10 Horror Movie Trailers That Lied to Everybody

How a movie is advertised can be more important than the movie itself. The best film imaginable can bomb critically and financially if it's presented in the wrong way. For this reason, the promotions shouldn't just be exciting but ideally also accurate.

Of course, some trailers and TV spots have a habit of plugging the feature in question in a deceptive way. Although we've looked at 10 Lies Told In Recent Movie Trailers previously, now it's time to specifically delve into the realm of horror. The genre tends to have the opposite problem, spoiling everything imaginable in an attempt to get something to click with viewers.

However, a marketing team will occasionally try a different tactic, representing a horror picture in a way that doesn't resemble the finished product. This can be done by lying about the genre, over-selling a character's role in the story, or highlighting a money shot that ends up on the cutting room floor.

Just to be clear, this type of misdirection isn't always bad. The trailers for Scream, The Cabin in the Woods, and Barbarian were fairly formulaic, so it was refreshing when each of these films went in wild and unpredictable directions. 

Having said that, some moviegoers may have felt conned by the trailers for the following films since they sold something very different than what we ultimately got.

Turning Pride and Prejudice into a supernatural action-based parody should never work, at least in theory. And yet, Seth Grahame-Smith's novel Pride and Prejudice and Zombies novel was a bonafide success. 

What made the book work so well was how it successfully captured the spirit of Jane Austen's love story and 19th-century romantic literature in general despite containing a bunch of flesh-eating ghouls. Seven years after its publication, a film adaptation was released. 

The British promotions for this movie did a fine job at showcasing Pride and Prejudice and Zombies as a dark comedy that was still entrenched in Austen's work.

However, the same cannot be said about the international trailer, which made Grahame-Smith's adaptation look like an apocalypse thriller. 

The US teaser focuses almost entirely on the action, showcasing our heroines hacking, blasting, and kung fu kicking the savage revenants. Yes, these elements feature in the movie, but not as prominently as the trailer indicated.

British viewers got what they expected, but the rest of the world was left confused by the fact Pride and Prejudice and Zombies wasn't more traditional.