20 Hit Horror Movies NOBODY Saw Coming

4. Skinamarink

Perhaps the single biggest commercial surprise on this list, Kyle Edward Ball's experimental feature debut Skinamarink had all the makings of a well-received horror film that would get quietly released on streaming and endure as a niche cult fave.

Yet the $15,000 haunted house film, based on Ball's 2020 short film Heck, became a viral hit after a copy leaked online from a festival which screened it virtually.

The sustained social media attention led IFC Midnight to acquire Skinamarink for distribution, where it went on to gross $2.1 million worldwide from an ultra-limited theatrical engagement.

With a final cume of 140 times Ball's original budget, for a film whose slow-paced, low-fi style is tailor-made to divide, and which was already widely pirated online, that's one hell of a result.

It proved enough of a success that Ball's next film, The Land of Nod, is being produced and distributed by A24. You love to see it, as unexpected as it all is.