A disjointed and at times off-putting mess that veers wildly and unconvincingly between a road movie, a family drama, a violent crime film and an offbeat sci-fi thriller before arriving at a finale so loopy that even if I spoiled it here and now, many of you would just assume that I was kidding.

While the premise has some undeniable potential, it has been executed by writer-director Lotfy Nathan in a manner that is neither particularly frightening nor spiritually enlightening.

When Madea is onscreen, at least you know what universe you are in, and there is something interesting and insane to watch. Otherwise, you are thrust into an abyss of meaninglessness and plot-heavy maneuvering overlaid with Christian propaganda that wears out its welcome with the first line of exposition.

Imagine a J-horror plot involving a child possessed by a swamp demon told through the aesthetics of the screenlife found footage subgenre, and you can pretty much imagine how writer-director Pablo Absento‘s new film, “Bloat,” will play out.

This is one of those super-convoluted conspiracy theory movies where nothing makes sense and you simply stop caring. Saviors show up inexplicably at just the right time. People come off as evil for the sole purpose of misleading us. There’s no character development, a lot of patriotic posturing and the villain gives a lecture that must have been written before they cast a Black actor as its recipient. Despite endless gunfire and a lot of shit blowing up, most of the action sequences fail to quicken the pulse.

It’s not involving; it’s not scary; it’s just kind of miserable.

The worst thing about The Girl in the Spider’s Web — the element likely to enrage most fans of the franchise — is how it betrays its central character by eradicating almost every aspect that made her so initially fascinating.

As the story bloats to two hours by mistaking itself for an epic, The Outsider falls into a pit of boredom somewhere between the white savior complex of Tom Cruise in “The Last Samurai” and the much slicker kills by Alain Delon in “Le Samourai.”

The Amateur skims the surface of what has worked in spy thrillers of the past, never finding its own rhythm, identity, or personality.

The Hunter’s Prayer is like a Luc Besson film put through a deflavorizing machine to remove any element that could be distinctive, energetic, or fun.

As it stands now, Aloha feels like several films at once, crammed together and sped up, with results that are emotionally hollow and narratively confusing.

It's a movie lost somewhere in the middle: too weird to be believable, not weird enough to be memorable.

When Day of the Dead: Bloodline, a promised retelling of one of Romero’s classic “Dead” films came across my radar, I thought, “That might be a fun way to start the new year.” It’s not.

For far too long, nothing especially creepy or unsettling happens on screen.

My Policeman is surface-level queer representation lacking in visual imagination and begging for better performances. It’s the kind of glacially paced movie that sticks around for two hours and tells its viewer nothing new; a series of moving images without any sense of emotion or wonder. “My Policeman” commits the gravest of crimes—it’s soulless.

Mighty Oak is clumsy when presenting its darkest stuff, and can't balance that with its sporadic attempts at broad humor.

Science fiction is often used in allegorical fashion. It may not be fair to judge Automata by this gauge, but the film is so deathly somber and heavy-handed that I can only assume director Gabe Ibáñez wanted to tell us Something Important.

To top off all of the ineffective weirdness, the movie ends on a tone-deaf “got a sequel if you want it” note.

The Shack wants to be a sincere exploration of faith and forgiveness but somehow manages to be both too innocuous and too off-putting for its own good.

Spiral: From the Book of Saw is more frustrating than the average mediocre horror sequel because you can easily decipher the wasted opportunity up there on the screen.

Edward Berger’s “Ballad of a Small Player” is one of the most over-directed films I’ve ever seen. And I’ve been playing this specific game for a long time.

Geostorm fails to work either as awe-inspiring spectacle or as campy silliness.

Isle of Dogs does not have a compelling story, and even worse, it has the most egregious examples of its director’s privilege since “The Darjeeling Limited.” This movie really pissed me off, and the only thing I found soothing while watching it was silently repeating to myself “the dogs are very furry.” Reminding myself of the film’s best asset kept me from walking out.

A dull retread of ideas explored more interestingly in other films and TV shows. Even the always-welcome Stanley Tucci can’t add any flair to a movie that feels so much like a relative of John Krasinski’s 2018 smash hit that one has to wonder if Netflix didn’t try to convince the producers to rename it “A Quiet Paradox.”

Sure, the events are scrambled, with minor changes here and there, but if you know what happens in “Madame Bovary,” you will not be surprised by this film. In fact, you’ll probably be as irritated as I was by Gemma Bovery’s attempts to be clever and meta.

Lily James brings a refreshing straightforwardness to the role in the second half, as the character takes the reins of the situation, but has a difficult time convincing us in the first half that she is susceptible, cowed, in thrall.

Django is for the most part everything Reinhardt’s music was not: listless, glum and meandering.

There’s more than enough meat on the bones of this true story for a film like Above Suspicion, but director Phillip Noyce can’t figure out how to tell it in a way that's more interesting than a Wikipedia entry.