10 Horror Movies That Aren’t About What You Think
Horror movies that aren't about what you think - Antebellum, One Cut of the Dead & more!
Horror is all about illusions.
The entire genre is built around smoke and mirrors, whether that's to deliver surprising death scenes, keep the identity of a killer secret or simply make the audience feel unsafe. Audiences are supposed to feel powerless in order to elicit genuine fear, and as a result directors strive to subvert their expectations at every step, constantly keeping them on their toes and refusing to let them have too much of a grip on what's going on.
As the old saying goes, we fear most what we don't know, and some movies take that to heart. The following films gained a reputation - either through their own fault or the fault of audiences - as being about one thing, when really they're about something completely different.
Marketing, of course, plays a big part in a film being perceived as something it isn't. Sometimes a trailer is cut in a way which plays up marketable elements that don't get much screen time in the movie itself, whereas other times a movie's advertising purposefully hides a twist that recontextualises the whole story.
Either way, audiences got more than they bargained for with these horror flicks.
10. The Wolf Of Snow Hollow
If you were a police officer and everyone was trying to tell you that the local murders in your town were actually being carried out by a werewolf, you'd think you were the only sane person left.
Luckily for you, you're not a police officer, and when you're watching a horror movie literally called 'The Wolf of Snow Hollow' and gory murders are being attributed to a lycanthrope, you're probably not going to hesitate in assuming the case has been cracked - especially when a big, wolfy figure is is seen in the shadows.
Consequently, you spend the runtime assuming you're watching a pretty effective modern werewolf flick, but the final act reveals this isn't the case at all. It turns out the murders aren't supernatural, but they are still technically caused by a 'werewolf'. Confused? Bear with me.
The very human serial killer committing the crimes does so while dressing up in a gigantic werewolf costume, ripping his victims' bodies apart while indulging in his cosplaying hobby every full moon.
So it wasn't a werewolf movie at all, just an extremely twisted crime drama.