It wouldn’t be Hollywood without a handful of rejects. We’ve got zombie beavers, glow-in-the-dark nuns, and tornados filled with sharks — there’s never a dull moment to be had with cinema’s most unpredictable genre. There are various categories when ranking the narrative of a horror movie. Some are just plain awful from start to finish while others are modern-day masterpieces, and then there’s the start-strong-and-prematurely-fizzle-out archetype that many are no doubt familiar with
As always, Reddit’s r/horror forum had plenty to offer in the way of an insightful and intellectual discussion regarding movies that started out promising, only to turn the tide halfway through and get progressively worse. The OP called out Insidious, which is a bold pick that not many James Wan defenders will be in agreement with.
Other horror nerds were eager to share their own thoughts. Apparently, thousands agree that Ghost Ship is the only acceptable answer when naming and shaming the movies that started out so strong and fell off the wagon dramatically. Many were praising Ghost Ship’s opening sequence, which was compared to some of the best in filmmaking, but the conversation soon pinpointed everything wrong with Steve Beck’s 2002 title, unrelated to the 1952 film of the same name.
One comment observed how a lot of creature features and supernatural endeavors make the mistake of revealing the monster too early or overexposing the audience to it.
You might have been swayed by Dylan Minnette, the star of the hugely successful Don’t Breathe, but the Rotten Tomatoes score of 13% speaks volumes as to The Open House‘s status as a complete failure.
You might not have imagined 2012’s Sinister to be named among some of these others, but to each their own.
With this year and last shaping up to be some of the richest in recent memory as far as horror cinema goes, there’ll no doubt be multiple qualifiers waiting to be added to the above list, deserved or not.
Published: Apr 5, 2023 10:52 AM UTC