Bad-movie night for beginners

The band gives this one a built-in cheering section. Friendship songs sit beside ninja violence and earnest personal revelations, making it a generous introduction to films whose ambition exceeds their dramatic control.

For your group: Expect bloody fighting and sudden shifts from sweet sincerity to gang warfare.

A family holiday supplies a simple story to follow while the performances, food warnings and goblin business supply the surprises. It rewards a room that enjoys comparing increasingly questionable decisions.

For your group: The child-in-danger setup is creepy, but the tone becomes very difficult to take seriously.

Use this as the welcoming bridge from ordinary horror comedy. The clown designs and carnival weapons keep changing, so the joke has more to offer than its title.

For your group: Deliberate camp with inventive practical monsters; it is not evidence that the filmmakers failed at comedy.

A mall is an easy space to understand, and murderous security robots give everyone an immediately clear problem. Its brisk setup makes it useful when your group is impatient to reach the action.

For your group: Bloody deaths and sexual material. The robots do the chopping, despite the slasher-like title.

For friends who prefer human melodrama to monsters, this love triangle offers wonderfully puzzling social behaviour. Watch how scenes begin and end, and how urgently the characters treat very ordinary exchanges.

For your group: Sex scenes and a suicide make this an adult choice; enthusiasm does not make its ending lighthearted.

The family is already a cartoon before the satellite monster arrives. Choose it for a group that enjoys loud decor, grotesque creatures and people who seem to have wandered out of competing television shows.

For your group: Very broad, deliberately tasteless humour. Subtlety has no part in the appeal.

The teenage romance gives the dinosaur absurdity a surprisingly clear emotional centre. It is a good choice when the group wants an outrageous premise that continues producing new complications.

For your group: Editions vary sharply in gore. Check whether you are watching the restored violent version.

The waiting becomes part of the story your group will tell afterward: ordinary dates and business talk eventually give way to airborne digital chaos. Save it for friends willing to enjoy the awkward stretches too.

For your group: Slow opening, repetitive action and rough sound. Do not promise wall-to-wall bird attacks.

A clear survival problem and a capable action cast make this an easy bridge into more ridiculous shark movies. The laboratory keeps failing in new ways, so even newcomers have something concrete to follow.

For your group: Bloody attacks and abrupt deaths; the scientific premise is much less convincing than the action staging.