10 Movies Totally Ruined By Test Audiences

10. The Descent

None of the movies on this list came away from their encounter with the dreaded test audience better off for the experience, but none were as wholly ruined as Rob Marshall’s magnum opus. Fortunately, Marshall’s bleak, vicious vision made it to cinemas in his homeland of Britain unscathed.

The violent and dark—both literally and figuratively—tale of a spelunking trip which turns ultra-violent after an encounter with bloodthirsty subterranean creatures, the film was a brooding meditation on grief as well as an unrelentingly tense bloodbath. It’s understandable that test audiences wanted a little light relief, but this does nothing to justify the inexplicable decision to recut the film’s ending.

Where the director had hoped to have the heroine escape only to reveal she is lost in a hallucination and never actually made it out alive, the American release stopped right after her escape. The change makes the film marginally less cruel, but it also cuts a gut punch twist as well as setting the scene for a woeful sequel.