10 Horror Movies Critics Were WAY Too Harsh On
Hindsight can finally give these horror gems the praise they deserve...
Everyone's a critic these days. It's practically unavoidable, everything from airport toilets to The Pyramids of Giza has a star rating.
Movie reviewers have had the monopoly on opinion sewn up for decades and what an enviable position to be in - free cinema tickets for life and an untouchable opinion. Pre-internet, these guys could make or break box office success with the addition or subtraction of a simple star or two.
For the purposes of this article, only real, paid, professional film critics from well established outlets have been used, Empire Magazine and Roger Ebert, for example. These expert evaluations are here to make sure we spent our well-earned cash on cinema tickets for ripping, not refunding, so when have they been wrong? No one's perfect, even Twilight got four stars, perhaps some of that sparkle should've gone on the script...
Horror movies can take decades to be properly appreciated and even the harshest of critics need a nudge off those highest of horses.
Featuring the most underrated, misunderstood horror diamonds in a sea of polished glass, such as A Nightmare On Elm Street Part 2, now rightfully claimed by the LGBTQ community and Diablo Cody's razor sharp Jennifer's Body, here are the best horrors with the worst reviews.
10. Jennifer's Body
In a time when many, including Michael Bay, were only too quick to point out Megan Fox's ability to bend her torso at 90 degrees in two different places at once, Diablo Cody had other plans for Fox's flexibility. Jennifer's Body flopped in 2009 and while it should have elevated Fox from pin-up to break-out, critics had other plans.
Robert Abele (LA Times) was not impressed: "Oscar-winning Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody does her language-laden best to make Jennifer’s Body... into a femme-tactic anti-Carrie, but her glib teen-hip dialogue mostly feels like self-conscious splatter over a sorely lacklustre scare flick."
When a rock band decide to murder a virgin in a demonic ritual to hit the big time, Jennifer is not that chaste and is soon a demon herself, tearing indiscriminately through Jocks and Goths alike. "Jennifer's evil... No, I mean actually evil, not high school evil... " explains Amanda Seyfried's Needy (even Cody's names have subtext).
The dialogue is an exercise in slick, witty observations on themes like girl-on-girl hatred - the lens of horror shouldn't always be a straight, male one. "Sandbox love never dies" riffs Needy - it's that fractured friendship that critics missed - all eyes were firmly on Jennifer's body and not on Diablo's wordplay.