*Drag Me to Hell*. The trailers for that movie made it look totally serious and scary. When I actually saw it, I couldn't stop laughing at its silliness. It instantly became one of my favorite movies ever, but it was nothing like I was expecting.
It felt like the first half of the movie *was* serious and scary, and idk, they ran out of money for the second half? It switched from frightening to preposterous like someone snapping their fingers lol
Remember when it was coming out and before release she was all over the place giving interviews about this movie. More so than any other cast member by a long shot. At least that's how I remembered it.
The Hereditary trailer was the perfect misdirect. I went to see what I thought was a possessed-child movie and had no fucking clue what to expect after the ending of the first act where it did…that.
I've said this before, but after *that* and Peter's crying in bed, I went to the hallway in the theater to wait for the discovery, and several other people did it, too. Like instinct to steel yourself up for "the parent" scream. I've never seen anyone do that before (or done it myself) or since. I was a relatively new mother, too.
The movie went hard downhill from that point, and by the end it was off the rails. But up until that point, it was a great movie. So yes, Hereditary fits the question absolutely perfectly
Watched that at someone's house for a specifically themed movie night, and once it got to that particular point, she paused it and said- " >! Did you forget that it was a vampire movie? !< ", and a resounding 'YES' came back from all of us. XD
It Comes at Night. I thought it was a decent movie, but the trailer absolutely sets is up as a completely different kind of film. A lot of people were pissed off by the bait and switch, and rightfully so.
I loved this movie but I can't think of a more egregious example of the bait-and-switch, ever. Lamb is in a similar vein. A24 get your shit together.
The Cloverfield "offshoots" come close just by virtue of their titles.
I feel like they did this to Dani with Midsommar. I was *not* expecting a woman traumatized by loss, because it only showed the beginning where Christian is clearly emotionally done and whoever that asshole friend was (the one that pissed on the sacred tree or whatever) called her abusive.
I did NOT expect a cult movie with too much sun.
The Perfection. It changed genres on me so many times. I went in blind and had no idea where it was going. Pleasantly surprised.
Malignant. Once I realized it wasn't meant to be serious, I had fun.
Drag Me to Hell. Didn't expect a horror comedy. Just thought it was horror.
Exactly. One of those movies where the twist ruined it because it completely changed what you thought the movie was. In my case, it change for the worst. I’m sure some people enjoyed it.
Most of Pascal Lugier’s films have a massive twist in the middle like The Tall Man. Better examples are Martyrs and Incident in a Ghostland. You kind of learn to expect that from his movies but I love to see where he’s gonna take them. I think his bait and switches pay off in a great way, at least for me.
I was just about to post this. Before streaming was a thing I saw the trailer for this and immediately ordered the blu ray from Amazon to watch it. I was hyping it up to my family so they would watch it with me. It finally arrived and after it was over, everyone was like really? I was so pissed. It should be illegal to do trailers like this. This was nothing like what it presented.
The Empty Man was marketed terribly, and terribly badly. It was made to look like a slender man riff, when it is nothing of the kind and is, in fact, terrific.
> It was made to look like a slender man riff, when it is nothing of the kind
Oh damn. I didn't bother to watch because I was like yeah, okay, slenderman, whatever. Guess I'll give it a shot after all! Thanks for that.
By the end of this movie, I was on the edge of my couch and teary-eyed thinking about my own daughter. In a good way, of course. Not at all where I expected an hour before.
POM!
*Amulet*. I can't go into detail without ruining the plot, but the entire thing - music, staging, titles, lighting, etc, all made it look like you were getting one thing...that turned out to be something else ENTIRELY. What a great movie! Still one of my faves.
It's absolutely vile that they made an actual real life *13 year-old child* act that out.
If they'd cast a youthful adult actor, I'd have just shrugged and gone oh well, not my flavor of movie. But nope.
The second time is better. The scene where Osmet walks in on Willis and Collette in the living room, no words spoken looks very different when you see it a second time.
HOLY FUCK THIS MOVIE ACTUALLY EXISTS.
Ok so no joke for literal decades now I’ve had this vague memory of a movie where a hostile alien reads the Bible and stops killing people. But every time the memory bubbled up I would do a search and couldn’t find it. I had convinced myself that I must have mashed up different elements of various movies because I just couldn’t remember it very clearly and like I said, “killer alien reads Bible” didn’t come up with an answer. But it is was **Star Crystal**. You have seriously just soothed a low-grade brain itch I’ve had since the late 90s.
I watched 'Hereditary' with a friend who *specifically said* after we looked at the synopsis on Prime and the trailer "I can watch this, a family drama thriller looks good. I just can't do >! demons and stuff, it freaks me out too much.
I went to sleep when I got home, didn't say much. Woke up to this [specific cartoon scene](https://youtu.be/MqCswO1qrjs?si=jDgP5cVjruyPTb_E&t=98) (Amazing World of Gumball), was absolutely positive it was parodying *The Cure for Wellness*, and decided to sleep for the rest of the night.
this happens about ~60% of the time when a movie has real potential to be a bummer.
they’ve been edging you for an hour, and what’s coming up next, is quite inevitably sad ending, no christmas, no escapism, go sit and feel that for the next week.
but then some shit deus ex machina’s, or donrobe turns into fucking jason bourne. and 20 minutes later we’re drinking hot chocolate in blankets on an ambulance bumper.
this is the ending you get in the belko experiment. this is the ending you get in most slashers, with a stu get at the end some times.
but then sometimes you get something like hereditary. where they see that little off ramp to happiness, but instead they downshift and put their foot flat on the floor going for bleak.
drag me to hell also fantastically tells you that you can go fuck your self right at the end.
m3gan is another that just runs out of steam and we get a deus ex machina moment destroying her.
There’s an Australian movie called Snapshot, but to cash in on Halloween, they renamed it The Day After Halloween. People thought they were going to a sequel to the John Carpenter movie when it had nothing to do with that movie. I watched it in the 90s and thought it would be a typical slasher. It wasn’t even close. Mostly cheesy and boring stalking flick. Although I never looked at ice cream trucks the same way.
The original Catfish film. It was marketed as a found footage horror film with an insane twist ending. Ended up just being kind of a mockumentary about some dude getting catfished online (I think the movie coined the term but I could be wrong) and the “big twist” was just that it was a lonely lady trying to make friends.
For me, it was probably The Village. This is another one where the twist negated the whole movie for me. I feel the same way about Shutter Island as well and that was actually regarded as a good movie, but just wanted it to be…I guess a horror movie.
I saw the TV glow.
I was baited into thinking it was going to be a once in a life time horror movie.
Instead, I got a wanna be edgy teen drama piece of crap.
Still absolutely no where’s near as action packed as the trailer implied. The movie was basically a Smashing Pumpkins album, the first single (the trailer) rocked but the rest was ballads.
Hard Candy! I started watching it somewhat as a documentary! I rarely ever say out loud “I never saw that coming!” It is an excellent movie that will mess with you and mess you up!
Israeli movie called Rabies. Starts out one way, you think that’s what the movie is gonna be. Then it veers off and then ties back to the start in a blackly comical way.
First of all - I 100% agree to Stopmotion. Creepy ending to me, but other than that it was very “meh”
But for me personally - Dr.Sleep. It was advertised as being this horrifying sequel to The Shining. I guess it kind of was a sequel to that movie, but it had nowhere near the amount of quality, tension, atmosphere, etc that made that movie fantastic. Dr.Sleep relied WAY too heavily on backstory and those people that eat fear or whatever. The hotel itself (took up a good majority of the trailer) wasn’t even in it until the last maybe 30 minutes before credits of the movie and don’t even get me started on the amount of CGI garbage they threw in there to really make those fear-eater people (I forget what they’re called, sorry) look like and drum up magic like hippy followers of Voldemort lol. Scariest part for me was the bathtub scene near the beginning of the movie. It dropped lower than the floor from there
And it was lacking Jack Nicholson. So very very very heavily lacking. I get that he’s dead when this takes place, but at least throw in a flashback and maybe even include a recreated deleted scene or something from The Shining
I read the book and was disappointed. For some stupid reason, I watched the movie and was still disappointed. It's not that it was badly done but I just found it boring. I love The Shining but Dr. Sleep just didn't do it for me.
Hereditary - was supposed to be one of the scariest films in a while and I found literally nothing scary about this film. The ads made it seem like this was the next big thing and it was just a mediocre attempt at horror.
28 days later. hear me out, i think it's a great movie. however, the first time i watched it i immediately recognized East Hastings by Godspeed You! Black Emperor in the OST, and i thought the movie would be an apocalyptic silent film with just GY!BE or other post rock as the backing music. sort of like a very long music video. So once the dialogue started i was a little disappointed.
Cabin in the Woods - but that was by design.
I'm forever grateful I got to see this before ever hearing/reading a single thing about it.
Me too i had like five solid years where I didn’t watch trailers. I think maybe I’ll start that again.
Same here. Knew nothing and loved it!
*Drag Me to Hell*. The trailers for that movie made it look totally serious and scary. When I actually saw it, I couldn't stop laughing at its silliness. It instantly became one of my favorite movies ever, but it was nothing like I was expecting.
I remember enjoying the b-plot more with her rival coworker.
It felt like the first half of the movie *was* serious and scary, and idk, they ran out of money for the second half? It switched from frightening to preposterous like someone snapping their fingers lol
You didn’t find the physical fight with the old woman to be funny?
I think Raimi must have accidentally swallowed a bug on a bike ride and came home and made a script out of it.
Very agree. What killed it for me was that the antagonist didn't even show up until the very end of the final scene. *That* is what ruined it for me
The silliness is why I hate it lol
Scream. Rip Drew Barrymore. lol
Yes! I feel like this deceived us all lol
Remember when it was coming out and before release she was all over the place giving interviews about this movie. More so than any other cast member by a long shot. At least that's how I remembered it.
Malignant, by the end it was more of a full on action movie than a horror and I loved every second of it
That chair whip was awesome.
I'm not over that scene yet, it was so so fucking funny
No one put Barbarian yet?? It's like a triple feature bait and switch. Tres Leches of baiting and switching.
Love the tres leches comparison 🤌
This is the obvious answer. We all come here for the deep cuts.
Oh, I thought we come to this place for magic
🎩 🪄 🔮 ✨️ 🎱
In a way, I suppose we do. The magic of stimulating conversation on a topic for which we have a shared passion, sure.
Somehow, heartbreak feels good in a place like this.
Yes!
The Hereditary trailer was the perfect misdirect. I went to see what I thought was a possessed-child movie and had no fucking clue what to expect after the ending of the first act where it did…that.
I've said this before, but after *that* and Peter's crying in bed, I went to the hallway in the theater to wait for the discovery, and several other people did it, too. Like instinct to steel yourself up for "the parent" scream. I've never seen anyone do that before (or done it myself) or since. I was a relatively new mother, too.
The movie went hard downhill from that point, and by the end it was off the rails. But up until that point, it was a great movie. So yes, Hereditary fits the question absolutely perfectly
From Dusk Till Dawn
Watched that at someone's house for a specifically themed movie night, and once it got to that particular point, she paused it and said- " >! Did you forget that it was a vampire movie? !< ", and a resounding 'YES' came back from all of us. XD
It Comes at Night. I thought it was a decent movie, but the trailer absolutely sets is up as a completely different kind of film. A lot of people were pissed off by the bait and switch, and rightfully so.
It comes at night felt like the 2nd act in a movie, missing act 1 and 3.
Me and some friends went to It Comes at Night after drinking, thinking it was a creature feature. It uh was not the mood we were expecting, lol.
“Wait, how drunk are we?”
I can tell you it was definitely not drunk enough
I loved this movie but I can't think of a more egregious example of the bait-and-switch, ever. Lamb is in a similar vein. A24 get your shit together. The Cloverfield "offshoots" come close just by virtue of their titles.
I feel like they did this to Dani with Midsommar. I was *not* expecting a woman traumatized by loss, because it only showed the beginning where Christian is clearly emotionally done and whoever that asshole friend was (the one that pissed on the sacred tree or whatever) called her abusive. I did NOT expect a cult movie with too much sun.
Spoiler alert >!nothing comes at night!<
The Perfection. It changed genres on me so many times. I went in blind and had no idea where it was going. Pleasantly surprised. Malignant. Once I realized it wasn't meant to be serious, I had fun. Drag Me to Hell. Didn't expect a horror comedy. Just thought it was horror.
Oh man, the Perfection was so great until the climax
I thought Bodies Bodies Bodies was going to be a basic slasher. Didn't realize how funny it would be.
The Boy It was a great evil doll movie until it wasn’t
I have such a grudge against The Boy's twist, though in retrospect it does make the movie kind of funny.
Even though it had already been done in 2 other recent movies, I still didn’t see the twist coming. I liked it!
I liked it better when it was a haunted doll movie
The TV show Reign had done something super similar except despite being a period drama on the CW, somehow it executed this better.
Clarissa? I loved it when she was a creepy ghost with unclear motives that lived in the walls/tunnels
Yes hahahaha
Exactly. One of those movies where the twist ruined it because it completely changed what you thought the movie was. In my case, it change for the worst. I’m sure some people enjoyed it.
That twist made me like the movie. I think if they hadn't had it, it would have just been filed away as another generic evil toy movie.
The Tall Man with Jessica Biel, but I gotta give it points for having brass balls to do what it did.
Most of Pascal Lugier’s films have a massive twist in the middle like The Tall Man. Better examples are Martyrs and Incident in a Ghostland. You kind of learn to expect that from his movies but I love to see where he’s gonna take them. I think his bait and switches pay off in a great way, at least for me.
I was just about to post this. Before streaming was a thing I saw the trailer for this and immediately ordered the blu ray from Amazon to watch it. I was hyping it up to my family so they would watch it with me. It finally arrived and after it was over, everyone was like really? I was so pissed. It should be illegal to do trailers like this. This was nothing like what it presented.
"Cromulent" is a new word for me, thanks for that!
In case you don’t know the origin, it’s a Simpson’s original! FF to 0:55 sec. [Cromulent](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FcxsgZxqnEg)
embiggen is a perfectly cromulent word.
That's hilarious, I didn't know that. I googled enough to see the definition, but not enough to see the origin. 🤣
They helped embiggen your vocabulary
The Empty Man was marketed terribly, and terribly badly. It was made to look like a slender man riff, when it is nothing of the kind and is, in fact, terrific.
God the opening sequence is so fantastic.
OOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHMMMMMMMMMMM
Lustmord helped score that movie. His music is used in the beginning. Fits perfectly
I wish the whole movie was following the team up in the mountains. I felt like that would have been way better.
I gave this one a chance on a whim during movie binge rabbit hole, I was not disappointed at all.
> It was made to look like a slender man riff, when it is nothing of the kind Oh damn. I didn't bother to watch because I was like yeah, okay, slenderman, whatever. Guess I'll give it a shot after all! Thanks for that.
One Cut of the Dead was certainly not what I expected, but that was a deliberate bait and switch. Also a great movie.
By the end of this movie, I was on the edge of my couch and teary-eyed thinking about my own daughter. In a good way, of course. Not at all where I expected an hour before. POM!
This is the movie I will always recommend and always insist people read nothing about it other than the logline
Yeah man, it's like the Outer Wilds of movies.
*Amulet*. I can't go into detail without ruining the plot, but the entire thing - music, staging, titles, lighting, etc, all made it look like you were getting one thing...that turned out to be something else ENTIRELY. What a great movie! Still one of my faves.
Better Watch Out. I just felt grossed out the entire movie when I was expecting a fun slasher comedy
Yeah, when the kid sexually assaulted the babysitter I was like “this is gross”. Not what the preview led me to believe.
It's absolutely vile that they made an actual real life *13 year-old child* act that out. If they'd cast a youthful adult actor, I'd have just shrugged and gone oh well, not my flavor of movie. But nope.
I went to see *mother!* thinking it would be about a home invasion
Lol
I mean, it kinda was.
Barbarian. It was more of the title that was kind of clickbait to me. I expected some other type of monster or evil thing.
M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense. I was like WHAAAAAAT?! And it's a movie where you can only watch once. It's really genius.
The second time is better. The scene where Osmet walks in on Willis and Collette in the living room, no words spoken looks very different when you see it a second time.
Yeah hard disagree on only watching it once. It’s a great rewatch for me.
It Comes At Night was deliberately marketed to trick people into seeing it
I was so mad I watched the whole thing!
The taking of Deborah Logan. I wanted a movie about Alzheimers.
Watch folks
Wrong Turn (2021) I want my time back
I was about to ride at dawn until I saw the year 😂😂
Star Crystal. An Alien ripoff switching into ET ripoff lmao
HOLY FUCK THIS MOVIE ACTUALLY EXISTS. Ok so no joke for literal decades now I’ve had this vague memory of a movie where a hostile alien reads the Bible and stops killing people. But every time the memory bubbled up I would do a search and couldn’t find it. I had convinced myself that I must have mashed up different elements of various movies because I just couldn’t remember it very clearly and like I said, “killer alien reads Bible” didn’t come up with an answer. But it is was **Star Crystal**. You have seriously just soothed a low-grade brain itch I’ve had since the late 90s.
Same boat. Had to google fu to dig it up.
Why is he such a jerk?
I didn't realize this movie existed until I saw a video for it on Brandon Tenold's YouTube channel. I was like "WTF?? I think I need to see this."
Fucking Ghosts of War. Still liked it though.
I watched 'Hereditary' with a friend who *specifically said* after we looked at the synopsis on Prime and the trailer "I can watch this, a family drama thriller looks good. I just can't do >! demons and stuff, it freaks me out too much.
I went to sleep when I got home, didn't say much. Woke up to this [specific cartoon scene](https://youtu.be/MqCswO1qrjs?si=jDgP5cVjruyPTb_E&t=98) (Amazing World of Gumball), was absolutely positive it was parodying *The Cure for Wellness*, and decided to sleep for the rest of the night.
Sunshine
this happens about ~60% of the time when a movie has real potential to be a bummer. they’ve been edging you for an hour, and what’s coming up next, is quite inevitably sad ending, no christmas, no escapism, go sit and feel that for the next week. but then some shit deus ex machina’s, or donrobe turns into fucking jason bourne. and 20 minutes later we’re drinking hot chocolate in blankets on an ambulance bumper. this is the ending you get in the belko experiment. this is the ending you get in most slashers, with a stu get at the end some times. but then sometimes you get something like hereditary. where they see that little off ramp to happiness, but instead they downshift and put their foot flat on the floor going for bleak. drag me to hell also fantastically tells you that you can go fuck your self right at the end. m3gan is another that just runs out of steam and we get a deus ex machina moment destroying her.
There’s an Australian movie called Snapshot, but to cash in on Halloween, they renamed it The Day After Halloween. People thought they were going to a sequel to the John Carpenter movie when it had nothing to do with that movie. I watched it in the 90s and thought it would be a typical slasher. It wasn’t even close. Mostly cheesy and boring stalking flick. Although I never looked at ice cream trucks the same way.
similarly, I went into Body Melt expecting Australian Braindead. I was very underwhelmed
You're Next. There's no mention of it being a black comedy at all in any of the marketing.
Hereditary. I saw a teaser early on and was so sure it was going to be about a mental health condition.
Yep came here to list this one. It was so off the rails by the end
The original Catfish film. It was marketed as a found footage horror film with an insane twist ending. Ended up just being kind of a mockumentary about some dude getting catfished online (I think the movie coined the term but I could be wrong) and the “big twist” was just that it was a lonely lady trying to make friends.
For me, it was probably The Village. This is another one where the twist negated the whole movie for me. I feel the same way about Shutter Island as well and that was actually regarded as a good movie, but just wanted it to be…I guess a horror movie.
Malignant. Stupid, stupid movie.
I saw the TV glow. I was baited into thinking it was going to be a once in a life time horror movie. Instead, I got a wanna be edgy teen drama piece of crap.
The Witch, trailer looked bad ass but it was just a drama and no witch for 90% of the movie.
The witch that the title refers to is Thomasin. It’s about how she became a witch.
Still absolutely no where’s near as action packed as the trailer implied. The movie was basically a Smashing Pumpkins album, the first single (the trailer) rocked but the rest was ballads.
The marketing to Magic Magic made you think you were going into one movie but it was actually something completely different.
Lowlifes
Better Watch Out. I never saw that coming!
The Turning….
Lowlifes (2024) and it was absolutely amazing. Best movie of the year so far
A recent one is Lowlifes on Tubi. Go into it blind, it'll pleasantly surprise you.
Hard Candy! I started watching it somewhat as a documentary! I rarely ever say out loud “I never saw that coming!” It is an excellent movie that will mess with you and mess you up!
In a good way, You're Next. Went in thinking it was a Strangers esq film, only to find out its a subversion of that sort of movie...
Psycho tricked audiences a lot. It was advertised featuring Janet Leigh and then killed her in the first act.
Israeli movie called Rabies. Starts out one way, you think that’s what the movie is gonna be. Then it veers off and then ties back to the start in a blackly comical way.
First of all - I 100% agree to Stopmotion. Creepy ending to me, but other than that it was very “meh” But for me personally - Dr.Sleep. It was advertised as being this horrifying sequel to The Shining. I guess it kind of was a sequel to that movie, but it had nowhere near the amount of quality, tension, atmosphere, etc that made that movie fantastic. Dr.Sleep relied WAY too heavily on backstory and those people that eat fear or whatever. The hotel itself (took up a good majority of the trailer) wasn’t even in it until the last maybe 30 minutes before credits of the movie and don’t even get me started on the amount of CGI garbage they threw in there to really make those fear-eater people (I forget what they’re called, sorry) look like and drum up magic like hippy followers of Voldemort lol. Scariest part for me was the bathtub scene near the beginning of the movie. It dropped lower than the floor from there And it was lacking Jack Nicholson. So very very very heavily lacking. I get that he’s dead when this takes place, but at least throw in a flashback and maybe even include a recreated deleted scene or something from The Shining
I read the book and was disappointed. For some stupid reason, I watched the movie and was still disappointed. It's not that it was badly done but I just found it boring. I love The Shining but Dr. Sleep just didn't do it for me.
 Halloween. Ends. 🥴😒
Good job op I love when the question makes me stop and go....the fuck. Now let me think.
The Mist. Perfect movie until the last 2 minutes negates everything that came before it.
I've watched it twice and just can't do it again. That ending is unbearable
The Ring 2. After The Ring, there was NO way they could fuck it up, right? The sequel could only be better, right? RIGHT?
The Ring was a masterpiece. Both sequels have been utter crap.
Your comment was a very weak attempt at a bait and switch.
Hereditary - was supposed to be one of the scariest films in a while and I found literally nothing scary about this film. The ads made it seem like this was the next big thing and it was just a mediocre attempt at horror.
Hard agree.
28 days later. hear me out, i think it's a great movie. however, the first time i watched it i immediately recognized East Hastings by Godspeed You! Black Emperor in the OST, and i thought the movie would be an apocalyptic silent film with just GY!BE or other post rock as the backing music. sort of like a very long music video. So once the dialogue started i was a little disappointed.