Critics have branded Ana de Armas and Chris Evans‘ new film Ghosted as “the worst of the year”.
Directed by Dexter Fletcher (Rocketman, Bohemian Rhapsody), the romantic action-adventure sees Evans play Cole Turner, a farmer who falls for de Armas’ enigmatic Sadie Rhodes, only to discover that she’s a secret agent.
“Before they can decide on a second date, Cole and Sadie are swept away on an international adventure to save the world,” reads a synopsis for the film.
Released on Apple TV+ on April 21, Ghosted has been universally panned by critics and currently holds a “Rotten” score of 33% on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes. Many have noted a lack of chemistry between the two leads, while others have taken aim at the film’s plot, script and CGI.
In a one-star review, The Guardian wrote: “It’s utterly impossible to see the appeal of Ghosted, the movie, a staggeringly, maddeningly atrocious heap of increasingly boneheaded decisions that will act as depressing documentation of just how rotten things got in the current oversaturated streaming landscape.”
Empire was similarly critical, writing: “If you’re going to take a hugely familiar premise and rely on easy star chemistry to sell it, you really need the right stars in the right roles and a killer script for all the killing. Sadly this ain’t quite it.”
“The espionage intrigue is rote; the action is more bombastic than any rom-act-com can truly sustain,” wrote Variety. “I’m not sure if Dexter Fletcher has it in him to stage an elegantly fanciful-yet-plausible action scene. Yet in Ghosted he tosses a whole lot of stuff into the blender, and that’s supposed to be enough. The action in this movie doesn’t really do much to bring the two characters together, except to the extent that when it’s over it’s like Novocaine wearing off.”
The Daily Beast went as far as to call it the “worst movie of the year”, writing: “Featuring not a single convincing element or exchange, this fiasco plays like a wannabe-Knight and Day exercise in eliciting annoyed reactions: groans for its awful one-liners, exclamations for its moronic plot twists, and eyerolls for its terrible CGI and desperate cameos. It feels like ChatGPT wrote it, and the fact that it didn’t is all the more damning for those who did.
Scarlett Johansson was formerly attached to star opposite Evans in the film, but dropped out due to a scheduling conflict. She was replaced by de Armas in December 2021.
Ghosted is now available to stream on Apple TV+.