The 5 Worst New Netflix Movies Released in 2025

When you release over 125 movies from productions all over the globe, any studio is bound to have some unsuccessful misfires, and Netflix is no different.

From big-budget, action-packed adventures that failed to grip us to rom-coms that didn’t make us laugh or swoon, several films were unable to meet the expectations of me as a critic and many of you as a loyal subscriber. While you can check out all my weekly reviews here, let’s look at my list of the five worst Netflix Original Films of 2025.

5

The Electric State

• Genre: Action, Adventure, Comedy
• Rating: PG-13
• Release Date: March 14, 2025
• Director: Anthony Russo, Joe Russo
• Cast: Chris Pratt, Millie Bobby Brown, Woody Harrelson
• Language: English
• Runtime: 220 min

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I guess if you’re going to fail, fail big. The Russo Brothers’ latest post-Endgame blockbuster reportedly cost around 300 million dollars, starred 2 of the biggest stars around in Chris Pratt (Jurassic World, Super Mario Brothers) & Millie Bobby Brown (Stranger Things, Godzilla), and is based on a critically well-received illustrated novel, but somehow ends up with an inconsistent, shallow, and contradictory story full of tech word salad.

Set in an alternate reality 1990s where robots lose a war with humans after seeking freedom & equality, an orphaned teen named Michelle, who lost her parents and genius brother to a car accident, struggles to fit into the new VR/AI-heavy society created largely by tech giant Sentre and their CEO Ethan Skate (Stanley Tucci). Their invention of the Neurocaster helped defeat the robots by creating a neural link between a human and a drone mechanical body. Now, humans use this device to be able to work & play at the same time, creating a better reality than their post-war environment. 

One night, a robot based on the Cosmo cartoon Michelle used to watch with her late brother arrives at her home seeking her out. While seeming implausible, she is convinced by the robot that it is, in fact, her brother’s consciousness controlling this robotic exterior and that they need to find Christopher – alive and in danger – before it’s too late.

With a seemingly Amblin-Spielberg aesthetic (read: attempted) filled with animatronic pop culture based robots (Mr. Peanut as an example), an opportunistic smuggler/robot war veteran (Pratt) with a growing empathy and a spunky robo sidekick, and … well … Ke Huy Quan (The Goonies, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom), The Electric State seems to have veered off in a completely different direction from its bleaker, more dystopian source material and looked to more of the grandiose blockbuster register that the Russos prefer to operate within.

The Electric State. (L to R) Keats (Chris Pratt) and Michelle (Millie Bobby Brown) in The Electric State. Cr. Paul Abell/Netflix ©2025

As confounding as that tone shift may be for fans of the graphic novel, viewers coming in cold will have plenty to be conflicted about as well. In our current world of AI, Metaverse, & ugh, Elon Musk, it may be hard to care about robot rights or tech moguls gone too far without rolling your eyes or turning it off. Now, try it on when the movie doesn’t go into any of these subjects with any depth or clarity. Every time this films goes up to the line where it would have to go darker or more introspective or philosophical, it pulls back and dines on nostalgia & largely unearned sentimentality. Are we pro-technology, as we created the robots that we should live side-by-side with in harmony, or are we anti-tech, as we become over-reliant on tech billionaires and the inventions that seem to make us more isolated & withdrawn from society? Don’t worry about that! Just watch an old timey baseball mascot bot throw baseballs at drones! Heck, the end credits song “Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots, Pt 1” by the Grammy-winning indie art rockers The Flaming Lips features lyrics largely consisting of KILLING “those evil natured robots” while following a battle won by robots! Can’t make this up.

The main issue for The Electric State is that it somehow falls short on both sides of the emotional choices it could make: it’s not deep, dark, or smart enough to lean into the high-minded sci-fi that its source material may lead you to believe this may be AND it’s not funny or fun enough to overlook its screenplay shortcomings. It’s simply a 2 hour madlibs of things we are coded to enjoy but can’t seem to wrap our minds around or care enough about in the end. With a story that wants us to stop being distracted and start engaging with reality, the film, interestingly enough, wants us to not think that hard and just have an adventure.

4

The Life List

• Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance
• Rating: PG-13
• Release Date: March 28, 2025
• Director: Adam Brooks
• Cast: Sofia Carson, Kyle Allen, Sebastian De Souza
• Language: English
• Runtime: 123 min

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I ALMOST feel bad for this one as Sofia Carson rebounded quite nicely with the later 2025 release My Oxford Year, but The Life List wastes so much of its bloated runtime on extraneous subplots, forgettable supporting characters, and cringey moments of attempted humor that it had to make my more unfortunate list.

The movie follows Alex Rose, a young woman perceived by others as being lost following a big change from her more impassioned career as a teacher to working for her mother’s cosmetics company. Adding to her listlessness, Alex discovers that her mother’s cancer has returned, and she won’t be going through treatment.

With a closer & stronger bond to her mother than her other siblings, she takes her eventual passing very hard. However, that bond and maternal guidance would continue as Alex is given a rather unique stipulation to her inheritance: instead of staying on and running her mother’s company, she is let go of her position and sent on a quest to get her life back on track.

Alex must follow and complete her “Life List” that she created when she was 13 years old. With tasks ranging from trying stand-up comedy to finding true love, she must complete everything on the list over the next year in order to receive her final messages from her mother and the real inheritance left in the will.

Picture: The Life List – Netflix

Reading this plot, you may think I’m a monster for not connecting with this one. While Connie Britton is a standout as Alex’s mother and there ARE some moments of deeper human connection, the story drowns in inconsistency, poor character design, & a lead performance that settles more for being angry & dour than having the range to meet the emotional moments.

The story struggles to construct a base narrative for Alex; a character who, while possibly lost without passion for her current life choices, does not seem to have those passions front and center as the goal in which to get back … or at least not the ones centered around a man.

The “Life List” is a means to tell you who she is as a person and who she aspires to be; however, a lot of the list is meaningless and doesn’t seem to suit her personality. Learning a song on piano because her mom told her to, doing standup comedy when she is clearly not funny (or even that fun most of the time), getting a tattoo, learning to drive (she clearly didn’t do this much at all), & reading Moby Dick are just some of the examples of the nonsensical fluff that fills a movie that seems to overstay its welcome.

A journey of self-discovery turns mostly into a plodding & predictable tale of how she found love. Her teaching career is a laughable side project that gets barely any backstory as to why she changed professions in the first place or why it seemed to suit her even when she was a young teen. Her family issues are too large and counterproductive to one of the only things that seem to work in this movie: her relationship with her mother and the messages she leaves behind.

The Life List may satisfy fans of Sofia Carson’s past work, but the film’s drawn-out, contrived, & largely unearned conclusions shouldn’t work for more discerning romantic drama enthusiasts.

3

Demon City

• Genre: Action, Adventure, Crime
• Rating: TV-MA
• Release Date: February 27, 2025
• Director: Seiji Tanaka
• Cast: Tôma Ikuta, Masahiro Higashide, Miou Tanaka
• Language: Japanese
• Runtime: 106 min

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As a connoisseur of gun-fu crime films and stories based on comic books (or in this case a Manga), I have a high tolerance for simple, contrived plot lines with constantly monologuing villains and weak expository dialogue, but Demon City hardly felt like it tried.

Based on the manga “Oni Goroshi” by Masamichi Kawabe, the film centers on Shuhei Sakata (Toma Ikuta), a hitman hired to take out the Yakuza gang known as the Kono-gumi as his last job before ending his career. However, after he dispatches the Kono-gumi as requested, the mysterious organization who hired him known as Kimen-gumi, donning demon-faced masks, arrives at his home. Failing to take them out, Sakata can only watch as his family is gunned down right before he takes a bullet himself.

Miraculously, Sakata survives only to see himself sent to a prison hospital as police saw the scene at his home as a murder-suicide attempt. After being in a coma for several years, he awakens in a near-vegetative state and is soon released. However, almost immediately, Sakata finds himself back in the hospital and fighting for his life; this time with a corrupt cop & his superior in a demon mask seeking to finish the job they started over a decade ago.

In an even MORE miraculous fashion, our hitman’s body responds to the adrenaline of almost being killed, snapping out of the vegetative state just enough to stave off his attackers. At full strength and finally free, Sakata focuses his energy on one simple thing: Revenge.

Demon City has all the ingredients to create a high-octane, gun-fu crime thriller—a one-man army revenge plot with a skilled assassin, demon-masked villains, and a rock guitar-laden soundtrack created by Tomoyasu Hotei (Kill Bill Vol 1, Samurai Fiction)—but mediocre execution, poor writing, jagged pacing, and unremarkable characters make this one a largely forgettable effort.

The pulse between fights slows to a crawl sapping all momentum. The central villain is barely present with a very bland vision for his empire and lacking depth. Our protagonist rarely speaks and the only things we know about him are that he was a hired gun that had no problem taking a job from this new gang & the new gang killed his family while trying to frame him for their deaths. These things add up to a movie that will look fun in Internet clips, but will disappoint anyone looking for anything further.

Much like Sakata’s inexplicable return to form, Demon City will leave you shrugging and struggling to find meaning in anything that isn’t a proper beatdown. Some action fans won’t seem to mind (and that’s fine), but I was hoping for SOMETHING to connect me from brawl to brawl.

2

Brick

• Genre: Sci-Fi
• Rating: TV-MA
• Release Date: July 10, 2025
• Director: Philip Koch
• Cast: Matthias Schweighöfer, Ruby O. Fee, Frederick Lau
• Language: German
• Runtime: 100 mins

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For those excited to see familiar Netflix faces Matthias Schweighofer & Ruby O. Fee reunite for the first time since the largely underrated Army of Thieves, you may consider a simple AOT rewatch instead.

Brick tells the story of Tim & Olivia (Schweighöfer & O. Fee naturally), a couple going through the motions and barely keeping their relationship afloat following a traumatic loss. After a last-ditch attempt by Olivia to keep the spark alive goes awry, she decides to pack her things and leave, only to find their apartment is completely shut in. All their doors, windows, & exterior walls are completely sealed off by a dark collection of brick-like shapes with a texture and feel completely unlike anything they’ve ever encountered.

With no communication, no technology, and no explanation for these events, Tim & Olivia work together in search of answers and a way out of this confusing, mysterious, & claustrophobic nightmare. Breaking down walls and floors between apartments, they gain the help of their neighbors to aid in their mission to leave. But as they draw closer to finding a way out, new forces & rising tensions find more ways to keep them in.

Brick follows a classic puzzle box plot construction that entices the viewer with an unexplained event that entices and engages its audience while slowly answering the question along the way. Some of my favorite films & TV shows (especially the works of Damon Lindelof) follow this structure incredibly well, typically making the characters and the moral & philosophical quandaries they endure so engrossing that the mystery takes a backseat to the meatier plot entanglements. Unfortunately, Brick does not do much to excite & entice its audience beyond the poorly rendered CGI wall of confusion.

Brick; Matthias Schweighöfer; Ruby O Fee Brick; Cr. Courtesy of Netflix ©2025

The film is an obvious, poorly executed genre blend that doesn’t do any of those genres particularly well. The science fiction doesn’t get that technical as the mystery largely gets solved by a dead man and mostly just discovered by a video game programmer, an architect, & a collection of bumbling, drug-addled, paranoid neighbors who don’t add much to the proceedings. The thriller aspects don’t kick in until halfway through the film and are constantly derailed by Koch’s poor use of drama and pointless, painful-to-watch philosophical musings. 

The movie just wants to scream “He built a wall around himself emotionally, get it?! He had to break down those walls to get through THESE walls, GET IT?!” while occasionally trying to get deeper with the “why us?” conundrum that tries to trauma bond the characters together in a fruitless, nauseating, extremely forced manner conducted by side characters who don’t deserve more backstory.

Brick’s story construction feels like a relic of the cheap, small Covid-friendly productions that got greenlit a handful of years ago, created around 1-2 location settings with minimal characters who mostly have to reckon with confinement, political/social commentary, conspiracy theorists, or all of the above. With so many of those films coming and going already, it seems too little & too late for Brick to make an impact, even if it was made well (it really wasn’t). 

The toughest part to square up is what the audience is supposed to take away from such a story. Surveillance is good because it will give you all the answers? Always believe the tech guy over the conspiracy theorist/doomsday believer, even if what they say is completely plausible? Always bet that something positive will occur, even if you have very little basis to go on? Don’t trust your neighbors? Put emergency messages over radio frequencies that they know can’t penetrate the walls? If anyone has any answers, I’m willing to listen.

For all the questions of “what is this?” and “why is this happening?”, the audience will mostly be left asking “What was the point?”

1

Kinda Pregnant

• Genre: Comedy, Drama
• Rating: R
• Release Date: February 5, 2025
• Director: Tyler Spindel
• Cast: Amy Schumer, Will Forte, Jillian Bell
• Language: English
• Runtime: 97 min

Watch on Netflix

Amy Schumer’s first leading film role in 7 years probably didn’t want to end up like this.

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, Schumer’s latest farcical dramedy Kinda Pregnant may have been the movie you fired up for your date night this year, but you may have regretted it more than a fake pregnancy gone too far.

Co-written & co-produced by Schumer, the story centers on pregnancy & motherhood with Amy’s character Lainy finding herself desperate & jealous as a woman in her 40s who’s wanted a family of her own since childhood.

After her 4-year relationship ends in embarrassment & frustration and her best friend Kate (Workaholics star Jillian Bell) gets pregnant before her, Lainy just can’t take much more. Seeing the positive attention pregnant women get, she straps on a “sympathy bump” she stole from a maternity store and heads out into the world posing as an actual pregnant woman. However, as she goes more and more places and meets more and more people, the lie starts to snowball into something she can’t control. A new pregnant friend (Ginny & Georgia breakout Brianne Howey) and a new man in her life (SNL’s Will Forte) lead to anxiety when her “pregnant” life and her real life collide.

Directed by frequent Happy Madison comedy creator Tyler Spindel (The Wrong Missy, Father of the Year), Kinda Pregnant feels kinda half-baked & kinda unfocused but less than kinda funny. Even with the ultra-thin conceit of “middle-aged woman without any family – Dead parents? Alcoholic parent? The movie barely cares so why should I? – gets jealous of pregnant women around her and pretends to be pregnant for attention”, the film gets caught in the middle of wanting to be outlandishly funny AND talking seriously about what it’s like to be a pregnant woman. However, the laughs are very few and the conversations about real women issues are given to our duplicitous protagonist who seems to not learn anything from these incredibly frank talks before the film concludes. 

Kinda Pregnant. (L to R) Lizze Broadway as Shirley, Jillian Bell as Kate, Amy Schumer as Lainy, Brianne Howey as Megan and Urzila Carlson as Fallon in Kinda Pregnant. Cr. Scott Yamano/Netflix © 2024.

While the tone of the film is certainly an issue, what may be the biggest issue is Schumer’s lack of chemistry & connection with any major character in her orbit. Everything is on the surface or a deception. We learn nothing from her past relationship with Dave (Damon Wayans Jr.) except that she wanted a family and he wanted more women in their bed. This was a 4 YEAR RELATIONSHIP. Her friendship with her best friend Kate immediately gets derailed out of jealousy and never really crystallizes their 30+ year friendship in any real way. They both had no moms growing up and Kate is pregnant – that’s probably hard to deal with. She complains that her husband isn’t that into being a dad. Lainey doesn’t seem to do ANYTHING to help her. Her new friendship with Megan? One-sided & deceiving. She says really intimate things that Lainey can’t relate to and barely has any meaningful responses in return. Lainey has no repercussions to her behavior and GAINS new relationships from her insane, selfish fake pregnancy. What a picture.

Even harder to take in a romantic comedy, Schumer & Will Forte feel so forced as a couple. It’s always awkward banter even when they’ve been around each other for months. The intimacy is either kissing that doesn’t feel authentic or a sex scene played for laughs because of the fake pregnancy. The ending is predicated on their success and it clearly falls flat.

Kinda Pregnant feels stuck between genres & messaging; the romance feels strained, the comedy works in very small doses, every man in the film is made out to be a douche or a loser, & the welcomed commentary about pregnancy/birth/motherhood is ultimately not pivotal to the plot of the film nor the growth of the protagonist. It’s hard to have much of a takeaway from the film besides “don’t fake a pregnancy” or “work on your mental health before entering into any meaningful relationships”. Sorry to say, but Kinda Pregnant was my least favorite Netflix film experience of 2025.