17 Awesome Movie Concepts That Were Totally Botched

14. The Purge

The Pitch: A wonderfully John Carpenter-inspired premise, where for 12 hours on one day per year, all crimes are legal in the U.S., including murder.

What Happened?: With a premise like that, audiences clearly wanted to see the streets littered with carnage as The Purge kicked off and society as they knew it unraveled.

Instead, we got a middling home invasion thriller which kept viewers at arm's length from the mayhem they really wanted to see, with the film's budgetary restrictions being painfully obvious throughout.

The performances are fine, but given the potential of its high concept, the end result is weirdly low-key and even quite boring at times.

The sequels did at least rectify this somewhat, but it still feels like the franchise could do with more money being thrown at it, especially as they've all been huge financial hits so far.