10 Horror Movies Test Audiences Loved (And Everyone Else Hated)

3. The New Mutants

Marvel's superhero horror film The New Mutants was shot in mid-to-late 2017, and before long it emerged that there was a wealth of behind-the-scenes drama as director Josh Boone battled studio Fox over the final cut of the movie.

Boone turned in a cut of the film which tested incredibly well with audiences, its preview score even matching that of the original Deadpool.

But once the 2017 adaptation of Stephen King's It became a box office phenomenon, Fox decided to adjust the marketing to emphasise The New Mutants' horror elements, despite the tone actually being far more of a Young Adult adventure.

Ultimately planned reshoots to transform The New Mutants into an outright horror film never happened - primarily due to Disney's acquisition of Fox - and so when it finally hit cinemas in August 2020, audiences en masse were left underwhelmed by its rather tepid genre stylings.

Reviews were predominantly negative, and even accepting the film releasing at the height of the pandemic, general audiences had little time for it, causing it to tank catastrophically at the box office.