10 Movies That Were Massively Improved By A Director's Cut

9. Mimic (1997)

Mira Sorvino Mimic
Miramax

Guillermo del Toro's first Hollywood feature didn't turn out the way that the Mexican director had envisioned, with studio interference turning what was designed as a character-driven horror into a generic B-movie full of cheap scares.

Del Toro ultimately disowned Mimic altogether, but 14 years later a Director's Cut was released that is much closer to the director's original vision for the $30m creature feature than the disappointing effort that landed in theaters. While the Director's Cut only runs to 112 minutes compared to the theatrical version's 105, the changes and improvements made to the movie are noticeable. Del Toro is known for not using a second unit on his projects, and when assembling his own cut of the movie removed many of the jump scares and exposition scenes in favor of more character-centric moments, resulting in a much more focused version than the choppily-edited and confusing narrative audiences were initially treated to.

While it is still essentially a genre movie about giant cockroaches, the Director's Cut of Mimic offers a more enjoyable and atmospheric take on the material that is much more visually and stylistically reminiscent of Guillermo del Toro's work than the theatrical version, which very obviously bore the fingerprints of studio interference.

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