10 Movies That Hated Their Own Audience
4. Natural Born Killers
Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers is one of the most controversial and divisive films of the 1990s, depicting the brutal killing spree of two serial murderers (Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis) and their glorification by the mass media.
Like almost every single Oliver Stone movie, Natural Born Killers is loaded with pointed socio-political commentary, yet it was largely sold to audiences on the appeal of its brutal violence and general controversy.
Except, this is precisely what Stone's film is railing against, taking a typical Bonnie and Clyde scenario and filtering it through a thoroughly surreal lens.
The violence is cartoonishly exaggerated, and a subplot literally deals with a douchebag entertainment journalist (Robert Downey Jr.) milking the duo's infamy for every drop it's worth.
And while you can argue that some audiences will simply embrace the brutality at face value and ignore the social commentary, Stone shoots and edits the film to be as sensorily offputting as possible, employing jarring jump cuts and bizarre colour filters that constantly keep the viewer at unease.
It's a bracing effective - if not entirely successful - vision, and one that ensures the film remains extremely polarising 25 years on.