We're only weeks into 2026, but already we've got a potential contender for this year's 'worst' movie. The Razzie Awards just announced its annual contenders, with the likes of Disney's maligned live-action Snow White, Netflix's The Electric State, and Amazon's infamous War of the Worlds with Ice Cube all vying for the unwanted award from last year. Amazon might be onto another clanger, with the AI-centric Mercy already being panned by critics and earning a pretty abysmal Rotten Tomatoes score.
In an era where artificial intelligence reigns supreme, Timur Bekmambetov's Mercy should’ve had all the ingredients to make it a hit sci-fi film.
Mercy sounds like a pretty standard dystopian thriller where an AI judge tells a captive detective he has just 90 minutes to solve the murder of his wife (which he's accused of). If sounding like a modernized version of Steven Spielberg's underrated Minority Report wasn't enough to lure you in, an all-star cast of Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson had all the makings of a blockbuster.
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Still, just like The Electric State struggled despite having Pratt in top billing, the controversial Marvel star apparently isn't enough to save Mercy.
However, whereas The Electric State debuted with a paltry 23% on Rotten Tomatoes, Mercy is languishing even lower down with just 17%.
While it's possible that Mercy could somehow turn it around when audiences head to see it, it's actually dropped from its original critic score of 18% as more reviews have flooded in.
The Washington Post referred to it as 'ridiculous', but at least admitted it was a 'hoot'.
Others aren't quite as kind, with The Independent's Clarisse Loughrey awarding it one star while saying: "A baffling piece of work that happily swipes the mood and aesthetics of Hollywood's police state dystopias (Minority Report, RoboCop, Blade Runner etc), while presenting such horrors as an agreeable norm."
There's a similarly scathing takedown from Looper's Audrey Fox, stating: "'Mercy' is not a good movie, with hackneyed dialogue and stock performances that, ironically, seem like they themselves could have been generated by AI.
“ But worse than that, it's a movie that pushes insidious views about AI, law enforcement, and privacy laws under the guise of a brains-off action thriller.”
Perhaps the most brutal comes from MovieWeb's Mark Keizer, concluding: "The 'swift justice' promised by its story's judicial system would be best applied by burying the film in the lowest tier of Prime Video."
Pratt has spoken candidly about Mercy and its themes, although he told BBC News he remains hopeful that this kind of tech can be used for good: "I'm cautiously optimistic about these evolving technologies, and how they might actually move humanity forward in a great way."
Unfortunately, whatever message Bekmambetov and Pratt were trying to portray in Mercy is in danger of being lost under a deluge of negativity.
Across the board, Mercy is being branded as a poor man's Minority Report, which might struggle to make back its $60 million if the critics have anything to do with it.