2016 was a rough year, to put it as lightly as I can. We lost countless beloved celebrities and our new commander-in-chief is a reality show host with tacky hair and fascist tendencies.

However, no matter who is born, who dies, or which miscreant gets elected President, movies are forever. They will always be there to make us laugh, make us cry, make us think, and take us to another world for two magical hours.

2016 saw a plethora of remakes, sequels and reboots to varying degrees of necessity, but there were hidden gems such as Shane Black's buddy cop comedy The Nice Guys, and with Oscar season in full swing, critics are raving about contenders such as La La Land and Manchester by the Sea.

These are not those movies. With hours to go before we ring in 2017, I would like to count down the 10 worst movies I watched this year. I didn't get to see as many releases as I hoped I would, but I saw enough to make a satisfyingly vitriolic list, so let's get started, shall we?

10) Hail, Caesar!

This had all the makings of a great movie: love letter to Old Hollywood, A-list cast led by George Clooney, the Coen Brothers directing. Which is why it gives me no pleasure to say that this aimless, so-called "love letter" to the Golden Age of Hollywood is more like a text message reading "ur hot ;)" The only thing more frustrating that its meandering plot is its 85% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

On the plus side, Channing Tatum is wildly entertaining as a tap-dancing sailor. Surely those four minutes are on YouTube by now. Just watch that.

9) Independence Day: Resurgence

Independence Day is mindless fun with urgency and a certain charm to it. Independence Day: Resurgence is a soulless retread of the original without Will Smith (smart move, Will.) Everything that made Independence Day the glorious cheeseball it is is sorely lacking here. Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, and Judd Hirsch reprise their roles, but they never look like they want to be there, and in turn, neither does the audience.

Side note: I felt so bad for Charlotte Gainsbourg. She seemed to have no idea what she was doing in something not directed by Lars von Trier.

8) Jason Bourne

A better title for this would've been The Bourne Redundancy. Or Jason Bored.

Aside from the fact that Jason Bourne is a bland and unengaging protagonist, this film suffers from poor editing and questionable cinematography. There were so many close-up shots of the characters I could count Tommy Lee Jones's wrinkles, and the all-thumbs camera work gave me the splitting headache I would normally anticipate from a found-footage horror film. If you still want to watch it for some odd reason, bring Advil.

7) Hardcore Henry

Speaking of needing Advil... Hardcore Henry is the most gimmicky movie of the year. It's a cool concept on paper. Your average action movie, only shot entirely from a first-person POV à la The Prodigy's "Smack My Bitch Up" video. In practice, however, its novelty wears off almost immediately, and you're stuck in the middle of a first-person shooter bloodbath.

Also worth noting: Hardcore Henry is is brutally ugly. It was too violent even for me, an avowed horror enthusiast.

6) X-Men: Apocalypse

It's rare that I hear a character review the movie they're currently in, and that exactly happens in the jaded and yet still somehow overambitious X-Men: Apocalypse.

Set in 1983, young Jean Grey and friends see Return of the Jedi at the theater, and argue over which Star Wars movie is the best. Jean says "at least we can all agree the third one's always the worst." She's not wrong, you know.

5) Zoolander No. 2

What is Zoolander about? It's about a dumb-as-a-stump male model who is brainwashed to kill the Prime Minister of Malaysia. What is Zoolander No. 2 about? It's about a deadbeat dad trying to reconnect with his long lost son. Which sounds like a more compelling comedy to you?

There are more cameos in Zoolander No. 2 than there are jokes, which is the opposite of how Zoolander worked.

4) Dirty Grandpa

Robert De Niro. Lord, how the mighty have fallen.

This aggressively misanthropic comedy features Zac Efron getting mistaken for a child molester, De Niro triumphantly dropping the n-word in front of a predominantly black audience, and Aubrey Plaza seducing De Niro. Just to put the age gap in perspective, when De Niro was 50, Plaza was 9.

Suddenly, Little Fockers seems pretty dignified in comparison.

3) Fifty Shades of Black

Make no mistake, Fifty Shades of Grey is a terrible movie (Seamus McGarvey's dazzling cinematography notwithstanding) but it at least feels like a movie. I cannot say the same about this mirthless parody, that simply retells its source material through topical pop culture references.

All you need to know about the humor in this movie? Jane Seymour speaks Mandarin to her adopted Asian children, and by Mandarin, I mean "ching-chang-ching-chong-chang!"

2) Norm of the North

A twerking polar bear. A TWERKING POLAR BEAR.

A.
Twerking.
Polar.
Bear.

Need I say more?

And the #1 worst film of 2016 is... (drumroll)...

1) The Darkness

Wait, what?!

The dubious honor of worst film of 2016 goes to a low-budget horror flick starring Kevin Bacon (dude, fire your agent!) It came out the same weekend as Captain America: Civil War, so if you've never heard of The Darkness, I don't blame you.

I could talk about how the plot is just a greatest hits compilation of movies like Poltergeistand The Amityville Horror, but that's hardly the worst thing about it. Short version: a family comes home from a trip to the Grand Canyon. Unbeknownst to them, their autistic son brought home magical rocks. Weird, scary things begin happening in their house, and the boy's parents and sister blame it all on his "weird behavior." There is even a part in the film where Kevin Bacon's character googles the link between autism and the paranormal.

As someone who has an autistic sibling, the way the son was treated in this movie absolutely infuriated me, and I'll leave it at that, because I don't want to give this piece of crap more credit than it deserves. If you need to watch something scary with Kevin Bacon, just watch Stir of Echoes.

Well, here you have it, kids! I hope my masochistic efforts weren't in vain and you never have to suffer through these, and I will counter this with a celebration of 10 great movies from this year within the next few days.