10 Good Horror Movies With Surprisingly Low Rotten Tomatoes Scores
Who doesn't love an underdog?
Love it or hate it, Rotten Tomatoes is arguably the most influential force of modern film criticism during today's internet age. Does that mean it's perfect or always gets things right? No. Rather, the cite works as an aggregate of professional reviews, offering users an easy way to tell if a movie might be a huge waste of time.
The way the site works is relatively straightforward. Critics submit their review of a film from their respective outlet, labelling it either rotten or fresh. Anything below a 60% score is rotten and anything above 60% is fresh. Bad or good. Simple right? Well, not really.
Just because a movie has a low score or a high score doesn't actually determine its worth or quality. After all, film is subjective. So, what may be totally rotten to one person could be fresh to someone else. One man's trash is another man's treasure if you will. This is true of all genres, but horror especially due to horror movies still being seen by many to be low-brow, and unworthy of the same respect as other genres.
So, let us honour a few frightening features that critics did wrong with ten good horror movies with surprisingly low Rotten Tomato scores.
10. John Dies At The End - RT Score: 60%
This one comes in at number ten on our list not because it isn't worthy of a higher spot, but because it's the only one with a fresh rating.
In John Dies at the End, after encountering a strange substance known only as Soy Sauce, two best friends find themselves at the centre of a cosmic mystery of horrors. The adventure crosses both time and space, as the two must battle a monster made entirely out of meat, a biomechanical eldritch supercomputer, and even reality itself in the hope of saving the world.
John Dies at the End is the kind of movie destined to achieve cult classic status. Its weirdness is unique in that, instead of feeling forced, it comes across as endearing, working in conjunction with the twisty narrative to tell an unusually sweet story about friendship. Where it really succeeds though is in its willingness to just go for it. The movie never feels constrained by logic or real world sensibilities, and is constantly upping the ante in its oddity. It knows exactly what it wants to be, and proudly embraces its identity.
Whether it just went over critics' heads or was too weird for its own good, John Dies at the End is worth more than a barely passing grade on the Rotten Tomatoes scoreboard.