11 Big Name Actors Who Ruined Good Horror Movies

The Messengers was made before the horror genre's modern day renaissance really kicked off, but its efforts to bring together an array of key tropes and ideas from the horror canon are well-meaning, even if they didn't land.

Produced by horror legend Sam Raimi, the film brings industry veterans John Corbett, William B. Davis, Dylan McDermott and Penelope Ann Miller together with the at-the-time-untested Kristen Stewart (whose previous film was the 2005 children's space adventure Zathura), to tell a supernatural tale about an eerie darkness that invades a quiet family farm in North Dakota, leaving the family torn apart by suspicion, ghosts and grisly murder.

Unfortunately, Stewart is the main character, and so the film lived or died (and, lets' be honest, it died) on her shoulders. While far from her worst effort, her lacklustre performance only served to emphasise the issues in the screenplay -- issues that might well have been rounded off in the hands of a more capable or convincing lead.

Perplexingly, The Messengers arrived pre-Twilight, which means the casting team for the world's least favourite vampire series knew full well what Stewart would bring to the table, and they still went ahead with her anyway.