3. Richard Kelly
AKA - "The Auteur Behind Donnie Darko"
Let's get one thing out of the way. Donnie Darko is a fantastic film. It features a Patrick Swayze at his best, introduced us to Jake Gyllenhaal and had one of the most talked about plot lines in years. The future looked very bright for Richard Kelly. Then Southland Tales happened. Notoriously laughed out of the Cannes film festival, the edited version that hit cinemas was an absolute calamity of a film, an over plotted mess that was at best unintelligible and at worst, an embarrassment to all involved. The careers of the actors seem to have survived it, but it seemed like Kelly was never able to get over everyone hating his baby. He returned to our screens in 2009 with his adaptation of the Richard Matheson short story The Box. The first thirty minutes or so being a more or less literal adaptation of the short story, and then the film descends into supernatural silliness that becomes tedious to watch. His next project remains in limbo, where hopefully that's where it'll stay, because as the old saying goes, "everyone has one great story in them", and it seems that Richard Kelly has told his.