Gore Verbinski's life has been leading up to Rango

 Gore Verbinski has had kind of a weird career.

best worst movies about terrible families

9

Thirst

Chan-Wook Park's vampire movie is based on a novel by Emile Zola. It's streaming on Netflix, so you can go watch it right now. There are a lot of movies about the plight of vampires, and this is one of my favorites. It's at the bottom of this list because it's only partially about a bad family--it's mostly about a sort of love triangle, but the mother-in-law character really makes the movie.
In good news, speaking of Chan-Wook Park, that old rumor about a Smith/Spielberg version of the Old Boy story? That's not happening.
Note: Old Boy is also only partially about a bad family.

8

Dogtooth

Why haven't you watched Dogtooth yet?
Lanthimos's next movie, by the way, is supposed to be darker and funnier than Dogtooth. Which is good, because Dogtooth really needed to be a little more extreme.

7

Box

I thought about putting Audition on this list, because really that movie is all about a dad trying to find a mom for his children, and what could be sweeter? It's like The Brady Bunch, heartwarming. Box, Miike's contribution to the Three...Extremes trilogy is more in line with the theme of weird families. It's about sisters. And it's weird and cool and pretty. Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, all three of the movies in that collection should be on the Bad Families list, each in its own way.

6

Arsenic and Old Lace

Do the Brewster sisters really qualify as a bad family? I mean, they are good as a family. But they are also serial killers, so let's count them as bad.

5

Animal Kingdom

Animal Kingdom is not a terribly original story, and I suspect I would not have liked it--or actually, I would have liked it fine, and forgotten it immediately--if it weren't for Jacki Weaver and James Frecheville. She's terrifying and convincing and intense: half Tony Soprano and half Baby Jane. His performance is so quiet and bleak and passive in contrast, that when he does take action, it's surprising...and surprisingly satisfying. At the end of the movie I felt relieved more than anything.

4

Bunny Lake Is Missin

I saw this movie when I was very young, late at night on TV, and I remembered bits of it--a creepy doll, a man smoking a cigarette in a bathtub. For years, I could not figure out what movie it was. Then I rented Bunny Lake Is Missing, because it was directed by Otto Preminger and it has Lawrence Olivier and Noel Coward in it. It sounded interesting, like "If you liked Laura, you'll like Bunny Lake Is Missing." I was about thirty minutes into the DVD before I started to suspect it was that movie. It's a little less haunting and maybe even a little corny on rewatching, but it's still scary.

3

Speaking of Baby Jane: Whatever Happened to Baby Jane

2

Grey Gardens

Two roads diverged in yellow wood.
And pondering one, I took the other.


And of course, the very best worst movie about a really unpleasant family:

1

Chinatown