The 5 Worst Nicolas Cage Movies Ranked

Nicolas Cage is arguably one of the most well-rounded leading men working in the modern era. Name another actor who can effortlessly essay romantic comedies ("Moonstruck"; "Valley Girl"), action films ("Con Air"; "Face/Off"), free-wheeling, somewhat surrealist pieces ("Raising Arizona"; "Wild at Heart"), and dramas ("Pig," which is Cage's favorite among his works; "Adaptation"). There's nothing he can't do, and while he may be known for his fearlessly gonzo performances, he can also credibly do romantic dramas and quiet, smaller, character-driven pieces. 

But Cage, like every other major actor in Hollywood, has had a number of big bombs and bad missteps in his career. There have been outlandish action disasters, over-the-top horror films, and biopics where it just felt like he'd been completely miscast. There's plenty of cause to give leeway for the high camp value of some of his performances (you won't find "Vampire's Kiss" here) while noting that sometimes everything else around him is the problem and not his acting at all. Yet, those bad flicks definitely still exist. Here are Cage's five worst films.

Nicolas Cage did a lot of direct-to-streaming films in the mid-2010s. Before his career was resurrected by a combination of "Mandy" and his work as Spider-Man Noir in "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse," many similar-looking features featuring him as a rogue cop or a vengeful father clogged his resume. Among the worst is "Inconceivable," where he plays a dad tempted by his off-her-rocker babysitter. 

The actor plays Brian, who has two lovely children with his wife, Angela (Gina Gershon), via surrogacy. Angela has a chance encounter with Katie (Nicky Whelan), a fellow mother, in a local park. Katie and Angela develop a friendship, and Angela offers a down-on-her-luck Katie a job as a nanny for their kids. Katie soon learns that Brian and Angela are looking for another surrogate, and literally kills the competition to get what she wants. Katie then sets about seducing Brian, claiming the kids as her own, and becoming pregnant with Brian's baby.

Among the many over-the-top and mind-boggling direct-to-streaming movies Cage has done, this one stands out as being the least original and the most boring. There's nothing here that hasn't been done better in "The Hand that Rocks the Cradle" or any average Lifetime feature. Although the film reunites Cage with Gershon for the first time since they partnered up in "Face/Off," it wastes the talents of both actors and even the credibly chilling Whelan, who is the main reason why the movie is at the bottom and not the top of this list. Amazingly, Lindsay Lohan was set to star in the film before the studio pulled the plug. For once, she dodged a big bullet.

Putting Nicolas Cage in a serious period piece may feel like a strange decision, but he more than acquits himself in historical films like "Birdy," "Captain Corelli's Mandolin" and "Windtalkers." Unfortunately, in "The Boy In Blue" he's asked to credibly portray Canadian rower Ned Hanlan, a national hero and a sculling champion. No, he does not try for a Canadian accent. No, there's not a wit of his performance that feels properly period-apropos. Yes, you will be bored to tears if you're not interested in sculling.

To be fair to Cage, most of the performances are nearly universally bad, most of them broad and none of them witty. The tale takes place in the late 1800s, but nothing about the staging or the film's advertising campaign hints toward the right era. The plot is another stale, generic bad-boy-with-charm-finally-makes-good plot. The entire effort lacks fun, charm, and spirit — definitely counter to Cage's general oeuvre. 

Some Nicolas Cage movies are good-weird, like "Willy's Wonderland" or "The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent." "Season of the Witch" is weird in a way that wants to be rousing but ends up being awkward and muddily plotted. 

The Crusades-set action epic sees Cage play Sir Behmen von Bleibruck, an Austrian knight (no, he does not attempt an accent, nor does anyone else in that production) who abandons his station after witnessing their fellow Teutonic knights massacre a village of innocents. Along with Sir Felson (Ron Perlman), they discover their Austrian home castle has been plagued with ... well, the plague. A girl named Anna (Claire Foy) has been accused of being a witch and the cause of the plague, and the two knights are ordered by their cardinal to take Anna to a monastery where a priest will perform a rite that will stop the plague, nullifying her powers. 

Felson and Bleibruck agree, as long as the charges of desertion will be dropped against them and Anna is given a fair trial. But Anna may not be a witch, and the powers they face are quite different from simple witchcraft. 

Cage's stately performance isn't the problem here, it's the poor theology, the muddily staged battle scenes, and the repetitive slogging dullness. No action film should be boring; "Season of the Witch" definitely is. In any event, it's not worth sticking one's hand into a fire over.

It turns out that when you remove Kirk Cameron and the extremely amateurish special effects from the "Left Behind" series of faith-inspired apocalypse films, you only get a slightly better product. Nicolas Cage leads the reboot and plays what was once Cameron's role, a pilot named Rayford Steele who is understandably shocked when half of his flight is raptured out of the blue one day. So is his wife Irene (Lea Thompson), a true believer in Christ. But Rayford, his daughter Chloe (Cassi Thomson), and the woman he was having an affair with (Nicky Whelan), well ... they're going to have to get through a lot of hellfire to get through together. Or they would have — if the film had been anything remotely resembling a success.

All of the actors involved in "Left Behind" have talent — they have, after all, been better at better things. But their acting here is atrocious, and the writing a boiled-down simplification of the novel that is no patch even on the lesser of the three Cameron films. Cage and everyone else in the movie deserve better. 

Say it with us now: "No! Not the bees! Ahh, my eyes!" Believe it or not, that moment was chopped from "The Wicker Man" and left on the cutting room floor. It was made legendary by its extended DVD cut, which doesn't help its case for existence. Whether you see it as an intentional exercise in camp or not, the weirdly misogynistic tone of the 2006 version of the British horror film drags down what could be a fun exploration of faith against reason.

The original movie doesn't pit man against woman, but hippies against the establishment. There's no such divide here, as Cage's Edward Malus goes to a little island off the Oregon coast looking for a little girl who could be his biological daughter. When the colony she's allegedly being hidden in proves to be free of all men and filled with women who resent "phallic symbols" and their bearers, Edward starts to realize something sinister must be going on — something he may or may not be saved from.

While Cage gives an over-the-top, campy performance loaded with rage, Ellen Burstyn and Leelee Sobieski are the only actors who try to match his freak. The film is otherwise hampered by the wide-but-dead-eyed performance of Kate Beahan and Neil LaBute's complexity-free script. The sight of Cage beating women while wearing a bear skin proves a memorable spectacle but for all the wrong reasons. Sure, you can laugh your butt off at "The Wicker Man" — but as a serious horror picture, a dramatic film, and even a commentary on the battle of the sexes, it's a total failure. The worst insult is left for the end credits when the entire mess is dedicated to the memory of Johnny Ramone.