10 More Horror Movies That Had No Right To Be This Good
6. The Empty Man
It's almost never a good sign when a movie spends years languishing on a studio shelf, and so there wasn't much hope for The Empty Man - the directorial debut of David Fincher protege David Prior.
Prior's supernatural horror was shot in the summer of 2017, before atrocious test screenings led Fox to halt its release until October 2020, where it was quietly dumped in cinemas with little marketing fuss.
Initial reviews were heavily mixed which, combined with a "D+" CinemaScore, seemingly condemned it to obscurity.
Yet word-of-mouth among horror fans allowed it to enjoy a resurgence once it hit streaming a short while later, where it became something of a bonafide cult classic.
And indeed, far from an overhyped Film Twitter darling, The Empty Man is a beautifully shot, richly atmospheric horror with one of the most startling prologue sequences of any genre entry from the last few years.
Given the studio's reaction to it, you'd be forgiven for writing it off as a worthless dud, yet it's anything but.