in the horrific attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941.
Despite its obvious void of quality, the film was nominated for four Academy Awards, winning ‘Best Sound Editing’ ahead of the magnificent Pixar movie Monsters, Inc., for our money, it was wildly undeserved.
Suicide Squad (David Ayer, 2016)
Largely considered to be one of the worst superhero movies of modern cinema, somehow David Ayer’s Suicide Squad scraped out of 2017 with an Academy Award under its belt. Winning ‘Best Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling’ ahead of Justin Lin’s Star Trek Beyond, Ayer’s film was barely deserving of the award, with the hair and makeup of the movie being rather middle of the road in comparison to James Gunn’s 2021 version of the same story.
Starring an eclectic cast that includes Will Smith, Margot Robbie, Viola Davis, David Harbour and Jared Leto, the film was lambasted by critics and audiences alike, who bemoaned the awful casting of Leto as the Joker.
The Wolfman (Joe Johnston, 2010)
It’s rather unfair that the effects artist Rick Baker should be mentioned twice on our list, yet the Oscars need to be held accountable for giving awards to such rubbish movies. The 2010 Joe Johnston movie The Wolfman is a totally uninspired remake of the 1941 original, doing little new to the source material that tells the story of an American man who is bitten and subsequently cursed by a werewolf.
Taking home the award for ‘Best Achievement in Makeup’, Rick Baker and Dave Elsey walked away with Oscar for their work on the unbelievably forgettable movie, not that they were phased.
The Woman in Red (Gene Wilder, 1984)
You may recognise Gene Wilder from some of the most beloved movies of the 20th century, including Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein and Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, but the celebrated actor was also a brief filmmaker, making the Oscar-winning movie The Woman in Red in 1984. Starring Wilder and Kelly LeBrock, the film follows a man who spots a beautiful woman in a red dress on his way to work and decides to track her down.
Aside from the questionable plot of the dated film, the movie also contains the ill-fitting Stevie Wonder song ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You’, which is often cited as one of the artist’s worst songs. Surprisingly, Wonder took home a ‘Best Original Song’ Oscar for his efforts.
