HORROR TEN SPOT: Top 10 Miscasts

September 11th 2009, 11:01pm

Last Updated on August 3, 2021

Before we get to this week’s list, I owe my man Eric Walkuski an apology for not mentioning that the last Top 10 was his idea. Thanks bro!

And since I’m always looking to do as little work as possible, I’m gonna snag a concept that JoBlo’s own AwesomeZara sent my way. Miscasting. This is not the ordinary piss poor acting that genre fans know and love. We’re talking about a colossal miscalculation in how to fill a role.

Should be a fun discussion his week, since the behind the scenes disagreements are already significant. So sit back, take it all in, and then spit bullets on what you think I got right, wrong, and couldn’t care less about.

1. M. Night Shyamalan, EVERY CAMEO EVER

Please Night, stop giving yourself cameo’s in your movies. And if you can’t do that, please stop turning them into speaking roles. You’re an occasionally brilliant screenwriter and an awesome director, but as an actor you flat out suck. Your mere presence on screen drags the pacing down immediately. So please stop. If you care about your films at all – just stop.

2. Nicolas Cage, THE WICKER MAN

I have to imagine that Chris Brown and Shawn Merriman think this is the greatest movie ever. After all, watching Nic Cage in fully unrestrained, eyes wide panic mode, beat up just about every woman on the island has to be a domestic abuser’s dream. For the rest of us, it was just further proof that Cage’s deal with the Devil for great acting talent ended sometime in 2005.

3. Tara Reid, ALONE IN THE DARK

Tara Reid. Archeologist? Ha, ha, heh, heh, uh…wait, for real? Only in the world of Uwe Boll I guess. I do have to give credit for the fact that it’s hard to get casting this wrong in a movie so destined to fail no matter what, but they managed anyway. I have to move on, because spending any significant time thinking about this flick makes my eyes start to bleed.

4. Vince Vaughn, PSYCHO remake

I’m not sure that anyone could have been cast here to make this project work, but Vaughn’s extra pervy, extra scurvy take on Bates felt forced and uncomfortable. More like he was trying to run from Perkins performance, than create his own. Van Sant said that he did this so that no one else ever would. Perhaps the casting of Bates was specifically in support of that goal.

5. Julianne Moore, HANNIBAL

Julianne Moore is a fantastic actress and I applaud her determination to be naked on screen as much as possible, but casting her as Clarice Starling just flat out didn’t work. Clearly the producers felt that as long as they had Anthony Hopkins as Lecter they were golden, but I’d argue Jodie Foster’s Starling was just as unreplaceable. It created a movie that felt more like an homage to the series than a viable sequel. The relationship between Lecter and Clarice was fatally flawed the moment that Jodie Foster chose not to reprise the role, and the result is a wholly unsatisfying film.

6. Alicia Witt, URBAN LEGEND

Hope ya’ll don’t mind that I didn’t bother with the usual movie still for the pic above. But that pic is about the only enticing thing about Witt. She may be a lovely person, but her acting is tantamount to watching a stroke victim on valium. I don’t think I’ve seen her in anything that I didn’t pretty much hate her performance in, but to be notably bad in a second tier horror flick is worthy of special notice.

7. Casper Van Dien, SLEEPY HOLLOW

This is probably the casting that confuses me the most on this list. I spent most of the movie wondering how the hell Casper Van Dien got into a Tim Burton movie. The only thing I can figure out is that SLEEPY HOLLOW kinda sucks, so maybe Burton wanted an actor on set who could match that.

8. Costas Mandylor, SAW IV, V (and presumably) VI

I’m sorry, Jigsaw is dead, and Amanda is dead, so now we’re stuck with Hoffman? Really? I’ve got nothing against Costas, but his pudgy lack of intensity is sour sauce after the calculated cruelty of Tobin Bell. And yes I’m aware that Hoffman was present in II and III, but he didn’t really become a known player until IV. We all lost a little bit when that happened.

9. Keanu Reeves, THE DEVIL’S ADVOCATE

Whoa! We need to cast a jury selection expert who is not only believable as one of the smartest guys in the room, but also has the chops to go toe-to-toe with Al Pacino. As Satan. The perfect guy would have to be…Johnny Utah? Much like the marshmallow in a smore, Reeves simply gets crushed between Scarface and Aeon Flux. The only surprise with this is that anyone involved was surprised that it didn’t work.

10. Mila Kunis, AMERICAN PSYCHO 2

Hmm, let’s take one of the most disturbing portraits of a serial killer we’ve ever seen, and spin it off into a STD featuring a tiny comedy actress as the killer. Yeah, that’s not gonna suck donkey balls or anything. Not to say that Kunis is a bad actress, quite the contrary, but like many of the entries on this list, a bad idea infects everyone involved. Kunis is cute, but she’s no Bateman, and she’s no Bale. In other words – FAIL!