With a towering legacy as an actor, and a body of work that includes movies of vastly different levels of quality,Nicolas Cageis one of the most respected, prolific, and distinctive of his generation. His commitment to the craft of acting has made him something of a living meme, but he’s far more than just a punchline, given how many great performances he’s given and the countless times he’s perfectly understood the assignment at hand.
Cage has won an Oscar and appeared in various critically acclaimed movies throughout his 40+ years as an actor, though not everything he’s appeared in has been a winner, by any means.He’s one of those rare actors who’s starred in both 1/10 and 10/10 movies, with the following all leaning closer to the former. These are arguably Nicolas Cage’s worst movies, some deservedly languishing in obscurity and others having achieved a certain level of notoriety. Be warned… they’re not easy to sit through, even if you consider yourself a Cage super fan.
10'211' (2018)
Director: York Alec Shackleton
Not able to join thelong line of great bank heist movies,211is a forgettable movie with a forgettable title, and one of many low-budget/cash-grabby movies Nicolas Cage appeared in throughout the 2010s. You had better get used to that sort of film, because they tend to be heavily represented among the worst Cage movies, and scarcely even have the mercy to be so bad they’re good.
The dialogue and pacing in211is atrocious, both working in tandem to make it feel closer to 211 minutes in length, rather than the brief-sounding 86 minutes it purportedly is. It covers a stand-off between bank robbers and police that ensues after a heist gone wrong, and trudges along with surprisingly little urgency or vibrancy…but for as bad as it is, there are worse offerings to be found within the Cage back catalog.
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9’Willy’s Wonderland' (2021)
Director: Kevin Lewis
Willy’s Wonderlandmight sound like it has the potential to be fun on paper, but the execution leaves a shocking amount to be desired.Clunky and silly monster movies can be entertaining, but this one isn’t, doing very little with a winning premise that sees Cage playing a man taking on a job as a cleaner at a mysterious family fun center, eventually battling the evil animatronic mascots that reside within.
It might be fun for a brief few seconds to see Nicolas Cage essentially star in aFive Nights at Freddy’sknock-off, because yes, he does get to brutally kill various animatronic monsters. But at a point,Willy’s Wonderlandbecomes so repetitive and almost comically one-note, not at all concerned with trying to top itself or build toward a worthwhile conclusion. In the end, there’s next to no wonder or enjoyment to be found here.
Willy’s Wonderland
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8’Running with the Devil' (2019)
Director: Jason Cabell
Committing the cinematic crime of wasting both Nicolas Cage andThe Matrix’sLaurence Fishburne,Running with the Devilis a floundering and tedious crime/thriller movie. Narratively, it involves a series of events that occur in the wake of a shipment of cocaine getting compromised, leading to the boss of a drug cartel sending his henchmen to work out what went wrong.
Running with the Devilis populated by mostly unnamed characters, with Cage playing “The Cook” and Fishburne playing “The Man” (yes, really). Everyone’s as uninteresting as the titles they’re given in the end credits, andthe film overall lacks momentum and even a sense of purpose. Worst of all, it’s one of the few Nicolas Cage movies where the man himself even seems checked out, making it hard to recommend to even his most passionate fans.
Running with the Devil
7’Grand Isle' (2019)
Director: Stephen S. Campanelli
The notparticularly thrilling thriller moviesstarring Nicolas Cage continue withGrand Isle, a 2019 release that came out just a couple of years before Cage’s body of work got back on track quality-wise. Indeed, movies like 2021’sPig, 2022’sThe Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,and 2023’sDream Scenarioare all worth checking out before ever checking outGrand Isle, which has nothing on those late-career Cage gems.
The story ofGrand Isleis mostly about a young man meeting a married couple during a hurricane, with everyone ending up in a perilous situation thanks not only to the weather outside, but due to the fact that there’s an unsolved murder causing tension and stress.Even for a low-budget movie,Grand Islefeels disappointingly claustrophobic, and it fails to mine anything that’s notably thrilling out of its allegedly “thriller” premise.
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6’Pay the Ghost' (2015)
Director: Uli Edel
Not to be mixed up withRunning with the Devil,Pay the Ghosthas a similar title (or at least a similarly derivative one), with the only constant being that both movies are pretty bad. Actually, “pretty bad” might well be a pretty generous way of describingPay the Ghost, which only has some novelty value because of the fact that it’s one of the few“serious” supernatural horror moviesCage has appeared in.
Horror comedies likeRenfieldand the aforementionedWilly’s Wonderlanddon’t really count, so it all falls onPay the Ghostto demonstrate what Cage is capable of in a movie featuring supernatural forces and with a setting on Halloween. Perhaps he could make it work in a better movie with such things, butPay the Ghostdoes also inadvertently show why Nicolas Cage hasn’t done a ton of full-on horror… perhaps the experience – and final product – of this 2015 film frightened him away from the idea.
Pay the Ghost
5’Between Worlds' (2018)
Director: Maria Pulera
Between Worlds, for a certain subset of Nicolas Cage fans, might well be a fun kind of bad movie, as it is truly awful in just about every way, but is so baffling that it’s also oddly enthralling. Whether or not he’s giving a genuinely good performance in it,the fact remains that he is strangelycaptivating in the way that only Cage can be, and whenever he’s not sleepwalking through a movie (this happens almost never), that dedication has to be admired.
Though, regrettably, the dedication on offer from Nicolas Cage here is something thatBetween Worldsas a whole doesn’t deserve, because it’s a very poorly made psychological thriller/mystery film. It involves the spirits of dead people possessing the living, deals with souls, and haphazardly works in other fantastical elements for a bizarre story that’s persistently going off the rails throughout its entire runtime. This extended cinematic trainwreck, as a result, does have a certain amount of befuddlement and entertainment value to offer.
Between Worlds
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4’Outcast' (2014)
Director: Nick Powell
Nicolas Cage has starred in some ofthe best action movies of all time, and was particularly dominant within the genre during the late 1990s. After all, it was at this stage of Cage’s career that he managed to grace the world with performances in films likeThe Rock(1996),Face/Off(1997), andCon Air(1997), all hyper-masculine, over-the-top, and gloriously spectacular examples of maximalist action.
Things weren’t so hot for Nicolas Cage as an action star during the 21st century, though, withOutcastbeing one of the more infamous examples of a late-career Cage action film.Cage is given a prominent spot on the poster, and he’s billed first, but disappears for large stretches of the movie. Those other large stretches involve… oh, who cares? Who remembers? Who even wants to Google anything about Outcast during CURRENT YEAR? Just don’t bother with any of it.
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3’The Wicker Man' (2006)
Director: Neil LaBute
When it comes to ranking thevery best folk horror movies of all time, you’d be hard-pressed to find many titles more deserving of that top spot than the originalThe Wicker Man. It’s an example of a 1970s horror movie that’s still efficiently unnerving, but just as the original is universally revered, so too is the remake – released 33 years after the original – almost universally hated.
2006’sThe Wicker Manremoves all the subtle creepiness found in the original version, and is instead a lumbering, unintentionally funny, never scary, and often quite boring film, whether you’re familiar with the original movie or not.It’s best remembered today for all the memes it created – many of them prominently featuring Cage’s character– but actually getting through the entire movie is a challenge, no matter how funny you might find the“Oh no, not the bees” scene.
2’Left Behind' (2014)
Director: Vic Armstrong
It takes a special kind of bad movie toget a score below 10% on Rotten Tomatoes, but then movies likeLeft Behindmake it look easy by going above and beyond and ending up with a score of 0%. This means that of all the critics whose reviews were taken by the site, not one of them came away feeling positively towardLeft Behind, essentially getting a passing grade from exactly 0% of them.
It’s this reception and the film’s overall infamy that consistently ranks it up there (or down there) as a bottom-of-the-barrel Nicolas Cage movie, and some would say his very worst. Being largely set on an airplane during a mysterious rapture,Left Behind’sattempts to thrill, excite, and entertain prove laughable at best, and miserably boring at worst, making it arguably too bad to be so bad it’s good (a truly rare thing to experience while tracking down and sitting through bad movies).
1’The Humanity Bureau' (2017)
Director: Rob W. King
Not as well-known asThe Wicker ManorLeft Behind, and not as fun as other bad Nicolas Cage movies likeDeadfall(1993) or 2017’sInconceivable,The Humanity Bureauis as bad as it gets, not just for Cage, but perhaps for movies as a whole. It’s an absolutely nonsensical sci-fi movie that will have you immediately seeking outsome good science fictionto serve as a chaser, should you manage to survive the whole thing.
Feeling like a parody of certain sci-fi tropes, but without a director on board who knew they were making something serious,The Humanity Bureauis incredibly stupid, narratively focusing on a series of environmental disasters that rock the world in 2030.It’s never exciting, it often feels implausible, no one involved seems to be on the same page, and it’s just an unmitigated disaster in every single way a movie could be an unmitigated disaster. Abandon all hope ye who enter intoThe Humanity Bureau.
