The 10 most overrated movie performances of 2024 (2025)

This year, some fantastic movies have been released, reminding us of the pure joys of cinema. From flashy epics to reserved indies, we’ve seen a wide range of genres get their dues this year – it even seems that horror will earn mainstream award success for the first time in a while. Many fantastic performances have been delivered among these new releases, but we can’t help but feel as though some actors have been praised a little too willingly.

While cinema is a rather subjective medium, it can often be agreed upon when a performance is spectacular and when an actor has failed miserably. Still, there are times when it feels like everyone is raving about a performance, and you just can’t understand why. You might feel as if you can see through cases of clear Oscar-baiting or believe that an actor only got a certain role because of their status in the industry – not because they were the right choice.

Thus, we’ve picked out ten performances from movies released this year that were wildly overrated. While they might not be inherently bad turns, they simply received too much praise or felt like a poor representation of the actor’s talents. It doesn’t mean these were bad movies either, although that’s entirely down to personal preference.

From Selena Gomez’s questionable Spanish in Emilia Pérez to Nicolas Cage’s controversial turn as the villain in Longlegs, here are the ten most overrated movie performances of 2024.

2024’s most overrated movie performances:

10. Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones (Twisters, Lee Isaac Chung)

Reading the reviews for Lee Isaac Chung’s Twisters, a legacy sequel with box office domination on its mind, you could be forgiven for thinking the movie featured the birth of two new megastars. It was declared from the rooftops that Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones had been minted as movie stars thanks to the film, which busted plenty of blocks and was generally well-received.

Allow us to resist the Powell Hollywood psy-op for a little longer, though. Yes, the man was great in Top Gun: Maverick in his supporting role as Hangman, and he does seem to be a nice bloke in real life. But his performance in Twisters is by no means an undeniable demonstration of his movie star bona fides, no matter how much Hollywood is hellbent on presenting it as such. He’s fine, but no more.

As for Edgar-Jones, an actor so brilliant in Normal People and Under the Banner of Heaven, it was hard not to think she looked lost in Twisters. Her character was thinly written, yes, but she still couldn’t bring anything to the screen that made her compelling despite the bad writing. We wouldn’t be surprised if she doesn’t make too many more action blockbusters in her career because it doesn’t seem like they suit her sensibilities.

9. Jodie Comer (The Bikeriders, Jeff Nichols)

Jeff Nichols’ 1960s motorcycle club drama simply never got off the ground, as the central conflict between Austin Butler’s too-cool-for-school tearaway Benny and Tom Hardy doing his latest funny voice as club leader Johnny mostly fizzled for much of the runtime. It also left an extensive cast of talented actors without much to grab onto to make their characters shine.

Butler and Hardy received some decent notices but could have easily appeared on this list, as they mostly sleepwalked through their roles. Jodie Comer’s performance as Kathy, the narrator of the story of the Vandals Motorcycle Club and the film’s true lead star, was outright bad, though. There was something that never rang true about her as a bolshy Chicago girl with a heart of gold and a sailor’s mouth.

Maybe it was the accent, which Comer herself admitted was a risk. She recreated the bizarrely unique North Chicago accent of the real woman that Kathy was based on to a tee, which doesn’t sound like any other Chicago accent anyone has ever attempted on screen. However, a bigger problem was Comer’s lack of chemistry with Butler, which sinks nearly all of their scenes together.

8. Lady Gaga (Joker: Folie à Deux, Todd Phillips)

Lady Gaga has established herself as a fantastic actor over the past few years following performances in A Star Is Born, House of Gucci, and American Horror Story. Thus, when she was cast as Harleen ‘Lee’ Quinzel alongside Joaquin Phoenix in Joker: Folie à Deux, people had high hopes for her performance. Unfortunately, the movie was a musical mess, but some, even those who disliked the movie, noted Gaga’s turn as a highlight.

But was it really? Her performance felt as though it lacked depth and just didn’t come across as particularly strong, although that is largely due to the lacklustre material she was given to work with. Gaga has certainly been better, and it’s about time people stopped pretending that she was the only good thing in the movie: even she couldn’t save it.

7. Austin Butler (Dune: Part Two, Denis Villeneuve)

As Feyd-Rautha, the chrome-domed, white-skinned nephew of Stellan Skarsgard’s Baron Vladimir Harkonnen in Dune: Part Two, Austin Butler certainly looked cool. It’s easy to imagine fans everywhere buying his action figure to have pride of place on their shelf or watching over them from atop their desks.

To get in the right headspace for the role, Butler reportedly pulled a Nic Cage and channelled the movements of snakes and sharks. Coupled with the brilliant prosthetic effects, everything seemed set for the crowning of a new cinematic villain du jour.

Ultimately, Butler was praised pretty widely for the performance, as were the rest of Part Two’s enormous cast. In a series of films that are po-faced in the extreme, though, it was hard not to think his over-the-top tendencies stuck out like a sore thumb. He completely failed to project any menace and, in his limited screentime, resolutely remained little more than a cool design given human form.

6. Kristen Stewart (Love Lives Bleeding, Rose Glass)

Rose Glass’ second movie, Love Lies Bleeding, saw her ditch the religious horror set-up of her debut, Saint Maud, in favour of 1980s America, where a lesbian couple, played by Kristen Stewart and Katy O’Brien, find themselves pulled into a world of violence. The was generally well-received, with some people loving the thrilling world of bodybuilding and crime, while others believed the script to be a mess.

Stewart, who has routinely beaten the accusations that she is a bad actor through performances in movies like Spencer and Personal Shopper, does not give her best work here. Her role feels a little lacking in dimension, with many of her choices getting overshadowed at times. While she isn’t egregiously awful, her performance has certainly been overrated by viewers when she has given much better demonstrations of her talent in the past.

5. Chris Hemsworth (Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, George Miller)

Following the success of Mad Max: Fury Road in 2015, George Miller returned this year with Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, a prequel tale about Charlize Theron’s character, this time played by Anya Taylor-Joy. While the movie was well-praised, it failed to gain the same amount of success as its predecessor. Although Taylor-Joy’s performance was undeniably good and stood out as one of the best parts of the movie, sadly, we can’t say the same about Chris Hemsworth.

Known for playing big, strong characters like Thor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Hemsworth might have felt like an obvious choice to play the supposedly terrifying villain Dementus, who even goes as far as abducting the young Furiosa. However, his performance feels rather over the top and irritating, failing to scare us as much as he probably should have, which is a shame.

4. Selena Gomez (Emilia Perez, Jacques Audiard)

There are many Disney stars who have gone on to have successful acting careers, but Selena Gomez has so far shown a mixed bag of performances, seemingly still finding her feet with adult roles.

While she has experienced widespread popularity as a popstar, only in recent years has she shown her potential outside of teen and child-oriented roles. When she landed a significant part in Emilia Pérez, directed by acclaimed filmmaker Jacques Audiard, people were excited to see what Gomez had to offer.

Despite the praise she has received, we just can’t understand why more people haven’t questioned the actor’s dubious Spanish performance, even though she is not fluent in the language. It is rather obvious that she’s not performing in a language she is fully comfortable with, affecting her role’s believability. It seems like this was the main reason for her lacklustre performance; she certainly has it in her to deliver something much greater.

3. Hugh Grant (Heretic, Scott Beck and Bryan Woods)

Hugh Grant is an actor who is excellent in the right role. Cast him in his younger days as a charming English fop, and you’re golden. Cast him in recent years as a devious, cantankerous asshole who is always ready with a sarcastic quip, and he’ll do highly entertaining things. He received some of the best reviews of his career this year for his role in Heretic as a mysterious recluse determined to test the religious beliefs of a pair of travelling teen Mormons. Hell, he even landed a Golden Globe nomination for it.

However, he was actively the worst part of it. If the movie was intended to be purely a black comedy with a dark twist, it may have been palatable, if a little aggravating. Instead, as the story unfolds, it anchors itself further and further into the horror genre, and that’s a bad thing. Why? Because Grant fails to be scary at every turn.

In Heretic, he’s occasionally quite funny, delivering monologues with gusto. That said, these monologues are considerably less clever than they think they are, and when they require Grant to add a layer of sinister foreboding, he simply isn’t up to the task. By the end, when the audience is theoretically supposed to be afraid of him, he’s already crossed the line into farce about 20 minutes beforehand.

2. Zendaya (Challengers, Luca Guadagnino)

Zendaya is another actor who started out on Disney, but she has gone on to appear in several acclaimed movies and shows ever since, including Euphoria, Dune, and the Spider-Man series, all of which have helped her become a Hollywood star.

Her role in Challengers by Luca Guadagnino – one of two movies the director released this year – alongside Josh O’Connor and Mike Faist was hotly anticipated. While many praised the film and the central trio’s performances, did Zendaya really deserve all the hype?

While we’re not calling Zendaya a bad actor – Euphoria would be nothing without her – it sometimes feels like she just doesn’t have what it takes to play Tashi, a married mother and cruel manipulator. Her performance isn’t terrible by any means, but we can’t help but feel as though she wasn’t the best choice for the role, which required more depth and nuance, which she just doesn’t deliver.

1. Nicolas Cage (Longlegs, Osgood Perkins)

Before the release of Longlegs in July, the marketing team made it seem like audiences were about to witness a malevolent film crafted by the Devil himself. Then the trailers came, and they were highly circumspect about revealing precisely what Nicolas Cage’s titular serial killer looked and sounded like, another masterstroke that heightened anticipation to a fever pitch.

When it was finally released, people raved about Cage’s unsettling, gleefully insane performance. With his long white hair, bleached skin, and a face that looked like the worst botched plastic surgery you’ve ever seen, Longlegs had a memorable look. He also had a disturbing singsong voice to match, and a few of his scenes in the movie were genuinely frightening. Unfortunately, though, a few scenes in the film also tipped into unintentional comedy territory.

Cage’s go-for-broke approach was admirable, but it can’t be denied that his killer feels much less terrifying with some distance from the movie. It simply doesn’t stick in the memory in a good way. Longlegs needs to have you in its spell for it to work, and if that spell loses its magic for even a moment, it seems silly. Perhaps that was the intention of Cage and director Osgood Perkins, but we still can’t help feeling the star got a few too many plaudits for this one.

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