10 Underhyped Movies That Blew Everyone Away

5. Snowpiercer

Snowpiercer Chris Evans
CJ Entertainment

The Non-Hype

While director Bong Joon-ho's Oscar success with Parasite means that his future projects will never be on a list like this again, things were different back in 2013.

The Host and Mother (his 2006 and 2009 films), had their fans, sure, but they were cult classics at best - at least, with Western audiences - and their exposure was limited by the fact that they weren't in the English language.

As a result, a lot of people simply didn't know how talented Joon-ho was in the lead-up to his 2013 film, Snowpiercer. Despite starring Captain America, it launched rather quietly, but as people started to see it, word spread about how fantastic it truly was.

The Big Reaction

It cannot be disputed that the decision to make an English-language film like Snowpiercer helped Bong Joon-ho's career. It certainly raised the awareness surrounding Snowpiercer (some people just don't like watching subtitled material), because it compelled more casual audiences to give it a go.

But language aside, Snowpiercer is just a great movie. A dystopian tale set aboard the titular train, the film managed to make the well-worn "end of the world" genre feel refreshing, with brutal fight scenes, distinct characters, and an always-topical class warfare story, with the wealthy and the poor being confined to different areas.

An indie film that defied its lack of hype, Snowpiercer appeared on dozens of "best of the year" lists, and proved to be a massive hit on VOD. It made Bong Joon-ho a name to watch not just with hardcore film fans, but with film fans in general.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!