20 Horror Movies That Weren't What Anyone Expected

While there's something to be said for a film that delivers exactly what the audience expects to a solid level of competence, it's tough to deny the thrill of watching a movie that ventures off in a totally unexpected direction.

A film that deviates from the norm is both exciting and risky, with the potential to offer up a wholly original vision but also risk alienating audiences who wanted the movie they thought they were getting when they bought a ticket.

And there's perhaps no genre more open to subverting the audience's expectations than horror, which serves as a welcoming sandbox for filmmakers to unfurl their most twisted ideas.

While there are a number of genre archetypes that consistently hit well with audiences, horror fans tend to be an adventurous bunch who are happy to see something they didn't even know they wanted.

And so, these 20 horror films were ultimately all a far cry from the movie most people thought they were getting, and while they surely didn't please everyone, they did nevertheless deliver a decidedly more memorable and off-the-wall experience than anyone could've surely expected pre-release...

Cinema has proven time and time again that branding is everything, but in the case of Lee Cronin's The Mummy the name property actually ended up cutting the other way.

In the lead up to its recent release, it was reported that Cronin's film suffered through tough test screenings due to many viewers believing that it was an entry into the Brendan Fraser-starring Mummy movies, and then being miffed that, no, Fraser was nowhere to be seen.

More to the point, Cronin's Mummy is an absolute sicko beast of a horror film while the Fraser Mummy movies are of course a far more accessible brand of action-adventure flick.

This perception continued to hound the film in the months and weeks prior to its release, unaided by the fact that most people have no earthly idea who Lee Cronin is.

Fans of Cronin's previous film Evil Dead Rise likely knew what they were getting into here, but outside of the dedicated horror fandom there were a great many casual moviegoers left impatiently waiting for Brendan Fraser to rock up.