You’re watching a pretty decent movie and then all of a sudden things start to happen and you have to back it up and wonder just where in the hell things went off the rails since the movie appears to have morphed into something completely different than what you were expecting. This is a ruined effect thanks to trailers, but with some movies, it’s still easy to be surprised when they somehow switch genres and reveal their true face when the story really gets going. There aren’t a lot of movies that can do this with such precision that it takes people unaware since a few of those that have done have clunked their way through and kind of dropped the surprise in the laps of the audiences, metaphorically speaking, without any real fanfare or tact. Some movies though manage to do this in such a sneaky fashion that you can’t help but be impressed since it was a bold move and it turned out just fine since it helped to create a different angle that you weren’t aware was coming. It’s kind of impressive how this happens, but sometimes it’s a definite ‘what the hell’ moment that makes a person pause and go back to the movie they were watching only to realize it’s the same flick.
Here are a few movies that switched genre partway through the movie.
5. Sunshine
What started as a mission to restart the sun so that the earth wouldn’t freeze over completely and kill everything became a thriller at some point with the supposedly dead Pinbacker coming back to wreak havoc among the crew. As if the situation wasn’t dire enough, there was at that point a murderous captain that was claiming that God told him to send humanity to heaven, which could be chalked up to dementia brought on by his stay in space but was definitely one of the worst bouts of reasoning by any character since it indicates that he wasn’t operating with a full deck at that point.
4. Hot Fuzz
Kind of like Shaun of the Dead this movie kicked off showing a guy that’s kind of down on his luck and has a rather boring life, well, the opposite though since Nicholas Angel was an exemplary cop who didn’t have the greatest personal life since he took things way too seriously. But when he was booted out of his precinct and promoted to a sergeant’s position in the country it would have appeared that the movie was going to be a kind of comedy that would pit an overzealous cop up against a quiet little burg where nothing really happened and his skills were kind of useless in a big way, up until it became apparent that the reason the town was so peaceful had nothing to do with ‘peace’ in the first place.
3. The Guest
A guy claiming to be a military friend of their son wouldn’t be that suspicious at first, but it would appear that the guy had a few screws loose since he could go from friendly and likable to pure psycho in a very short amount of time. The first impression was that this guy had issues of his own, but when it was revealed that he was a test subject from a clandestine program and was bound to kill anyone and everyone without any thought of preserving any life other than his own, the whole thing kind of up and switched gears as it became more important to wonder just what he was going to do next.
2. The Talented Mr. Ripley
This movie might have actually been pretty boring if not for the fact that Tom laid an oar upside Dickey’s head in a sudden fit of anger that he instantly regretted as despite the shock and the pain, Dickey meant to kill Tom in the next second. The idea that Tom had issues after that since he spent the rest of the afternoon in the boat with Dickey’s corpse after beating him to death, was more than evident. But what might have been a sordid but overall boring movie up to the point became something that most people should be able to admit was a thriller without question from that moment until the ending.
1. From Dusk Till Dawn
When it comes to switching genres this movie is one of the absolute best since up until Salma Hayek’s character pulled her transformation into a hairless, spotted vampire queen it might have been thought that the movie was going to be a gangster flick that was going to take a few interesting turns. Let’s be honest here and say that it was George Clooney’s tough-guy routine that carried a good part of the movie since otherwise, it might have been a little dull and not that exciting. But the sudden switch…whoa.
Not every movie can flip genres on a dime, and those that can still have to do it just right.
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