12 Movies From 2016 That Were Unfairly Hated

Robert Eggers directorial debut The Witch may have been a hit with critics, but not all mainstream horror fans were quite so taken with the creepy period horror and slammed it as boring and un-scary. The movie’s 91% critics rating and 53% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes should give an idea of just quite how divided critics and moviegoers were over the movie.

Admittedly, The Witch is quite far removed from the realms of modern, mainstream horrors. A slow-burner with an emphasis on psychologically unsettling themes and mounting dread, it doesn’t offer the quick fix jump scares and gore that most horror movies do these days. But that doesn’t necessarily make it a bad horror movie, just different. In fact, in a genre that’s all too often dismissed as anti-intellectual, gore-ridden tat for the slack-jawed masses The Witch, alongside films like The Babadook and It Follows which funnily enough got a similar reception, it’s a refreshing change.

As for the accusation of The Witch not being scary? Well, if a film featuring an old hag grinding up a baby and a woman breastfeeding a crow isn’t frightening enough then maybe modern horror fans really need to check themselves.