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These movies ended up in a completely different place from where they started.
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00:00It's fair to say that most movies let you know precisely what they're about from the first few scenes,
00:04establishing a style, mood and narrative through-line which endures until the end credits roll about two hours later.
00:11But not all filmmakers are interested in just giving audiences precisely what they expect.
00:15It's a risky trick to shift genre, reinvent style or just take the story to a wholly unexpected realm,
00:21which of course threatens to alienate less adventurous punters who may end up feeling manipulated.
00:25But when it works, it really works.
00:28I'm CypherWhatCulture.com and these are 10 movies that are totally different by the end.
00:33Number 10, From Dusk Till Dawn.
00:36Robert Rodriguez's From Dusk Till Dawn begins as a modest yet pulpy thriller in which two criminal brothers,
00:41Seth and Richie Gecko, take a family hostage while fleeing to Mexico.
00:45It's as grimy and foul-mouthed as you'd expect from any Tarantino-penned thriller,
00:48yet that first half is ultimately just setting the stage for one of the most legendary genre shifts in cinema history.
00:54At the midway points, Rodriguez's film reveals itself to be a secret B-movie.
00:59That is, an action horror film filled with bloodthirsty vampires and cartoonish supporting characters
01:04who look like they fell straight out of a comic book.
01:06By film's end, when Seth and Kate emerge as the only survivors from a night of hilariously over-the-top brutality,
01:12it couldn't seem much more divorced from the opening sequence in which the Geckos hold up a liquor store,
01:16no vampires in sight.
01:17For many movies, such a stark shift would simply tick the audience off,
01:21yet in From Dusk Till Dawn's case, the second half is such an absurdly entertaining,
01:25no-holds-barred blast that few have ever bothered to complain.
01:29Number 9, Audition.
01:31Takeshi Miki's filmography is so absurdly eclectic,
01:34spanning from Yakuza thriller to war epic to family comedy,
01:37that you can't ever be fully sure what you're about to see from him until the end credits have actually rolled.
01:42His 1999 film Audition, for example,
01:45begins a seemingly down-the-line romantic drama in which a lonely widower, Shigahara Ayama,
01:50holds a series of mock auditions in an attempt to find a new wife.
01:53One gets the sense that Miyake thoroughly enjoys toying with the audience throughout the film's first act,
01:58which is basically played entirely straight as an earnest melodrama.
02:01Though the object of Shigahara's affection, Asami certainly acts oddly throughout the film,
02:05it isn't until the third act that Miyake lets loose with a full-on stomach-churning horror show.
02:10Asami, who is revealed to be a jealously deranged psychopath,
02:13drugs Shigaharu with a paralytic agent,
02:15tortures him and then uses a wire saw to cut off one of his feet.
02:19The nightmare scenario only ends when Shigaharu's son returns home
02:22and kicks Asami down the stairs to her death.
02:24That's quite the escalation from a bereavement dramedy that Miyake offered us in the opening 40 or so minutes.
02:31Number 8, Million Dollar Baby.
02:33When you start watching Million Dollar Baby,
02:35it looks like the most typical Clint Eastwood movie ever made,
02:38a well-crafted, if familiar drama that sends the masses home happy.
02:42From its very first scenes, we're led to expect a conventional yet robust underdog sports tale
02:46in which an amateur boxer, Margaret Maggie Fitzgerald,
02:49attempts to reach the ranks of professional with the help of her grizzled old trainer, Frankie Dunn.
02:54Yet at the end of the second act, there's a jaw-dropping turn,
02:57where Maggie is sucker-punched from behind by an opponent between rounds
03:00and hits her head on a corner stool, breaking her neck.
03:03The rest of the film becomes a devastating drama,
03:05which, rather than have Maggie recover from her injury and return to the ring,
03:09segues into a meditation on euthanasia as Frankie wrestles with Maggie's request to help her die.
03:15Ultimately, he complies, ending the film on a heart-wrenching yet brilliantly executed down note,
03:20which couldn't be further from the rocky-est underdog yarn most surely expected from the beginning.
03:25Number 7, The Guest.
03:27Adam Wingard's Tenacious The Guest was largely sold as a horror film,
03:31and in fact one of the very first sights in the movie is of a jack-o'-lantern.
03:34The establishing scenes, in which a grieving family are visited by David,
03:38an apparent army buddy of their dead son,
03:41set audiences up to anticipate a twisted, seemingly horrifying reveal involving David's true identity.
03:47Yet by Act 3, The Guest slaloms seamlessly into vaguely sci-fi action thriller territory,
03:52when we learn that David was actually a test subject in a military super-soldier experiment,
03:57and is programmed to kill anyone who might compromise his identity.
04:00What follows is a bloodbath as David mows down anyone who gets in his way,
04:04before the film morphs again into a slasher flick,
04:06when David chases remaining family members Anna and Luke through a haunted house.
04:10Hilariously though, Wingard defies our expectations once more,
04:13as the film ends with Anna and Luke making it to apparent safety,
04:17albeit while a presumed dead David resurfaces once more,
04:20having somehow survived a brutal stab wound and disappears into the night.
04:24Needless to say, audience has considered many possible endings for The Guest,
04:27but a third act that weaved between three distinct genres,
04:30sci-fi, action and horror, probably wasn't on their minds.
04:34Number 6, Miracle Mile
04:36Cult 80s thriller Miracle Mile does a frankly magnificent job of luring the audience into a false sense of security.
04:43The first 20-ish minutes introduce us to lead Harry and his love interest Julie,
04:47without even a hint of the horrors awaiting them.
04:50The establishing scenes are styled in the vein of a corny, cutesy rom-com,
04:53as Harry and Julie meet, quickly fall for one another,
04:56and agree to meet at a coffee shop after her work shift ends.
05:00But, oh shucks, a power cut means that Harry doesn't wake up on time.
05:04It sounds like a totally banal misunderstanding on which to hinge a perfectly mediocre indie rom-com,
05:09and yet writer-director Steve Desjarnet has something else in store altogether.
05:14As it turns out, Harry answers a payphone at the coffee shop,
05:16and is informed by the person on the other end of the line,
05:19that nuclear war is apparently set to break out within 70 minutes.
05:23At this point, Miracle Mile morphs into a paranoid suspense thriller,
05:26in which Harry attempts to entertain the truth while making contact with Julie.
05:30And, as almost polar opposite to their adorable date at the start of the movie,
05:34it ends with the pair trapped in a helicopter that's sinking into La Brea Tar Pit,
05:38the very place they met at the start of the film.
05:41With no means of escape, they resign themselves to their fate,
05:44their only solace being that a direct hit from a nuke would turn them into diamonds.
05:47Lovely.
05:49Number 5. Kill List
05:50Ben Wheatley's 2011 crime flick Kill List offers a straightforward yet intriguing premise
05:55as two former British soldiers, Jay and Gal,
05:58take a job to carry out three killings in exchange for a hefty payday.
06:02The weirdness soon enough abounds as it becomes clear there's something more to Jay and Gal's mission.
06:06One of their target thanks them for killing him.
06:09It isn't until the final 15 minutes that things finally come into focus.
06:13As the pair prepare to carry out their third hit, they observe a cult ritual in the woods,
06:17which culminates in a human sacrifice, prompting an alarmed Jay to open fire on the assembled crowd.
06:23Gal is then mortally wounded by the cultists, while Jay is knocked unconscious and wakes up in a field,
06:28where he's stripped, fitted with a mask, and told to kill his final target,
06:32the Hunchback, who is armed with a knife.
06:34Jay complies, only to learn that the Hunchback was in fact his wife,
06:37Shel and son Sam, hidden under a mask and coat.
06:40The film then ends ambiguously, with the cult seemingly crowning Jay as their new king.
06:45For a film that was lastly presented as a gritty, low-budget crime thriller,
06:49the sharp left turn into folk horror, even with the preceding weirdness leading up to it,
06:53was a bracingly effective shock.
06:554. Hancock
06:57Hancock starts off as a damn fun time,
07:00an incredibly silly and puerile comedy,
07:02in which an alcoholic superhero, John Hancock, causes all manner of destruction across LA,
07:07before PR specialist Ray Embry steps in to try and help rehabilitate his image.
07:11Though that basic set-up sounds like the recipe for an entertainingly broad comedy,
07:15the script, co-written by Breaking Bad's Vince Gilligan, had something else in mind.
07:19At the start of the third act, we learn that Ray's wife, Mary, is also a superhero,
07:24and more to the point, she and Hancock were previously married,
07:26until Hancock lost his memory in an accident 80 years earlier, and she left him.
07:31Moreover, the closer together Hancock and Mary are, the more mortal they become,
07:35and in order to maintain their powers, they must again split up.
07:38And so, Hancock's finale becomes a far more dour and earnest story than the hour of silly fun
07:43times that preceded it, offering up a mawkish pondering on the nature of god-like entities,
07:48and a thoroughly sappy ending in which Hancock takes leave, so that Mary and Ray can reconcile.
07:533. Bone Tomahawk
07:55S. Craigsana's Bone Tomahawk is a western quite like no other,
07:59despite the fact that it seems to be a totally conventional entry at first sight.
08:03Even with a bloody opening sequence in which two brigands are brutally murdered by a local native,
08:08Zala's film seems to be operating fully within the tradition of a good old-fashioned pulpy western romp.
08:13At the end of the first act, Sheriff Franklin Hunt forms a rescue party to retrieve a number of locals
08:18believed to have been kidnapped by troglodytes, that is, a tribe of inbred murderous cannibals.
08:23Even with the troglodytes' nature being clearly described to us so early on, most of the movie's
08:27remainder plays out as a fairly familiar, albeit well-crafted, western journey.
08:32That is, at least, until we reach Act 3 and Hunt's party finally comes face-to-face with the troglodytes
08:37themselves. At this point, Bone Tomahawk mutates into a nauseatingly violent horror film,
08:43in which Hunt is forced to witness Deputy Nick be scalped, ripped in half, and eaten.
08:47The remainder of the movie is a glorified slasher joint, as Hunt and his fellow survivors escape
08:52their imprisonment, and attempt to murder the troglodyte horde, which they largely do in wildly
08:56grisly fashion.
08:57Number 2. Sorry to Bother You
08:59Sorry to Bother You starts off as an apparent workplace satire in the vein of office space,
09:04albeit from the perspective of the black experience, as our protagonist Cash gets a job as a telemarketer,
09:09and begins to mask his personality in order to perform better. For most of the movie, we observe Cash
09:14rising through the company's ranks, and as he becomes wealthy, seemingly abandoning his prior
09:19pro-worker idealism. But writer-director Boots Riley pulls a sharp handbrake turn in Act 3,
09:25when Cash attends a party held by his company's CEO, Steve Lift, and discovers a group of human-horse
09:31hybrids shackled up. Bet you didn't see that one coming. It turns out Lift is using a gene-modifying
09:36power to transform his employees into equi-sapiens, who are stronger and more obedient, and therefore
09:42generates more money for the company. At film's end, Cash himself begins to sprout three horse-like
09:47nostrils, and then leads an army of revolting equi-sapiens to break down the front door of
09:52Lift's home. Did a single living soul see such an insane shift coming from black comedy to surreal
09:58fantasy sci-fi?
10:00Number 1. 10 Cloverfield Lane
10:02Even with the word Cloverfield in the title, Paramount and producer JJ Abrams decided to market
10:07their spin-off, 10 Cloverfield Lane, as a claustrophobic, self-contained thriller largely
10:12taking place in a single location. And indeed, it kicks off with protagonist Michelle crashing
10:17her car and waking up in an underground bunker, alongside survivalist Howard and another resident
10:22Emmett. Howard claims that apocalyptic situation above ground makes it impossible for them to
10:27leave the compound for a few years, and both Michelle and we as viewers are basically immediately
10:32distrustful of him. Yet 10 Cloverfield Lane veers suddenly, of course, in the last 10 minutes,
10:37when Michelle escapes Howard to the outside world and learns that he was basically sorta
10:41right. She soon enough spots an alien biomechanical craft in the distance and spends the movie's
10:46remaining minutes battling a creature which drops from it. Even though many expected to
10:50see an alien monster at some point in the film, by this time it was so close to wrapping up
10:54that many had just assumed that 10 Cloverfield Lane would indeed be a mere psychological thriller
10:59set within the Cloverfield universe. It finally shifted gears at the very end, in a move
11:03which some criticise as tact on and unnecessary, while others appreciated it as fans of the
11:08original Cloverfield. And that's the list! Let us know what you thought of this video down
11:12in the comments below and any other films that you can think of that changed genre halfway through.
11:18Make sure you like this video, share it with your friends, subscribe and hit that notification
11:22bell! I've been Saif for WhatCulture and have a good week!
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