10 Terrible Horror Movies That Tricked You Into Thinking They’re Good
These ten scary movies really don't hold up under any close inspection.
Horror movies are incredibly formulaic.
Part of why so many people enjoy the genre is the litany of tropes we've all been conditioned to look out for. The unstoppable monster killer, the ragtag group of teens, the incredibly gory deaths, so on and so forth.
With so many different movies all vying for the same real estate using the same archetypes, horror films will often try and sell themselves with a unique concept.
This is how some of the most successful horror movies of all time have made their money - by taking familiar ideas and translating them onto an original format.
Sometimes though, movies that try to do this fail and fail hard.
All of these films had a lot going for them on the surface and, with a casual watch, might appear to be decent. However, if you put them under a microscope and examine them with impartial eyes, you'll find that they don't hold up at all.
Whether they got too clever for their own good or just didn't pull of their big idea as well as they could have, these movies are all much more hollow than you might expect.
10. Skinamarink
In 2020, director Kyle Edward Ball made the short film Heck (mind your language) as proof of concept for his wider creative vision, Skinamarink.
Two years later and Ball's dream came true when this supernatural horror finally hit the big screens. Unfortunately, not everyone was thrilled with the end result.
Much like Heck, Skinamarink tells the story of two children who wake up in the night to find that their father has gone missing. Oh, and all the windows and doors are also disappearing. And there's probably no food in the fridge, knowing their luck.
As the two kids attempt to find out what's going on, they get drawn into stranger and stranger scenarios. By the end of the movie, you've got absolutely no clue what's going on or what any of it means.
Whilst some people found this profound, others were profusely frustrated by the whole thing. There's a nugget of something decent in here, but there just isn't enough substance to this film to fill its runtime convincingly.
As nice as it was for Ball to get his first feature length release, Skinamarink would have worked better if it had stayed a short film.