We expected too much...
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At some point or another, every moviegoer has fallen victim to overhype
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If you found out a film you loved was getting a sequel, how are you going to stop yourself from getting pumped up
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If you learned that your favourite actor is making a feature with an iconic director, well, you'd expect it to be an instant classic
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But sometimes this overhype can unfortunately derail a movie's success. Either going in there expecting something and then seeing something completely different
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or just not being able to live up to the monument you've built in your own mind. So let's take a look at them
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As I'm Jules, this is WhatCulture.com, and these are 10 movies that are ruined by fan overhype
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And just for the record, most of the movies on here are still very, very good, they're just different from what most people expected
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10. Us Because Jordan Peele was initially known for his comedy skits
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nobody expected his directorial debut to be a psychological horror. As an extra shocker, Get Out was amongst the most thought-provoking films in recent years
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which helped cement Peele as a director to look out for. So when Peele announced his next project, Us, fans were immediately invested
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Although the trailer gave little away, save the story revolving around a family being tormented by their doppelgangers
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many assumed that it would be another smash hit. However, Get Out was a deeply personal story which the filmmaker spent four years fine-tuning to perfection
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and because he spent less than half that time on Us, it didn't carry the same level of finesse as its predecessor
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Also, the style and the structure of both features were very different. Despite Get Out's outlandish reveal during the climax, it ends with everything explained and
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resolved. Us, on the other hand, well, it was more surreal and deliberately vague
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forcing viewers to fill in the blanks themselves. Now, the reception of Us was positive
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but saying that it fell short of expectations, well, that is a huge understatement
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9. Hostel Hostel centres around a group of backpackers who get kidnapped and tortured by a nefarious organisation. And because of the film's
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innovative gore and disturbing premise, Hostel would have been received positively by the masses
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if it was released without fanfare. Instead, Eli Roth's work was plugged as the goriest movie ever
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and more terrifying than The Exorcist, stirring horror fans into a frenzy. And when Quentin
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Tarantino's endorsement for the movie was slapped on the poster, Hostel's rep was heightened even
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more. In hindsight, it seems like Hostel was set up to fail, since it was built up way too much
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Now, I know it's important for a studio to sell a movie, but it's also imperative not to oversell it
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Hostel isn't a terrible film by any stretch of the imagination, but it wasn't deserving of the hype it drew
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Martyrs, which deals with a very similar plot, received a lot of praise due to its nuanced performances, visceral gore and haunting tone
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Another aspect that made Martyrs stand out was how it didn't toot its horn for months, declaring itself as the scariest movie ever
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If Hostel hadn't put itself on a pedestal, it probably wouldn't have been so disappointing
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8. Land of the Dead During the noughties zombie horror experienced a welcome resurgence Even though films revolving around shambling brain corpses have been stagnant for years 28 days later Shaun of the Dead and Dawn of the Dead remake proved that there was plenty of life left in the undead genre But just like it seemed when zombie horror had peaked the unthinkable happened
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In 2004, Night of the Living Dead director George A. Romero revealed that he was making a follow-up
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called Land of the Dead. Because Romero is directly responsible for popularizing zombie lore
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the hype for this installment was through the roof. Instead of regurgitating a premise that
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we've seen a million times landed the dead revolved around zombies who could think, learn
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and strategize, making them far more dangerous than the mindless flesh-eaters that we've grown
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accustomed to. And the end result was, well, just okay. I mean, unlike the previous three
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installments, it's difficult to remember a single compelling character, inventive scene, or creative kill. Because Romero had been in the business for 40 years at the time
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it was heartbreaking to see his work being outperformed by zombie films made by far less
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experienced directors. 7. Glass It's never wise to over-praise a new director, based entirely on just one movie. So when M. Night
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Shyamalan was hailed as the next Steven Spielberg after the success of The Sixth Sense, it seemed
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like the poor guy never stood a chance. Even though his next few films were met positively
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his work got progressively worse. By the time that Shyamalan released The Happening, The Last
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Airbender, and After Earth, it was hard to believe how revered he once was. So when Shyamalan
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announced that he was making Split, a psychological horror revolving around a sociopath with 24
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personalities, many assumed it would just be a travesty. However, Split was met positively
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mainly because of James McAvoy's tour de force performance. Also, viewers were blown away by the
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climax, which revealed that the story took place in the same universe as Unbreakable
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When Shyamalan declared the leads of both films would face off in a follow-up, Glass
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it looked like the infamous filmmaker had finally got his mojo back. But due to exposition dumps
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barren dialogue and excessive twists, the reaction to the long-awaited crossover was
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well, pretty much the same as most of Shyamalan's work. Glass may have had some redeeming qualities
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but it could have been so much more. 6. Wes Craven's New Nightmare
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A Nightmare on Elm Street helped define the 1980s as the decade of the slashers
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Due to Wes Craven's solid direction and Robert Englund's performance as the wise-cracking dream
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demon Freddy Krueger, the series quickly became a horror staple. However, Craven moved on to other
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projects after the first installment, leaving other directors to take over the sequels
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Although the follow-ups may have had their moments, none of them even came close to reaching
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the original outing. So when the sixth entry, Freddy's Dead, The Final Nightmare, seemingly
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killed off the overarching villain, it looked like the franchise had nowhere else to go
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But out of nowhere, Wes Craven suddenly announced a new nightmare movie called, well, New Nightmare. Rather than churning out the same old schlock, New Nightmare was a meta
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Slasher, starring Wes Craven, Robert Englund, and the original Final Girl actress Heather
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Langenkamp playing themselves This time around the cast and crew of A Nightmare on Elm Street find themselves being haunted by a demonic entity who taken the form of Freddy Krueger With Craven on board and a bold new direction it looked like this sequel would be Nightmare on Elm Street done right But to everyone horror and not the good kind
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New Nightmare was full of tired tropes, bad special effects, and underwhelming scares
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And just to add salt to the wounds, Freddy's redesign was utterly awful. You do have to
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commend Craven's ambition, but New Nightmare wasn't the return to form that many of us were
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hoping for. 5. Nope If you felt disappointed after watching Us, you'd think that you'd be a bit more cautious about
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Jordan Peele's next project, Once Bitten, Twice Shy and all that. However, Peele's latest follow-up
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Nope, drew us all in with his masterful marketing. First off, that title, Nope. I mean, despite how
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abrupt and unintentionally funny it sounds, fans spent months dissecting the title's meaning
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which led to all sorts of wild theories. The poster, which showed a flagged string dangling
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down from an ominous cloud, explained next to nothing and yet left us utterly tantalized
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And although we thought all would be explained when the trailer dropped, it just left us with
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even more questions. And after watching the phenomenal teaser, everyone had the same thought
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I have to see this movie. And like us, Nope was a very divisive film. Despite the fact that
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there's plenty of people who loved it, there's just as many who detested Nope with an unbridled
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passion. 4. Army of the Dead No one is going to deny the fact that Zack Snyder is a love or hate filmmaker. However
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there's one thing that we can all agree on, and that is that his Dawn of the Dead remake is nearly
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impossible to fault. So, when the Watchmen director revealed that he was making another
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ZOM Fest called Army of the Dead, it looked like a sure thing. As refreshing as it was to see Snyder
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receive so much support, the hype for this blockbuster was utterly preposterous. Almost
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a year before the Army of the Dead was released, a prequel and an anime spin-off were greenlit
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and the same week that the film hit Netflix, Snyder unveiled a sequel called Planet of the
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Dead was also in the works. All of these projects were declared willy-nilly under the assumption
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that Army of the Dead was a guaranteed success, which it wasn't. It may have had its moments
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for sure, but this zombie heist thriller was let down by its bum-numbing runtime, absurd plot holes
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half-baked subplots, and lack of payoffs. I mean, why did Vanderhoe tease his buzzsaw if he wasn't
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even going to use the damn thing. Even though Army of the Dead was underwhelming in its own right
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the fact that the studio saw it as the tentpole for a cinematic universe made it all the more
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crushing. 3. The Blair Witch Project The marketing campaign for The Blair Witch Project didn't just advertise the movie well. The way that
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they sold this found-footage horror as an authentic documentary was a work of art. Because the actors
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in the film die in the climax, they went into actual hiding while The Blair Witch Project was
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advertised to make their deaths seem legit. The Blair Witch website had fake police reports and
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phony interviews about the missing party to add to the deception. After half the world was duped
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into believing the Blair Witch project was the real deal it was no surprise when it made an absolute killing at the box office But there was just one problem The Blair Witch isn actually that great as a film I know it sounds mad but seriously go back and watch it with a critical eye
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It's kind of boring. It's definitely badly shot because it's meant to be amateurish, and it's deeply repetitive
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Also, it's responsible for popularizing one of the most annoying aspects in the history of cinema
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shaky cam. If you're sick and tired of this ridiculous filming technique, well, you just blame the Blair Witch
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Maybe if the filmmaker spent more time on telling a compelling story rather than how they sold the
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movie, the Blair Witch Project would have actually been remembered much more fondly
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2. IT Chapter 2 Even though Stephen King adaptations are a kind of mixed bag, the 2017 adaptation of
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IT surpassed almost everyone's expectations. Although Bill Skarsgård earned the most praise
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for his career-defining performances Pennywise, the child actors who portrayed the Losers Club
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also received universal acclaim. The performances of Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard, Jack Dylan Grazer, and the other children were so beloved that fans were demanding
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their return in the follow-up, and despite the fact that IT Chapter 2 was supposed to deal with
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the Losers Club members as adults, the filmmakers buckled under the pressure, incorporating scenes
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of the kids. Sadly, the children's inclusion caused a number of problems. Because the ensemble
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cast had noticeably aged by this point, their voices and appearances had to be digitally de-aged
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which was noticeably distracting. Also, since we've seen these characters as adults
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the flashback sequences had zero tension, because we knew that they would survive their
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encounters with Pennywise. On top of that, these needless sequences tacked on an extra 40 minutes
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of the runtime, causing it to balloon to nearly three hours. If fans actually hadn't hiked these
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kids' performances so much, they wouldn't have been implemented into IT Chapter 2, which would
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have allowed the sequel to be tighter and probably more efficient. 1. Halloween Ends
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Because Halloween Ends was the conclusion of a 45-year-old movie saga, the rabid fanbase would
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desperate for an epic payoff. The horror community were dying to see the final confrontation between
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Laurie Strode and her tormentor, and most importantly, we needed to witness the death
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of one of horror's most iconic villains, Michael Myers. Considering the bad far outweighs the good
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in the Halloween franchise, you'd assume that fans would have been more prepared for the disappointment by this point. After all, the previous installment, Halloween Kills
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proved that this trilogy was on pretty shaky ground. Nevertheless, many were eager to see
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how Michael and Laurie's story ended. And yet, Halloween Ends was worse and way more bizarre
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than even the biggest cynics speculated. We're not talking Halloween Kills, but no, no, no. Due
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to Michael's absence and the ridiculous change of direction, Halloween Ends is on par with Curse
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of Michael Myers or Halloween Resurrection. And it ticked off so many viewers it inspired a petition
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encouraging the director to reshoot the movie. Yes, disgruntled viewers are expecting Halloween
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Ends to pull a Justice League here. Now, just to be clear, Halloween Ends is not the worst entry in
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this series, but because of how much it was built up, it's definitely the most disappointing installment


