The Worst Movie Of All Time Is A Sci-Fi Crime Thriller Disaster

By Chris Snellgrove | Published

While it’s hardly a perfect system, many movie lovers use Rotten Tomatoes to help gauge whether a movie they are interested in will be any good or whether it should be skipped altogether. This is even true for connoisseurs of bad movies; for example, if you want to put on something awful for a cheesy movie night, Rotten Tomatoes can help you really scrape the bottom of the barrel. If you want to see just how bad a film can be, this website has you covered: according to Rotten Tomatoes, sci-fi crime thriller Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever is the worst movie of all time.

119 Rotten Tomato Critics Gave Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever A Zero Rating

At this point, you’re probably asking a simple question: just how bad could Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever really be? While it’s not uncommon for critics to be unfair towards certain films (especially in the sci-fi and horror genres), this genre thriller has the terrible honor of having a zero percent critical rating on Rotten Tomatoes. That means not a single film critic (there were 119 professional reviews) thought it was good, and it has a barely better audience rating of 20 percent (taken from more than 10,000 ratings). 

Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever Stars Antonio Banderas And Lucy Liu

While watching Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever is the cinematic equivalent of eating lead paint chips, we have to admit it has the kind of casting that makes it seem like this is a decent film. For example, it stars Antonio Banderas (best known to action fans at the time for his performances in The 13th Warrior and The Mask of Zorro) and Lucy Liu (best known to action fans at the time for Charlie’s Angels) as the title characters. This is a film where two sexy action veterans must square off against each other before the inevitable team-up against a common foe…what could possibly go wrong?

A Bad Ripoff Of The Matrix

In a word: everything. The critics who reviewed Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever noted how the movie was effectively a sloppy copy of much better action films that didn’t manage to add any kind of style of substance of its own. For example, goofy plots were added to make the movie seem more like The Matrix, but this movie didn’t do anything new, causing critics to savage it for “[offering] overblown, wall-to-wall action without a hint of wit, coherence, style, or originality.”

A Gigantic Box Office Flop

Sometimes, critics hate a movie that ends up impressing audiences, but that wasn’t the case here. Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever ended up earning only $20.2 million against an oversized budget of $70 million. Weirdly enough, a game called Ecks vs Sever was released for the Game Boy Advance 10 months before the film came out, and that Nintendo game was successful enough that it led to the sequel (called Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever) releasing six days before the movie.

Ecks vs Sever Is A Much Better Video Game

There you have it: according to Rotten Tomatoes, Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever is the worst film ever made. Of course, the irony here is that you’ll never know how accurate the film’s reputation is until you experience it for yourself. By the time the credits are rolling, though, we guarantee you’ll wish you had just played the (surprisingly great) video games instead.