12 Brilliant Movies That Completely Lied What They Were About

7. Spring Breakers

The Lie: Harmony Korine's crime drama was a marketing department's dream come true: the vast majority of the film has the likes of Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez and Ashley Benson strutting around in bikinis, getting laid and getting wasted, so there's not much that needs to be done to sell it. And naturally, audiences for the most part went in expecting a shallow, hedonistic movie without much substance to it at all.

The Reality: If you know Korine's work, though, you'd know to expect the unexpected. Despite its frothy veneer, Spring Breakers is a deceptively smart, insightful and even tragic film, covering themes such as the objectification of women, the vapidity of pop culture and youthful obsession with it, the narcissism of contemporary youth, and of course, coming-of-age by way of traumatic realisation. Much like Inglourious Basterds, this is an example of a movie that serves up what audiences want (the boobs and general debauchery) while also making an understated, subversive comment on society. Really, the way the movie was constructed and marketed was genius: who would otherwise expect a Korine film to make more than six-fold its budget back at the box office?