Just like there are plenty of misunderstood horror movies out there, it’s fair to say that the genre itself might be the most misunderstood of all. Horror takes advantage of the unknown and the unfathomable to get viewers close to the rawest part of their souls, but not without its share of exaggeration and unsettling imagery. Audiences tend to expect movies to ask them a question and answer it themselves, but it shouldn’t be a horror movie’s job to explain what can’t be explained.
In that sense, it’s usually best to trust the unsaid rather than what’s unfolding onscreen. Even the most die-hard horror fans might miss the point every once in a while, mostly because a horror movie shouldn’t work without subjectivity. In the case of these great horror movies that audiences tend to misunderstand, there’s just much more to them than meets the eye.
10 Possession (1981)
Back when it was released, Possession was met with quite a negative reception from the critics and the audience. Over the course of the decades, the movie achieved a cult status among horror fans, especially with the rise of cosmic horror in cinema. In the film, a woman’s increasingly disturbing behavior leads her to leave her family behind, prompting her husband to investigate her secret life and stumble upon a sinister secret.
How It’s Misunderstood
The truth, however, is that Possession is much more about matrimonial dread than cosmic horror. Audiences often seem too distracted by the more otherworldly elements of the film — the tentacled creature and the long possession sequence, for instance — to fully grasp the psychological appeal of the ending, which has been a target of confusion ever since. In a movie so oppressively haunted by the ghost of divorce, two ex-lovers are literally split into two as they obsessively search for their old selves. Stream on Shudder
9 Drag Me to Hell (2009)
After changing the superhero genre forever with his Spider-Man trilogy, Sam Raimi decided to get back to his horror roots with Drag Me to Hell. The movie follows Christine Brown, a loan officer who becomes the recipient of a curse after denying a mysterious old lady an extension to keep her home. As Christine’s life turns upside down, tormented souls come all the way from Hell to get ahold of her soul.
How It’s Misunderstood
It’s difficult to understand what this horror movie is aiming at without being familiar with Raimi’s cinema. Although Drag Me to Hell is fully invested in its mean-spirited themes and gets progressively darker, the movie is adorned with hints of irreverent humor and over-the-top effects that suddenly tone down the film’s approach to that of a B-horror movie. It’s easy to misinterpret a horror movie that can feel all over the place, but ever since Evil Dead, Raimi has made blatantly clear that horror movies can be fun and scary at the same time. Rent on AppleTV
8 New Nightmare (1994)
A few years before Wes Craven dove head first into meta horror with Scream, he decided to bring his self-awareness to his most successful franchise: A Nightmare on Elm Street. New Nightmare is essentially the fourth movie in the series, bringing the horror icon Heather Langenkamp back to play a fictional version of herself. She’s tormented by a demonic entity who enters the real world through the character of Freddy Krueger.
How It’s Misunderstood
As someone who created two of the most iconic horror franchises out there, Craven knows a thing or two about franchise fatigue and uses this as the catalyst for New Nightmare. What many fans seem to overlook here is how out of focus Krueger is in the movie, for as much as the film carries signs of A Nightmare on Elm Street, the iconic hero has been replaced by something more perverse: the creator’s hand. Omnipresent and all-mighty, this new villain is capable of deconstructing (or writing off) everything fans thought they knew about their beloved characters and stories, bending them to its will. Rent on AppleTV
7 Jennifer’s Body (2009)
Being the straightforward movie that it is, audiences misunderstanding Jennifer’s Body is a clear sign of a project failing to reach the intended audience. The movie follows Megan Fox as a mesmerizing cheerleader who is possessed by an evil entity that preys on unsuspecting men. The only person who can stop her is her best friend, who may or may not give in to her own darkest impulses.
How It’s Misunderstood
Few horror movies encapsulate the generation in which they were produced as well as Jennifer’s Body. Elements such as the growing pop-punk scene, the beginning of viral media, and the rise of teen TV shows with dark undertones (The O.C., Veronica Mars, etc.) are present in every frame of the film. However, more than an effective product of its time, Jennifer’s Body is also a straight-up fantasy movie, and not everyone was invested in how blatantly the film incorporated its supernatural mythology into a familiar high school setting. Stream on Max
6 Titane (2021)
Titane
Following a series of unexplained crimes, a father is reunited with the son who has been missing for 10 years. Titane: A metal highly resistant to heat and corrosion, with high tensile strength alloys.
- Release Date
- October 1, 2021
- Cast
- Vincent Lindon , Agathe Rousselle , Garance Marillier , Laïs Salameh , Dominique Frot , Myriem Akeddiou
- Runtime
- 1hr 48min
Back in 2021, Titane secured a spot in film history by winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes Film Festival, but there’s an argument to be made that reaching this prestige status only harmed the movie. The film follows two parallel storylines that collide in violent fashion. The first follows a mysterious woman who gives in to her darkest impulses and sets out on a killing spree. The second revolves around a father reuniting with his son who has been missing for 10 years.
How It’s Misunderstood
There’s a lot to grasp in Julia Ducournau’s multilayered narrative, so much so that it feels as if there are three or more movies within one. However, beyond an intricate allegory and well-crafted character studies lies a movie that’s absolutely comfortable in its own absurdity. Deep down, Titane is just a simple love story set in a surreal world falling apart. Stream on Hulu
5 Christine (1983)
Christine
- Release Date
- May 11, 1983
- Runtime
- 110
John Carpenter’s Christine lives up to Stephen King’s talent for crafting unsettling stories centered around inanimate objects, this time focusing on a stylish 1958 Plymouth Fury. In the film, a nerdish teenager bullied at school becomes obsessed with restoring a classic car known as “Christine”. What he doesn’t know is that his new automobile has a mind of its own, and it’s prepared to kill whoever gets in its way.
How It’s Misunderstood
Christine understands that within the stereotype of the oppressed nerd in movies lies a potential psychopath. It’s easy to misinterpret Christine as the sole villain of this wicked tale of obsession, but the young Arnie Cunningham is far from the innocent protagonist viewers get to see in the film’s opening moments. Rent on AppleTV
4 Land of the Dead (2005)
Land of the Dead is set in a post-apocalyptic world infested with zombies, where the rich take shelter in a luxury high-rise called Fiddler’s Green, while the poor are either forced to engage in deadly outdoor missions or live in slums. All that changes when the undead revolt against humanity, marching towards Fiddler’s Green.
How It’s Misunderstood
In Land of the Dead, director George A. Romero deconstructs the zombie mythology he pioneered, looking at the flesh-eating creatures with an empathetic eye. The film was poorly received by fans of the previous movies because it portrayed humans as monsters, trying to make the audience feel for the zombies.
However, Romero never shied away from strong political allegories, always portraying the zombies as the death of the system. His ideals are crystal clear in Land of the Dead: in the face of humanity’s propensity to make the same mistakes over and over again, the zombies themselves stir a revolution. Stream on Starz
3 Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom (1975)
In this loose adaptation of Marquis de Sade’s controversial book, Pier Paolo Pasolini tells the story of a group of teenagers kidnapped by a group of corrupted fascist libertines, following them over the course of 120 days as they are forced to comply with the most heinous acts imaginable.
How It’s Misunderstood
The first misconception about Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom is that it is just a horror movie. Pasolini’s decision to set the story against the backdrop of Italy’s fascist regime should already give the audiences all the clues they need to realize all the sadistic imagery in the film isn’t there purely for shock value. Pasolini develops an infamous statement about a delicate moment in his nation’s history, exposing how easy it is to lose our freedom completely when the higher-ups are given too much power. Not Currently Available to Stream or Purchase
2 Malignant (2021)
Malignant
- Release Date
- September 10, 2021
- Runtime
- 111 min
Although James Wan is best known for commercially successful franchises such as The Conjuring and Insidious, Malignant feels like the movie he always wanted to make. In the film, the domestic life of a pregnant woman falls to pieces when she awakens an entity that haunts her with visions of a series of grisly murders.
How It’s Misunderstood
Malignant is a practical joke free to get as over-the-top as it can. In a scenario infested with horror movies that use trauma as a cheap tool to convey familiarity and humanity, Wan’s best movie in years embraces the unknown with a violent showcase of originality. The film pokes fun at the current state of commercial horror, whose top contributor was Wan himself, giving rise to a bunch of divisive reviews. Stream on Netflix or Max
1 Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982)
From Rob Zombie’s Halloween to David Gordon Green’s trilogy, the attempts to reinvigorate the Halloween franchise will never come close to the only one that did justice to what the franchise’s creator, John Carpenter, wanted: Halloween III: Season of the Witch. The film leaves Haddonfield behind to focus on a factory specializing in Halloween masks and their chilling scheme for world domination.
How It’s Misunderstood
Before the saga of Myers and Laurie became the hit that it turned out to be, the original plan for the Halloween franchise was for it to be an anthology series. Halloween III: Season of the Witch is a great blend of horror and sci-fi with a handful of genuinely disturbing imagery, but it suffered from not being what fans thought they wanted to see: more of Myers and his endless pursuit. Rent on AppleTV
