10 Great Directors Who Keep Making Terrible Movies

9. DJ Caruso

The Green Inferno Eli Roth
Paramount Pictures

With 2002's edgy neo-noir debut The Salton Sea, DJ Caruso marked himself out as one to watch.

The Val Kilmer comeback was a gritty, grimy crime thriller whose splintered, foggy narrative and intense visual style marked it out as a surprise success amongst a sea (hoho) of Tarantino imitators in the early noughties. Caruso soon lived up to his early potential with the superb teen thriller Disturbia, a 2007 hit which saw the director remix Rear Window for the ASBO generation and make suburbia a scary setting for the first time in a decade.

Funny, tense, and clever, this not-quite-remake solidified Caruso's status as an in-demand thriller helmer.

So it's a damn shame that he then made the espionage flop Eagle Eye only a year later. Another Shia LaBoeuf vehicle, this one was free of Disturbia's charm, tension, and humour, and set the director off on a brutal losing streak he's yet to escape from.

Soon came I Am Number Four, a flat and uninventive YA adaptation, and the aptly titled would-be "horror" The Disappointments Room.

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