The magical and whimsical elements of the fantasy genre have made it a staple of creative filmmaking for generations, with films like The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter being landmark staples that have become icons of film in and of themselves. This inherent strength of the fantasy genre has translated into 2025, from massive blockbuster films like Wicked: For Good and Frankenstein to critically acclaimed indie films like Eternity and Arco.
However, the year has been far from absolutely perfect in terms of its fantasy offerings, with 2025 having its fair share of exceptionally disappointing and ineffective fantasy films. No amount of otherworldly magic can save these films from their myriad of issues, from shoddy visual effects to basic, formulaic storytelling. The failures of these fantasy films only serve to make the truly great fantasy films of the year look that much better by comparison.
9
‘Death of a Unicorn’
A24, as a distributor of filmmaker-focused independent films, is rarely one to truly strike out in the eyes of both audiences and critics in the modern day, yet Death of a Unicorn proves to be much too bland and unmemorable to leave the same impact as the distributor’s other fantasy films. The horror comedy has a relatively fun and unique premise, seeing a father and daughter dealing with the ramifications of accidentally hitting and killing a unicorn while on their way to a weekend work retreat, but the final product feels largely derivative of overdone class divide themes.
Its lackluster visual effects don’t do a great enough job of emphasising the proposed horror of its unicorn killing spree, while at the same time not ever managing to be especially funny in its execution either. It’s easy to get a sense of where the entire film is going with its plot within the first ten minutes, with no amount of inherent charm from Paul Rudd or Jenna Ortega doing enough to save this overwhelmingly mediocre experience.
8
‘Troll 2’
Not to be confused with the all-time icon of so-bad-it’s-good filmmaking that happens to share the same name, 2025’s Troll 2 attempts to build upon the surprise factor that the original Norwegian film had on Netflix back in 2022. If the first film was acting as a fantasy Norwegian riff on Godzilla, this significantly more idiotic sequel acts as the equivalent to Godzilla vs Kong, putting any previous themes and messaging to the back burner and simply providing dumb giant troll action.
To some audiences, simply seeing two giant trolls fight each other and destroying a city in the process is all that this movie needs to be, yet much like the worst kaiju movies out there, its increased focus on entirely uninteresting human characters can make the film a slog to sit through. The actual trolls fighting each other only take up a minuscule amount of the runtime, with so much of the film consisting of dull exposition and lazy human action.
7
‘Z-O-M-B-I-E-S 4: Dawn of the Vampires’
The Z-O-M-B-I-E-S franchise has largely grown to be one of the silliest sources of over-the-top stupidity and campy fun from Disney Channel in recent years. However, while each previous entry was upping the ante in terms of wild dumb fun, Z-O-M-B-I-E-S 4: Dawn of the Vampires feels like it’s taking steps backwards. The franchise’s messages of persecution for young children reach a breaking point in this film, with the main characters acting as a third party to a centuries-old feud between a clan of Daywalkers and Vampires.
While none of the films in the Z-O-M-B-I-E-S series could be considered good from an objective standpoint, previous entries, at the very least, had a sense of campy, self-aware fun with the absurdity of their own existence. Dawn of the Vampires, by comparison, feels like it has entirely used up all the campy energy that this concept can provide, rehashing plot threads and going through the motions to create a largely dull experience.
6
‘Fountain of Youth’
Fountain of Youth is what happens if you take a normally talented action director in Guy Ritchie, remove any of the personality and wit that made his films entertaining in the first place, and force him to make a flavorless riff on Indiana Jones with amped-up fantasy elements. Not since the likes of Uncharted has a film so badly wanted to recapture that classic Indy adventure magic, while not having any fundamental understanding of what made those films so fun in the first place.
The characters are about as bland and surface-level as they get, the action feels muted and massively restrained by Ritchie’s standards, and the corny writing more often than not completely takes the audience out of any stakes or emotion the film may have. It’s the type of dumb fantasy adventure film that feels all too common for the streaming era, destined for a fate of being forgotten about by audiences only weeks after the film’s release.
5
‘Red Sonja’
The original Red Sonja film was a critical and commercial failure of a fantasy action film of the 80s, massively failing to live up to the strengths of either the original comic book character or the filmography of Arnold Schwarzenegger. However, with the massive resurgence of comic book adaptations in the modern day, it seemed all but inevitable that Red Sonja would once again be attempted to be brought to the big screen, with 2025’s Red Sonja being just as bad as the original.
The film has high hopes of being a fantasy revenge film with an overwhelming amount of gore and action, but its lackluster visual effects and by-the-numbers action are constantly holding it back from any potential greatness. The film feels completely out of place being released in 2025, having the feel and look of a bland straight-to-DVD release of the 2000s instead of something released in theaters in 2025.
4
‘Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare’
One of the often forgotten about spinoffs as a part of the “cinematic Poohniverse” of public domain children’s icons turned into horror villains, Peter Pan’s Neverland Nightmare, while not as bad as some other entries in the Poohniverse, is still a wildly ineffective fantasy horror film. The film genuinely has nothing to offer or say aside from the baseline premise of “what if Peter Pan was evil and dark and twisted”, entirely relying on the name brand of Peter Pan and the fascination of its own existence for success.
From turning Peter into a child murderer to making Tinker Bell a drug-abusing trans woman who has been gaslit and abused by Peter for years, every dark twist in the children’s story goes so over the top in its attempt to be shocking that none of it ends up being shocking at all. As a result, many of the original fantasy elements of Peter Pan have been largely abandoned, instead utilizing the same old boring grittiness of the real world.
3
‘In the Lost Lands’
Paul W. S. Anderson has never been a particularly celebrated filmmaker in the eyes of critics and audiences, with a divisive filmography ranging from underrated hidden gems to viciously hated video game adaptations like Monster Hunter. However, In the Lost Lands stands out even among Anderson’s infamous filmography as a wild swing for the fences that tries to do so much all at once that it crumbles in on itself. It combines post-apocalypse, steampunk, fantasy, and a handful of other subgenres and tones together to create an incomprehensible mess of energy over substance.
The film, at times, almost embraces its own stupidity and doubles down to create half-genius sequences of dumb fun brilliance. In select moments, it circumvents the very notions of good and bad entirely, while in other moments, it completely trips over itself in whatever it was attempting to do. It feels just as likely that the film could be completely forgotten in a decade as it could be revered as a cult classic, yet for audiences of 2025, In the Lost Lands is nothing more than a headache.
2
‘Smurfs’
Smurfs is the type of blatantly corporate cookie-cutter family movie garbage that brings into question the very appeal of the Smurfs as characters in the first place, as one truly has to wonder who, if anyone at all, was clamoring for a new Smurfs movie aside from money-hungry executives banking on its IP potential. Between the dated pop culture references, by-the-numbers story, and the near infinite number of celebrity voices and cameos, the film feels like the ultimate combination of every bad trope that has plagued studio animation in the 21st century.
It easily stands as not only one of the worst films of recent memory, but one of the most lazily constructed and deeply forgettable family movie experiences to have ever been created. As bad as the previous live-action Smurfs movies were, they at the very least had some personality that helped them stick out and become box office hits. By comparison, 2025’s Smurfs feels like every other boring animated kids movie of the past 10 years, destined to only be enjoyed by the youngest of kids, no matter how much of Rihanna‘s music is put into it.
1
‘Snow White’
Live action retellings of Snow White have been a proven formula for fantasy movie success long before Disney tried their attempt at remaking one of their most legendary animated movies of all time. However, the film finds itself caught in the middle of wanting to adhere to the legacy of the animated classic and forging its own path, accomplishing neither as a result and creating an experience that appeals to absolutely nobody. It’s hard to criticize the film in good faith without mentioning the overwhelming vitriol and anger surrounding the film, yet even if it weren’t at the center of a hatestorm, the film still wouldn’t be good on its own merits.
Rachel Zegler‘s talents feel largely wasted on either lackluster original songs or jarring direction, while any scene with Gal Gadot turns into an unintentional comedy thanks to her laughably bad performance. The film’s pacing is also egregiously terrible, being 26 minutes longer than the original animated film while still finding ways to cut out songs and important aspects of its story. It’s a sad, blatantly corporate failure by nearly every metric, as anyone looking for a good time in a live-action Snow White film should instead just watch Mirror Mirror or Snow White and the Huntsman.
