15 Awesome Horror Movies With Lower Critical Scores Than They Deserve

Rotten Tomatoes: 56% (Average Score: 5.49/10)

Metacritic: 42

Orphan is one of the best horror films of the latter noughties and a rare good studio horror film from this era, but you wouldn't necessarily know it from this muted critical score.

It doesn't look like much, but Orphan is actually highly suspenseful and has a great emphasis on psychological trauma and unease which makes it a very tense, anxiety-inducing viewing. Better still, it's not only got a great cast who all deliver the goods, especially Vera Farmiga and Isabelle Fuhrman as the main villain, but it has developed characters and many dramatic beats which work far better than you'd expect.

As for the big twist... well, it's ridiculous, but it's bloody awesome nonetheless.

Back in the noughties, horror films which unfolded in a well-realised world populated by characters that you cared about were in tragically short supply. Here is one which actually succeeded on that level, but for some reason critics largely dismissed it. It's full of plot holes and not all of it works, but there's still plenty to like.

The IMDb score of 6.9 is far fairer than those on Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic.