It has been quite some time since Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, the last epic swords and sandals film to have graced the screen. Since then, there have been some decently fun forays into the genre such as the 300 films and Troy, which is quite underrated. But most films of this nature end up being like disasters such as The Legend of Hercules or Pompeii, which are fairly ridiculous and uninteresting. Now, a new level has been reached, one that is so unbelievably low that it lacks any semblance of quality, and on that level lies Gods of Egypt.

Being dumped into theaters Feb. 26 when some of the greatest films in recent years are being appreciated at the Oscars, this cinematic abomination comes from the mind of once visionary director Alex Proyas (The Crow, Dark City) and is his fantasized tale that is cobbled together from real Egyptian mythology. A young thief named (Brenton Thwaites) must join forces with the disgraced God of the Sky, Horus (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), who sent himself into exile after his uncle Set (Gerard Butler), the God of the Desert, stripped him of his eyes and took the throne from him. Aided also by the Goddess of Love (Elodie Yung) and the God of Wisdom (Chadwick Boseman), the two head to take back Egypt and save the life of Bek’s love Zaya (Courtney Eaton). What follows is a true epic, an epic failure that is.

Proyas knows how to capture a visual spectacle as shown in his incredibly dark tale The Crow, but here, he fails miserably to do so. Perhaps he has gotten lazy as he has aged, adopting a George Lucas method of filmmaking as he resorts to a heavy over-reliance of computer-generated imagery. Whether it’s the atrocious green screens that clearly show blurry outlines around the actors or the creatures/weird robot bird people, they never once create a legitimately convincing atmosphere, nor even an entertaining one.

All of the performances here are cranked way, way up with no one ever taking a moment to ground themselves in any sort of seriousness. Every line of dialogue is delivered in an incoherent fashion, being either screamed at the top of one’s lungs or with a smarmy attitude. That’s the range of emotion delivered here, and it doesn’t help the film in any way.

The action scenes are borderline unwatchable as well, due in part again to the draining usage of CGI. The camera moves in swift and incomprehensible ways, somehow managing to make the effects look worse than they did on their own, almost distorting them in a way. Even with an overblown budget of $140 million, there is not even a single moment of visual splendor.

From start to finish, this is a horrendous looking, painstakingly acted, nauseatingly boring adventure that redeems itself in no way. It’s still quite early in the year, as the first two months are about to come to a close, but this atrocity has already secured itself a spot to become one of the worst, if not the worst, film of the year.