15 Most Overrated Horror Films Since 2000
What's so great about Split anyway?
Horror is a fascinating and wonderful genre, but it's also probably cinema's most frustrating type of movie; it's very inconsistent, it's only just out of a twenty year-long slump and it shows off the worst of Hollywood due to all the sequels, reboots and remakes. There's another interesting way in which horror will drive you round the bend: it's arguably the genre critics get wrong more than any other.
Many, many horror films are either overlooked or get overly harsh reviews, while there's then a smaller group which have praise lavished upon them because... reasons. It's better to take critical reactions to horror films with a pinch of salt; these following fifteen 21st century horror films are testament to that, since the praise arguably exceeded the product.
Of course, whether or not anything is overrated is entirely subjective and each to their own, but when you look at what many horror films are criticised for, it's hard to escape the feeling that these following fifteen horror flicks did get away with quite a lot...
15. Hereditary
Rotten Tomatoes: 89% (Average Score: 8.28/10)
IMDb: 7.3
First things first: it cannot be denied that the majority of Hereditary is a complete home run. The direction is phenomenal, Toni Collette is outstanding and the film does a far, far better job of combing its shocks with affecting drama than writer-director Ari Aster's next film, Midsommar, did (more on that in a little while), so why is it on this list?
The answer is simple: the ending is embarrassingly bad and damn-near ruins the entire film. In a short space of time, this goes from a horrifying supernatural drama to a horrifyingly bad schlock-fest of people flying around and being possessed in an unintentionally hilarious manner. Alex Wolff also gives a terrible performance as the protagonist's son, making this final act even worse.
So yes, Hereditary is great for most of its run-time but can it really be called a five-star modern horror classic when the ending is this awful?