20 Movies That Could've Been Horror Movies

2. Passengers

It's rather unfortunate that 2016's sci-fi film Passengers was presented as a romantic drama considering how many audience members ultimately found its central love-in deeply creepy.

The film revolves around Jim Preston (Chris Pratt), a colonist onboard a spaceship who is woken from stasis 90 years early due to a malfunction. 

After a year of crippling loneliness, he decides to wake up one of the other 5,000 colonists, and of course he decides upon a smoking hot young woman, Aurora Lane (Jennifer Lawrence).

Though the film doesn't entirely ignore the agonising morality of Jim's act, it is ultimately swept under the rug and somewhat downplayed in favour of the "love" that blooms between him and Aurora.

She's devastated when she learns the truth of course, but when she's finally able to re-enter stasis, she ultimately refuses, deciding instead to live out her days with Jim. D'aww.

And yet, it wouldn't take much tweaking at all for Passengers to become an outright sci-fi horror film, especially if it unfolded from Aurora's perspective and Jim was presented as a more unhinged stalker-type character.

Instead, Passengers got tangled up in tonal knots, leaving critics and general audiences with hugely mixed feelings about its earnest attempt at sci-fi romance.