4 films leaving Netflix in January you should be glad are gone

Yay! We are at the start of a new year, and a new month, and that means new stuff on Netflix. We might already know what is on our respective "new" lists, but we still check every day just in case there is a surprise, right?

And let's not pretend that if you are reading this article you have decided to cancel the seemingly ever-increasing cost of your Netflix subscription. You haven't. No one ever truly does, right?

Still, if you do have a Netflix account (and you know you do), here is what you should avoid in January. The good part is that these films are leaving soon. You will never have to worry about running into them again unless you secretly have a Hulu or Amazon Prime account (how dare you!).

Four films leaving Netflix in January you should try to avoid

The Next Karate Kid

Hillary Swank is capable of greatness. The issue with the film is not her. The problem is the situations the creators put her into. The premise should be that a girl can fight her own battles, and she certainly can, but in the film, Swank's character does not do that. She relies on her boyfriend and the iconic Mr. Miyagi to do so at times.

Also, there is a through-line with all the Karate Kid movies that one should not fight unless they are absolutely forced to. In this flick, one fights willingly. That seems to make the previous films even more melancholy.

Cats

First off, even while the musical was fantastically popular, the story of a bunch of cats being cats and then singing soapy songs is weird. Still, Andrew Lloyd Webber clearly knows what he is doing. The problem is the film takes any sappy camp from the Broadway show and discards it.

The production is awful, the acting is contrived, and the signing is overproduced. The film won't be just one of the worst you would have seen leaving Netflix in early 2025, but one of the worst you have ever viewed. Do yourself a favor and do not watch.

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones

A teenager suddenly learns their family helps deal with vampires and other unworldly demons. If this was Guillermo in What We Do in the Shadows, the writers would know well enough when the joke is in and when to back off. Instead, we get full-on boredom here.

Visually, the film is fine. The problem is everything we are seeing. The story stinks, the direction is lacking, and the acting gives no clear indication that they were aware of what movie the actors were in.

Project X

The movie clearly reached for something of an essence of what being a teenager is, but then one might assume the script was created by AI who had never been human. Either that or a bunch of really old people (like me) guessed at what a modern teenager goes through and thought, "This is gold!"

It isn't. The movie is strained for laughs, and not grounded in anything real. Sure, it might be meant as a good, but there has to be something tangible to root for. Plus, this storyline seems done about 500 times before. We got tired of it after the third attempt.

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