8 Horror Movies Built On A Lie
3. It Comes At Night
Mucha few of its other 'elevated horror' chums, It Comes At Night decided to play a dangerous game by advertising a film that doesn't actually exist. Manipulating its marketing to seem as if some inescapable monster would be preying on the remnants of humanity, what actually came out when the film finally dropped was a rumination on human emotion instead.
People didn't like paying to see a rumination on human emotion.
The whole misleading marketing gimmick is one that divides audiences at the best of times - with some desperate to get a full sense of a film before committing their hard earned cash to seeing it, and others wanting to go in totally blind to preserve the cinematic experience. At the end of the day though, It Comes At Night built its whole prospective audience up on trailers for a different film to what actually screened, and many called out the process as an undesirable industry tactic they didn't want to see again.
Good thing Hereditary didn't do anything of the sort then, eh?