20 Hit Horror Movies NOBODY Saw Coming

Zach Cregger's debut horror film Barbarian is basically a quintessential instance of a sleeper hit - a film that wasn't expected to do much business but ended up wildly overperforming relative to its budget.

In fact, Disney considered releasing the film direct to their streaming service Hulu until positive test screenings convinced them otherwise. And honestly, with a mere $4.5 million budget, what did they have to lose?

Thanks to buzz from early screenings about the film's unpredictable nature, aided by a marketing campaign which refused to give away its big surprises, Barbarian became something of an event in the horror community - something you had to see to know what everyone was talking about.

And this resulted in Cregger's film grossing an impressive $46.2 million - more than 10 times its budget - in turn positioning him to follow it up with the massively successful Weapons and most recently Resident Evil.

Just imagine if Barbarian had gone direct to streaming and Cregger never had the clout to get something as ambitious as Weapons made.