10 Horror Movies With Terrible Concepts But AMAZING Execution

These movies turned a bad setup into greatness.

By Jack Pooley /

We've all been there: sitting down to watch a horror movie with through-the-floor expectations, only to be pleasantly surprised by how shockingly good, even great it actually turned out to be. As in every genre, it's all about the execution - a smart filmmaker working with a great cast and crew can make basically anything work if they put their mind to it.

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With the right throughline, even the most horrendous horror concept can become something incredible. And so, as a follow-up to our recent article about horror movies with awesome concepts but terrible execution, we now have the opposite - ten horror movies with awful concepts but incredible execution.

On paper, each of these films invited a wealth of eye-rolls and generally little excitement from even the most excitable of horror fans. But then they released, and it became clear that those working on them had some seriously inspired ideas.

The lesson here? While we as modern moviegoers believe we can always smell a dud coming from a mile off - and, in fairness, we're often right - there's still plenty of room for us all to be surprised...

10. Christine

It's tough to keep a straight face through the logline of John Carpenter's Christine, which revolves around a car that grows jealously possessive of its new owner, Arnie (Keith Gordon). But if you can get past the utterly risible setup, Carpenter proves to be an outstanding match for Stephen King's source novel. 

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Much of Christine's success lies in how eerily it personifies the titular vehicle and explores its peculiar "relationship" with Arnie, allowing Carpenter to push the goofier aspects of the premise - that is, basically all of it - to the periphery.

From Carpenter's assured filmmaking, through to Keith Gordon's sharp performance as Arnie and the evocative sound design, this is nothing if not a film that wrings every last drop of intrigue and unexpected character development out of its seemingly dopey concept. 

Whether the recently announced remake can similarly avoid devolving into excess silliness, however, remains to be seen.

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