People Are Exposing The Movies With The Most Ridiculous Premises
People Are Exposing The Movies With The Most Ridiculous Premises
Alanna MarshallSun, August 23, 2026 at 1:16 AM UTC
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Some movie premises are dumb in a way you can buy into, making it easy to sit for two hours and enjoy the film without thinking too critically about what's actually going on (aka, movies that are so bad they're good). And while Sharknado and Dumb and Dumber fall under this category, other movies have the kind of ridiculous premises that you can't even suspend disbelief long enough to get through without starting to wonder how the film's plot made it into production.
©New Line Cinema/Courtesy Everett CollectionSo, when someone asked, "Which movies had the worst/dumbest premises?" the responses included perfect examples of this niche film category. There were also some hot takes, with the plots of fan-favorite movies like #14 being called into question. But we'll let you decide whether you agree or disagree with the top responses:
Note: Some responses were also pulled from this thread.
1. "The Day After Tomorrow has cold weather literally chase the characters down corridors and snatch helicopters from the sky. Just hilariously silly. Oh, and wolves just spawn in with the weather."
©20thCentFox/Courtesy Everett Collection
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2. "The John Wick series (except for the first movie). John Wick was about a retired hitman who takes revenge when some entitled mobster's son crosses a line and screws with the wrong guy by killing his dog. John Wick 2 and 3 (I haven't seen 4) establish an absolutely ludicrous and unbelievable world where, like, 75% of all people everywhere are highly trained assassins, shootouts can happen in public with no repercussions to anyone or any of the shooters getting arrested, and there are a bunch of ridiculous rules that John Wick and *only* John Wick obeys. The action choreography is great, but the story and world-building are so stupid that they're among the most unintentionally funny movies I've ever seen."
©Summit Entertainment/Courtesy Everett Collection3. "Teen Wolf Too. Teen Wolf is a dumb but passable premise, but then extending it to college 1-on-1 boxing is just insane. Nobody would box a f****** werewolf for college sports."
©Atlantic Releasing Corp/Courtesy Everett Collection4. "The Purge is one of the 'shut up, we REALLY want this premise despite it falling apart if you think about it more than five seconds' movies to me."
©Universal/Courtesy Everett Collection5. "Titane. A woman who has a titanium plate in her head becomes increasingly more homicidal and deranged while dealing with her sexual attraction to automobiles. She may or may not be impregnated by a car at one point. That’s not a spoiler, btw — that’s how they marketed the movie. It’s wild."
©Neon /Courtesy Everett Collection6. "Face/Off. A guy 'arrives home' to his wife and not only does the other guy's face manage to fit on his, but she doesn't notice him having an entirely different body, mannerisms, voice, or behavior."
©Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection
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7. "Bubba Ho-Tep. A mummy is preying on the residents of a nursing home, and only Elvis (who switched places with an impersonator in the 70s) and JFK (who is Black and in a wheelchair) can stop it. Sounds like Sharknado levels of stupid, but it's actually a great movie."
©Vitagraph Films / Courtesy Everett Collection8. "Tusk has a pretty dumb premise: an old guy captures a man, performs surgeries on him, gradually morphing him into a walrus to relive his friendship with a walrus in his youth. I watched it twice and am really not sure where the lines between comedy, camp, and body horror fall. It's an absolutely absurd film."
©A24 / Courtesy Everett Collection9. "Ratatouille. I think a movie about a rat who controls a chef by his hair at a gourmet restaurant is quite the head scratcher from first impression, but like what prime Pixar does, they add a lot of heart to it."
©Walt Disney Co./Courtesy Everett Collection
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10. "In Jurassic World, they keep trying to push the plot that villainous millionaires are trying to weaponize dinosaurs. At one point, someone says something about raptors like ‘If only we had these in Afghanistan…’ Then what? You’d have been murdered by raptors in Afghanistan? Wouldn’t you just spend these billions on more bombs, more heavy armor, drones, etc? The insanity reaches a fever pitch when a gun is revealed that, when pointed at a target, doesn’t just shoot the target, but tags the target for a genetically engineered Dino to attack."
© Universal Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection11. "The world has hit an ice age apocalypse, and most of humanity has been eliminated. One of the last bastions of survival is... a high-tech train that never stops moving. There's no destination; it just keeps driving. Snowpiercer."
©Weinstein Company/Courtesy Everett Collection12. "While it’s widely recognized as one of the best movies ever made, Vertigo’s premise is bananas. I love the film and encourage you to watch it again and again. It’s great on so many levels! But the idea that a rich industrialist would go to that much trouble to create a complicated plan to murder his wife that could easily fail at any point is comically absurd."
©Paramount Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection13. "The Lobster. Find love, or we'll turn you into an animal. And somehow that's the least weird thing about the movie. Great movie, though."
©A24/Courtesy Everett Collection14. "Clue is one of my all-time favorite movies, but ye gods, the premise is dumb. A blackmailer's butler assembles together all of his employer's victims and is either surprised when they start to murder each other, or that's what he planned all along, but also, somehow, it still all gets out of hand? What did he think was going to happen? Brilliant movie. No notes. 11/10 absoloodle."
©Paramount/Courtesy Everett Collection
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15. "The Tomorrow War (2021) with Chris Pratt. Earth gets a warning via time travelers that an alien invasion a few decades in the future is decimating the planet. Instead of taking the warning to mobilize and prepare to stop the invasion or investigate its origin, the plan they come up with is to draft people to be soldiers and send them to the future to fight. 70% of people die before the end of their weeklong deployment. And so they just keep doing that over and over. It’s the f****** dumbest plan, and support for it would have evaporated by the time the second wave of draftees didn’t come home."
© Amazon Studios /Courtesy Everett Collection16. "Looper. Time travel exists and is criminalized. Criminals still use it, though, mostly to dispose of bodies and pretty much nothing else. God, I hate this f****** movie, it's just trash writing."
©TriStar Pictures/Courtesy Everett Collection17. "Violent Night. Santa Claus has to stop a Die Hard-style hostage situation. Sounded like a bad Robot Chicken sketch, but it was surprisingly great as it still maintained a Christmas spirit feel as Santa is kicking a**."
© Universal Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection18. And finally, "Locke. A man has made a boo boo and has to spend a car journey trying to fix it all via phone whilst battling a cold. I mean, I loved the film and have seen it multiple times; it's a really well-made film with an engaging life drama story. But how they ever pitched it successfully blows my mind."
©A24/Courtesy Everett CollectionWhich movies do you think have the dumbest premises? Share your picks in the comments, or submit them anonymously using the form below!
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