10 Recent Movies That Surprised EVERYONE
8. Greenland
Expectations were understandably through the Earth's crust for Gerard Butler's recent disaster film Greenland, which was marketed to resemble as generic a stab at the genre as possible, while reuniting Butler with his Angel Has Fallen director Ric Roman Waugh.
On paper this seemed like a cool 36% on the Tomatometer, and so critics and audiences alike were shocked to discover that the final film was decidedly more well-crafted than its marketing or personnel suggested.
Greenland doesn't offer up many surprises, but it's actually focused less on apocalyptic, effects-driven destruction than it is the desperate plight of a family to make it to safety.
For a film that looked like just another Geostorm, it was a massively pleasant surprise that Butler, Morena Baccarin, and Scott Glenn were given the floor to deliver genuinely compelling performances, and Waugh mined the suspenseful human drama for every drop it was worth.
The only thing more surprising than the fact that it was well-reviewed? Greenland reportedly did gangbusters business on VOD, enough that distributor STXfilms recently confirmed that a sequel, Greenland: Migration, is in development with a $65 million budget (almost double that of the original).