If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. And if this spot is too hot, it’s probably best to avoid it altogether. There are various levels of bad movies. There are the ones you almost feel bad for because they never really had much going for them. They exist in the world of run-and-gun independent cinema, with incredibly low budgets and actors who may never have acted before. I don’t like throwing too much at those films because they’re often working with a fraction of the resources available to a major studio. Then there are films that have everything going for them, massive budgets, huge casts, and every possible advantage, yet somehow completely flop. Mind-bogglingly terrible films for no good reason, and trying to dissect what went wrong is part of the game. Then there’s another category: bad but interesting. Someone took a swing, and while that swing missed, at least it was an interesting one. Those are probably my favorite bad movies to watch once, because I’d much rather sit through something like Joker: Folie à Deux than something derivative, lazy, or incompetent. At least you can say they tried something different, even if it didn’t work.

And then there’s Hot Spot. A film so uniquely stupid and terrible that it feels like it could only have been written by artificial intelligence. Which is ironic, because it’s a film about artificial intelligence, and how, in the future, we all eat jelly beans to stay connected to an omnipresent AI called the Head. No, I did not make that up. That’s an actual thing that happens in this movie. Directed by Agnieszka Smoczyńska and written by Robert Bolesto, Hot Spot takes place in a dystopian future where resources, including water, are scarce and humanity has surrendered much of its autonomy to this sentient system. The film follows a detective named Djonny, played by Andrzej Konopka, who is called in to investigate the brutal murder of a refugee. There is an almost absurd amount of gore in the sequence, which seems designed purely for shock value, especially because the rest of the film doesn’t sustain that level of violence or intensity. The investigation brings him into contact with Rana, played by Noomi Rapace, and a community of refugees who have resisted the AI’s control. That sounds like the setup for an interesting science fiction thriller. Unfortunately, the simulation here is deeply flawed, and the film is an absolute slog to get through.

From there, Djonny wanders through some of the weirdest situations I’ve encountered in a movie this year. We have people licking faces, someone licking milk off a counter, and I swear I remember a tiger walking around at some point. There’s a tense scene involving his son, Zen, played by George Aurimas Cris, where I genuinely couldn’t tell whether he wanted to tuck the child into bed or kill him. The film is so bizarre, so collectively nonsensical, that I started wondering whether it really had been written by an algorithm. It’s almost a circle-of-life situation: a film about sentient code that seems to have been assembled by sentient code. And somehow we’re supposed to find everything beneath that premise fascinating. Instead, Hot Spot feels virtually devoid of narrative structure, favoring style over substance at every opportunity. It wants desperately to be radically clever, as though the only films its director has ever watched were A24 releases that intentionally run against the grain. But watching unconventional cinema doesn’t mean you can automatically replicate what makes it work. You still need to construct something coherent, with engaging characters, a plot that makes sense, and a world that feels like it operates according to some recognizable logic. Literally anything at all.

I truly hated everything about this movie. I have nothing kind to say about it. There have certainly been films this year where I went in expecting very little, like Melania or Run Hide Fight: Infidels, and they gave me exactly what I expected: nothing. But with Focus Features backing Hot Spot, I expected something. Instead, I may have just watched the worst film of 2026. If you think my review is lacking in a detailed breakdown of the plot, that’s largely because I spent so much of the movie trying to force myself to finish it. I don’t review films I haven’t completed, and I was determined to get through this one. But I’ll admit that every time my phone gave me a push notification, I checked it immediately. Please, God, give me something good to distract me for a few minutes so I can regain my composure before returning to this seemingly aggressive, intentionally awful science fiction crime thriller. Interestingly, it’s an international production with roots in Poland, Greece, Sweden, and Norway, yet it’s largely spoken in English. No, I don’t understand why either. It does have audio description, but even audio description can’t rescue something this incoherent. The narration can tell you what’s happening on screen. It cannot magically make the events make sense.

I know Taika Waititi has made comments about critics being failed filmmakers, but I got into film criticism when I was a kid, largely inspired by Roger Ebert and my subscription to Entertainment Weekly. I read the reviews from its critics every chance I got. When I went to film school and had opportunities to take production courses, I consistently chose the cinema studies track instead. I wanted to learn more about the art of cinema, not necessarily how to make it myself. I’m not looking to follow Curry Barker or Kane Parsons into filmmaking. I don’t have a screenplay I’m trying to sell. I want to advocate for audio description, and I want to tell people about good movies. But damn, I disliked this thing so much that I felt compelled to step in and write about it, especially if it really does end up at the bottom of my list for the year. This was borderline painful to sit through, and I wouldn’t wish the experience on anybody else.

I enjoy recommending films far more than tearing them apart, especially films that go unrecognized or aren’t as beloved by other critics. But every once in a while, a rotten review balances things out. As an independent critic, I don’t have an editor assigning me films. If I look at something and can tell that it’s probably not for me, or that I have no particular reason to believe I’ll enjoy it, I can simply choose not to watch it. That means I often produce far more fresh reviews than rotten ones. Hot Spot tested my patience to an extraordinary degree. If it were the only movie left on the face of the planet, I would rather give up the medium I’ve loved my entire life than sit through this thing one more time. I thought it was self-indulgent at best, with no discernible value. To each their own, of course. You may like it. I’m sure somebody does. Presumably the person at Focus Features who bought it. But for me, it’s baffling to see this film sitting alongside so many infinitely better Focus releases. Avoid it like the plague.

Rotten: 1.1/10