From werewolves that aren't real to monsters that are all in your head, we're counting down the horror movies that masterfully subvert audience expectations. These films used clever marketing and surprising plot twists to deliver something completely different from what was promised.
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As the old saying goes, we fear most what we don't know, but some movies take that to heart
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Consequently, the following films all gained a reputation, whether through bad marketing or simply audience expectations being completely wrong
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as being about one thing when they're really about something completely different
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I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com, and these are horror movies that aren't about what you think
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The Wolf of Snow Hollow If you were a police officer and everyone was trying to tell you that the local murders in your town
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were actually being carried out by a werewolf, well, you'd probably think you were the only sane person left
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Luckily for you, though, you're probably not this police officer, and when you're watching a horror movie literally called The Wolf of Snow Hollow
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and gory murders are being attributed to a lycanthrope, you're probably not going to hesitate in assuming that the case has been cracked
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no matter how daft it may sound, especially when a big bad wolfy figure is seen lurking in the shadows
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Consequently, you spend most of the runtime of The Wolf of Snow Hollow assuming you're watching a pretty effective modern werewolf flick
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But the final act reveals that this isn't the case at all. It turns out that the murders aren't supernatural
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but they're still technically kinda caused by a werewolf. Confused? Well, bear with me
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It turns out that the very human serial killer committing the crimes does so while dressing up in a gigantic werewolf costume
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ripping his victims' bodies apart while indulging in his cosplaying hobby every full moon
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So it wasn't really a werewolf movie at all, just an extremely twisted crime drama. Filming TV is cool, but you know what else is cool
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76% off a two-year NordVPN plan, plus three months free if you sign up today. I'd make that deal
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Damn good deal. It Comes at Night. It Comes at Night was a victim of misjudged expectations when
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it first released. It was marketed as something of a creature feature, and as such, fans took the
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title quite literally. It was presumed that this movie would be about something haunting a cast of
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heroes in the night, as a result of a virus that had otherwise eliminated humanity. When it came
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out though and fans finally got to the bottom of this mystery established in the marketing
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the film revealed that the something wasn't actually a monster or a creature at all. It was
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actually just the paranoia of the human characters. Ultimately, It Comes at Night is as much of a
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family drama as it is a horror movie. It follows a small family who survived the virus by keeping
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isolated, coming into contact with another family in need, and the stresses of the two living
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together each thinking that the other is a threat. What comes at night then is the worry for each
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character. The worry that putting their trust in other people will result in the death of the people
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that they supposed to protect Ultimately it a great film but not quite the straight creature feature some fans wanted Come to Daddy Come to Daddy is one of the most delightfully surprising horror movies in recent years Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood has always been drawn to weird eccentric genre
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pics since hanging up his hairy feet as Frodo Baggins, but this 2020 effort is easily his
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strangest project yet. Ostensibly, it's about a young man, played by Wood, who attempts to
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reconnect with his father after not seeing him for decades. The thing is, even this whole setup
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is steeped in mystery, as it's unclear why Wood's character was contacted out of the blue and why
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his father, who constantly berates him when he arrives, is so hostile towards his son
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You expect then the movie to explore this dynamic, and have some kind of sinister reveal explaining
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why the two needed to reconnect or why the father was missing in the first place. However
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the father actually dies from a heart attack before the end of the first act. It then becomes
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a film about the son having to live with the body of his dead dad as the morgue is too busy to pick
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it up, all the while strange noises keep him up at night. Is the father haunting the house
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or is something else supernatural afoot? Well, no. It turns out that his real father is actually
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alive and being held hostage in the basement, and consequently is in a bit of a predicament
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Come to Daddy then has twists within twists, and the movie that you think you're in for at the
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beginning resembles nothing of the one you're stuck with at the end, The Strangers Prayer Night
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Fans waited a decade for a sequel to The Strangers, and when it finally arrived, it was
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far from what they expected, but not in a bad way. Initially, the second movie seems like the natural
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continuation of the first, with the titular family of strangers hunting down a series of victims
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in a trailer park. Though not a home invasion in the regular sense, all the beats are still hit here
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Phones are destroyed, people are stalked, and characters are killed in brutal ways
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After this though, the sequel shifts focus entirely and becomes less a movie about the
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villains killing a band of hapless victims, but rather the victims fighting back and taking out
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each member of the murderous family. It inverts the slasher trope completely, as the remaining
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heroes kill off their tormentors one by one. I mean, that's one way to get fans from spending
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years begging for another sequel, I suppose. Piercing. For the first act of piercing, you think
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you can pretty much sketch out where the story is going. In the very first scene, the movie
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introduces you to Reed, a family man with a wife and newborn child. The thing is, the guy is a total
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Psycho, and in this first scene, he's shown standing over his kid's crib with an ice pick
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From here, the audience is quickly informed that he's a wannabe serial killer, and is using the
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cover of a business trip to rent a hotel room and indulge in his bloodlust by inviting over a sex
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worker. If you've seen American Psycho, it seems pretty cut and dry where this one's going. However
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if you ever read a book by Ryu Murakami the author who provided the source material for this movie then you know to never expect a straightforward story Consequently things take a turn when Jackie the sex worker turns up and understands exactly what this dude plans to do
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It turns out that she's a little twisted as well, and the power dynamic is then inverted
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resulting in one of the strangest psychosexual horrors in recent memory. Reed turns from the predator into the prey
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and things only get stranger from there on out. Henry, portrait of a serial killer, this is not
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Antebellum. Now, a lot of you might already understand exactly what Antebellum is about
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but that's because the trailers for it, for whatever reason, decided to just outright spoil
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the big twist that the entire movie is built around. Which is a huge shame, because the film
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itself does so much work to hide the big mid-movie reveal, and only really has any suspense at all if
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you don't know it's coming. But I'm getting ahead of myself, let me first explain. Antebellum opens
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on Eden, a Civil War Eva slave who recently attempted to escape a plantation in Louisiana
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resulting in a bunch of her fellow slaves being murdered. The first act essentially follows her
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daily life, as she's forced to work, is routinely assaulted by Confederate soldiers
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and slowly hatches a plot to escape. Well, that is until one night when she suddenly hears a
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modern phone ringing outside, and then the flick flashes back a few weeks prior. Here
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it turns out that Antebellum isn't a period piece at all, but rather takes place in the present day
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Eden, really a beloved author called Veronica, has been kidnapped along with a bunch of other black people by the white owners of a Civil War reenactment center
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It is absolutely bonkers and doesn't totally work, but it's certainly not what you expect from the first half an hour
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The Empty Man. The Empty Man has received a whole bunch of buzz with writers and fans alike, praising it as an overlooked gem from 2020
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However, after watching it, it is pretty clear why this didn't make much of a dent, and that's because it's impossible to market
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A horror movie that runs an epic two and a half hours is already a tough sell, but it doesn't help when it also blends completely different subgenres and tells a story that's intentionally designed to keep you in the dark
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So if you read the synopsis, you might go into it expecting something like The Bye Bye Man, where a bunch of kids are being haunted by a supernatural entity who only grows stronger the more you think about them
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And that is what the movie is about for around 20 minutes
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See, the thing about The Empty Man is that it's essentially three movies in one
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The prologue essentially acts as its own short horror film set in the snowy mountains
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then we get the teen slasher, and finally we stumble into a cult conspiracy and doomsday prophecy
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Consequently, as soon as you start thinking you know what the movie is going to be about, it switches gears and turns into something else
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One Cut of the Dead. Just when you think the zombie subgenre has no new ideas to offer something like One Cut of the Dead comes along Now this movie is a regular on the WhatCultureHorror channel but it simply couldn be left off a list about movies that aren about what you think That because One Cut of the Dead is three different movies in one but it pulls
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each one off better than The Empty Man does. Initially it starts out like a regular low-budget
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zombie flick, but it's quickly revealed that this is actually a movie being filmed within the movie
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The real story is about a zombie outbreak happening while this camera crew is recording their fictional
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zombie movie, and the confusion and chaos that comes from that situation. However, the film
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pivots yet again halfway through to show that this story isn't real either, by flashing back and
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showing how this apparently realistic zombie outbreak is also part of a fictional film. So
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we're actually watching a movie about how a bunch of fictional people made a zombie movie
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about a group of people making a zombie movie. It sounds much more confusing when I say it than
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is in motion, I promise. Crimson Peak. I mentioned briefly in the introduction how marketing plays a
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huge role in setting audience expectations, and Crimson Peak is one of the best examples of a
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movie's advertising completely misrepresenting its actual content. Guillermo del Toro's gothic romance is certainly steeped in horror. There are supernatural creatures ready to deliver jump
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scares and plenty of gore to go around, but it's far from a conventional horror movie, which makes
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it so weird then that the trailer sold it as your regular multiplex fare, a horror closer to the
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Conjuring or Ouija. Now, there's nothing wrong with those kinds of movies, of course
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but it meant that audiences going into Crimson Peak were expecting a straightforward ghost tale
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and were left with few scares and mainly a family melodrama and a lengthy opening
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that keeps the horror elements to the minimum. As one character makes clear, this isn't a ghost
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story, it's more a story with a ghost in it. The ghost is just a metaphor. The boy
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After Annabelle reminded everyone that horror movies about killer dolls can bring in stacks
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and stacks of cash, it was unsurprising when similar films were quickly put into the works
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One of these was the unimaginatively titled The Boy, a horror that swapped out the disheveled
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Annabelle for an eerily well-dressed doll called Brams. The trailers promised the kind of scares
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that act as this subgenre's bread and butter. You know the ones, the little doll kicking back in a
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rocking chair, very slowly turning his head when people aren't looking, and returning unharmed when
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his own is thrown away. And for the majority of the movie, this is exactly what it delivered
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audiences got to see the killer doll tropes played straight, as a family move into a house and become wary of Brahms
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until a late reveal throws all that on its head. That's because, as it turns out, this isn't a killer doll movie at all
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but rather a movie about a human killer who lives in the walls of the house
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Brahms the doll had no supernatural properties at all. Well, not until he was given some via a sequel retcon
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and the real Brahms was a disturbed man living in secret passageways the whole time


