10 Movies That Wasted Brilliant Concepts

Sometimes, a movie comes along that instantly grips you just from premise alone. But, rather tragically, it's surprisingly frequent for a big screen project to let its eager audience down, squandering its potential with terrible execution and awful casting.

Such is the case with following movies, all of which boast some seriously enticing ideas but through a series of unfortunate mishaps completely wasted them to an almost unforgivable extreme.

From should-be epic blockbusters, intriguing horror flicks, and time travel thrillers, these movies were all either terribly directed, written by someone completely unsure what they were going for, or brought to life by a cast painfully out of their depth. Or, in some extreme cases, all of the above.

With that in mind, as a follow-up to our earlier piece detailing rubbish TV, here are 10 movies that wasted brilliant concepts and left audiences deflated. The following will contain some spoilers.

In 2017, audiences were pleasantly surprised by Andrés Muschietti's adaptation of Stephen King's epic horror novel It, and when a sequel was announced it was widely believed that Muschietti would be able to hit another homerun, especially with a cast including Jessica Chastain, James McAvoy, and Bill Hader.

But whilst the first film was uniquely unsettling, rich with character and bursting with unpredictable threats, It: Chapter Two was unable to find the right tone. Focussing on the kids all grown up, the initial threat of Pennywise has been wore down to a dull flop, and it spends far too long dealing with his silly and melodramatic final stand.

Between its length and troubled tone changes, the horror sequel fails to live up to the hype in a big way, struggling to develop its characters effectively or maintain its predecessor's scares. Unlike It, Chapter Two is far too overblown for its own good, and squanders its chance to end the franchise on an emotional high.