10 Movie Moments That Pissed Off Fanboys (That Were Actually Great)

3. Robert Eggers’ Un-Scary Horror

Critics might have loved Robert Eggers’ directorial debut The Witch, a 17th century New England set supernatural horror focusing on a family torn apart by superstition and black magic, but more than a few horror fans took to Twitter to vent their disappointment, dismissing it as ‘not scary’ and ‘painfully boring’.

More of a slow-burner than a schlock stock horror that delivers its first scare before cinemagoers have even had a chance to settle into their seats, The Witch does have a genuinely unnerving and disturbing tone but for a generation of horror fans perhaps more used to gratuitous gore and jump scare tactics a film that’s more about a creeping sense of paranoia and doom-laden tension proved not to be to their tastes.

Maybe viewers that didn’t enjoy The Witch were right to be disappointed. The trailer, like so many other trailers, did piece together the film’s most action-packed parts making it seem more a conventional horror in line with the likes of The Conjuring or Sinister, but in a genre dominated by Saws and Hostels perhaps a film that returns to the creeping chill of horror classics like Rosemary’s Baby or The Shining isn’t necessarily a bad thing.