4. The Place Beyond The Pines (2012)
The Place Beyond The Pines is one of the great modern examples of a movie that was not spoiled at all by its marketing campaign, and was all the better for it. From viewing the trailer to this thing, it's as though we're being primed for a Ryan Gosling indie crime movie akin to Drive, with the handsome actor playing another broody badass who likes life in the fast lane. Going into this one, though, I was totally thrown by the turn that the movie took at around the hour mark. That's to say, Ryan Gosling's sudden and totally unexpected death. Yep, Gosling doesn't have as big a part in the movie as audiences might have been expecting. By the end of Pines, it was clear that what we'd actually seen was an occasionally bombastic but ultimately gripping crime saga - one that spans two generations, multiple characters and a ton of themes. There was no hint that the movie would be like this at all in the trailer - in fact, it was made to look like a relatively "small" drama, with Gosling facing off against Bradley Cooper for much of its length. Pines just proves how a trailer that ultimately lets the movie tell its story can be so throughly exhilarating if you're left in the dark.