Ever come across a movie that was entirely different from what the title and/or movie poster lead you to expect? I was cruising through the lineup on my favorite B-move channel, Tubi, and I came across something called “Sicilian Vampire”. Thinking that this would be Leslie Nielsen/National Lampoon type of farce, I clicked on it…and got a movie that was 90% straight mob movie and 10% vampire tale starring James Caan, Daryl Hannah, Paul Sorvino, Robert Davi, Robert Loggia, Armand Assante, Michael Paré, Eric Roberts, Daniel Baldwin and Art Hindle. They weren’t there in cameo roles-they were the lead actors, and they all played it seriously. I liked this film, but whoever thought up the title and created the movie poster should be shot.
The film Flight was advertised as a procedural - Did Denzel cause the crash or not?
The actual film was a character study about a mans addiction problems.
A few years ago, I was talking with Martin Kistler, the CEO of Ignition Creative, a marketing firm which specializes in movie production about Flight and while his firm didn’t do the trailer, they were involved in the bidding process. His point was that the job of the trailer is to get butts in seats, and sometimes they are given a movie which just won’t do it. And he flat out asked me:
“You went to the film expecting to see a procedural, right? Would you have seen the film if you knew it was about addiction?”
It’s a very dark violent movie. It was presented as a fantastical story that despite an R rating seemed suitable for young children. I enjoyed it but I know several people who were disturbed by what they saw, not really the content itself, but the expecting a more upbeat feel good movie.
Fight Club seems like a pretty good example of this. I’m quite sure I’m not the only person who had no interest in a movie about a fight club. It’s one of my favorite movies now. I’ve probably seen it at least a dozen times.
For some reason, I thought The Guest was a study of an emotionally damaged combat veteran trying to re-integrate into civilian life. I was expecting kind of a psychological drama. I’m not sure how I got that impression. I was wrong.
It was not a bad movie for what it was, just not what I thought it would be.
Back in the olden days, I rented Watership Down. I knew full well what to expect, but I had my little kids with me when I picked it up, and the guy at the register warned me it was not for them. I imagine he had fielded some complaints!
I love Pan’s labyrinth. An excellent movie, dark indeed. I had to watch the trailer, to see if you could actually think it would be suitable for young children, and honestly I don’t think it gives this impression. Even though you could have expected something less dark from it, indeed. The name of the director, however, should have been a hint.
I never saw a complete trailer, just the commercials, and some people talking about it on TV. It is a pretty good movie, but I understand people being surprised at what it actually was about. The tone of the commercials didn’t match what I saw in the movie. Others have mentioned similar circumstances with fantasy movies, I suppose that outside of horror and it’s related genres that it doesn’t pay to advertise how dark and violent a movie is.
And I thought thought from the little I knew about the movie that del Toro might be directing against type, and to some degree he was. He didn’t produce the film himself, not directly anyway, so he may have had no part in the marketing.
I knew what it was, but clearly all of the adults in the theater who brought their small children had no idea. Watching their reactions and then hurriedly packing up and shuffling out was almost as entertaining as the movie itself. I should have been taking notes on what points in the movie were the tipping point for the parents walking out. Most made it quite a while.
Hereditary, while advertised as a horror movie, was so much darker and emotionally charge than I could have imagined.The synopsis I read sounded so formulaic and, frankly corny, that I didn’t bother to see it in the theater. I did not expect to feel the way I did when it was over:eek:
Friends shined me on telling me it was the scariest horror movie ever. Saw a midnight showing, which sort of upped the tension that it was a horror movie. I knew absolutely nothing about it. Loved it.
From Dusk til Dawn is one of the best examples that springs to mind - especially as the first part is standard Tarantino wise-cracking gangster fare.
Another which surprised me was The Terminal with Tom Hanks. I expected some semi-serious Kafkaesque nightmare and found Hanks playing an international Mr Bean, for as long as I could tolerate it.
I had a small instance of that a few days ago. There is a 2015 Korean movie called The Beauty Inside where a guy has a rare condition where he wakes up every day with a completely different body, is forced to live an emotionally isolated life because of it, but then falls in love with a girl–but his rare medical condition makes establishing a relationship with her a difficult prospect. Then a 2018 American movie called Every Day came out where a guy has a rare condition where he wakes up every day with a completely different body, is forced to live an emotionally isolated life because of it, but then falls in love with a girl–but his rare medical condition makes establishing a relationship with her a difficult prospect. I assumed that the American movie was a fairly direct clone, but I pretty much stumbled into watching it recently and rather than having his own body change every day, he is some sort of mental parasite without a body that jumps into and possesses a different body every day.
This is more a case of relying on form rather than a trailer or a title. After a decade plus of loving everything those wacky, eccentric and charming Coen brothers had ever done, when Mrs Trep was out for the evening I treated myself to a trip to the cinema to see The Man Who Wasn’t There. Holy shit, that’s a tough watch.