10 Underhyped Movies That Blew Everyone Away
Oh, you predicted the success of John Wick, did you? Liar.
While we're going through a bit of a drought at the moment, Hollywood puts out hundreds of films in a normal year, ranging from polished Marvel blockbusters to experimental low-budget horrors, and everything in between.
But unfortunately for the majority of these films, there's only so much attention and hype to go around, and the truth of the matter is that most of it gets sucked up by dominant brands like Star Wars, DC, Mission Impossible and Jurassic World. As a result, there are usually very few passengers onboard the hype train for Joe Arthouse's latest quirky drama, or Jodie Gorehound's upcoming micro-budget slasher.
On the plus side, this means that we often get movies that come out of nowhere and smack us in the face with their brilliance: films that were underhyped - or weren't hyped whatsoever - but managed to overcome that lack of attention, break out into the mainstream, and show everyone how amazing they are.
From terrific stories to inventive action sequences to heartwarming messages, these movies blew us all away, and due to various reasons, we never even saw them coming.
10. You're Next
The Non-Hype
With only a handful of small horror movies under his belt - none of which made a particularly big splash - few people were eagerly anticipating director Adam Wingard's next film project, You're Next, yet another small horror movie.
From the trailers, we were told to expect a pretty generic slasher, only with the usual crowd of drunk, idiotic teenagers aged up to wealthy adults. It looked fun, sure, but in an insanely crowded and done-to-death genre, it didn't look all that special.
The Big Reaction
In the end though, You're Next turned out to be Wingard's breakout hit, and to this day, it's commonly regarded as his best film (with some competition from The Guest).
Those underwhelming trailers were in fact masking some pretty cool plot twists, as well as a sharp, dark-comedy undercurrent, and some surprisingly strong characters.
While the movie wasn't a hundred-million-dollar-grossing box-office smash, it attracted a ton of positive word of mouth in the months following its release, introducing more and more people to what is an inventive and deliciously gory horror gem.
In fact, You're Next was so well-received that Wingard instantly became a name to watch within the film fan community, and it raised his credibility so much that it set him on the path to landing the Godzilla vs. Kong directing gig. Not too shabby.