I loved the movie BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA- fortunately I read the pre-release discussion here & the book, which I also loved. The ad campaigns for the theatrical release, the DVD release, AND NOW the PPV release are utterly horrid (and they get worse with each one). Btw, the author & her son, the screenwriter, feel the same way.
I was led to believe it was scary. Apparently I did not get the updated version of the dictionary in which “scary” is a synonym for “annoying beyond belief.”
Well, I don’t think you can call that “bait and switch” because the filmmakers arguably TRIED to make a scary movie, they just failed. I mean, by that standard, you could include all of Adam Sandler’s alleged comedies as “bait and switch” films.
Blair Witch was, literally and without hyperbole, the only movie that has ever scared me in the theater. Kubrick’s The Shining scared me when I watched it on tv, but then again I was 11 years old and home alone in a strange house. I’ve spent years (many of them while working at a video store with unfettered access to lots of movies) trying to find a truly scary movie, and that’s the only one that’s done it. Other movies may startle, but Blair Witch scared. I wasn’t able to rationalize or distance myself through effects; even though I knew it was fiction, it was the only scary movie that I’ve ever seen that felt like it COULD be real.
Terrified me, that movie did, and didn’t make going “home” to my tent at a strange campground where I knew no one very easy at all. And then some asshat decided it would be funny to make stick figure dudes and hang them up outside everyone’s tent. Grrr. Woke up that morning to screams all over the grounds.
So I’m sorry if it didn’t scare y’all, but it sure as heck scared some of us.
Hmm, wish I’d have known so I could have gone camping during the time I went to see the movie - apparently one’s life setting matters with this film. 
Blair Witch Project proved to me that not everyone should do improv. These guys needed an actual script instead of their scene-setting outlines because their version of “everyday speech” needed a lot of work. I don’t think I’ve heard “the f-word” so many times since seeing an Eddie Murphy film from before he started working on cartoons. I’m not shy about saying it - except when posting from somewhere that it might get flagged… - but I haven’t heard too many people use it that often in daily, casual conversation like that, plus it was pretty much the only expletive they used. That right there started me on disliking the film and the characters, as I didn’t find them believable.
Then we move on to stupid, stupid mistakes on their part. The intentional sabotage regarding the map - WTF? (Yeah, maybe the Eeeeeevil was behind that, sure…) At one point, they ignore a large plane flying overhead - one that low would probably either be not far from the airport it just took off from or is landing at, and they could watch its movement, figure out which situation it was, and head towards where they think the airport is. Or at least, even if they were wrong, they could have debated the issue or mentioned the plane, because you’d think intelligent lost people would be looking for all possible ways to get out, including watching for planes/helicopters.* Yeah, I lost pretty much all sympathy. I wasn’t interested until the very last scene, where I thought wait a minute, that wasn’t bad… and it’s over.
Back on topic, I have to second the recommendation of Event Horizon. It was a great-looking, interesting SF film that took a hard left turn into a bad remake of Hellraiser. In my mind, I imagine that the scriptwriter quit halfway through writing and some producer got the bright idea how to end the film.
- Or their editor could have noticed that and excised it from the shots in some fashion.
Yep. That’s what my horror-film loving friend and I call Event Horizon. Hellraiser in Space. Complete with Lament Box/engine.
I have the best example of this ever.
Avenging Angelo. It’s the worst Sylvester Stallone movie ever made. Think about the gravity of that statement.
Anyhoo, the American previews totally lie and try to present this film as a gritty mob revenge flick. In truth, it’s just a shitty shitty shitty romantic comedy. Interestingly, on the DVD, they have the American trailer and the European trailer. The European trailer plays up the shitty romantic angle.
Didn’t they DO a Hellraiser in Space?
View From the Top. New Year’s movie picked by female friends, but I had remembered the trailers, and it was marketed as a wacky airplane-related comedy (though not in the style of Airplane!). That’s why my friend picked it. It turned out to be a bland chick flick that was utterly forgettable aside from the sting of having been tricked into watching it.
I think that was a *Friday the 13th * in space.
No, you’re thinking of Leprechaun in Space.
I saw this on cable once. IIRC, there was a scene with a giant version of the Hellraiser box in space.
I’m right there with you. I love dark comedy, but this wasn’t one. This was an extremely depressing drama. I couldn’t even make it all the way through it.
From the ads I saw for it, I don’t think this is a “bait and switch”. The ads I saw were that it was about the early days of the CIA and the people that made it what it is. I never saw anything proporting it to be an action/thriller movie, more as a reenactment of the early days of the CIA.
“My God! It’s full of crap!”
As I recall, said friend and I have agreed that we shall not acknowledge the existence of this movie.
Speaking of which, Croenenberg’s Xistenz was another bait-and-switcher, I think.
Oh man, how much can I agree with this.
I wanted scifi. I was a senior in high school, I think, when it came out. I loved Star Wars and Star Trek and yay space! But I was feeling a little down and queasy that day, kind of carsick and made worse with popcorn and candy, but I came to sit through the movie with my best friend.
shifts uncomfortably “Holly, can we go?”
“Don’t be a baby.”
“I’m feeling sick…”
“But this is cool!”
“Urgh…”
And then came that scene with all the blood. You know, that one. With lots of sharp things.
No, the other one.
“I think I’m going to puke…”
“Shut UP!”
So yes. Every time I see that movie I’m seventeen and uncomfortable.
Holey crap, I just watched “Bridge to Terabithia”. That one takes the cake for bait and switch. Dayum.
The movie that got me was In & Out which, by the preview, looked to be a comedy about a guy trying to prove to everyone that he is straight. Instead it was a movie about a guy coming to grips with his homosexuality–nor even a very good one at that.