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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 SciForWhatCulture.com and these are 10 movies that are totally different by the end.
00:3310. 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 Gekko, 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.
00:55At the midway point, 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 who 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 Gekko's hold up a liquor store, no vampires in sight.
01:18For many movies, such a stark shift would simply tick the audience off, yet in From Dusk Till Dawn's case,
01:23the second half is such an absurdly entertaining, no-holds-barred blast that few have ever bothered to complain.
01:299. Audition
01:31Takeshi Miike's filmography is so absurdly eclectic, spanning 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, begins as a seemingly down-the-line romantic drama
01:47in which a lonely widower, Shigahara Ayama, holds a series of mock auditions in an attempt to find a new wife.
01:53One gets the sense that Miike thoroughly enjoys toying with the audience throughout the film's first act,
01:57which 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 Miike lets loose with a full-on stomach-churning horror show.
02:10Asami, who is revealed to be a jealously deranged psychopath, drugs Shigaharu with a paralytic agent,
02:15tortures him and then uses a wire saw to cut off one of his feet.
02:18The nightmare scenario only ends when Shigaharu's son returns home and kicks Asami down the stairs to her death.
02:24That's quite the escalation from a bereavement dramedy that Miike offered us in the opening 40 or so minutes.
02:308. Million Dollar Baby
02:33When you start watching Million Dollar Baby, it looks like the most typical Clint Eastwood movie ever made.
02:37A well-crafted, if familiar, drama that sends the masses home happy.
02:41From 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, attempts to reach the ranks of professional
02:50with the help of her grizzled old trainer Frankie Dunn.
02:53Yet at the end of the second act, there's a jaw-dropping turn
02:56where Maggie is sucker-punched from behind by an opponent between rounds
02:59and hits her head on a corner stool, breaking her neck.
03:02The rest of the film becomes a devastating drama which, rather than have Maggie recover from her injury
03:07and return to the ring, segues into a meditation on euthanasia
03:10as Frankie wrestles with Maggie's request to help her die.
03:14Ultimately, he complies, ending the film on a heart-wrenching yet brilliantly executed down note
03:19which couldn't be further from the rocky-est underdog yarn most surely expected from the beginning.
03:247. The Guest
03:26Adam Wingard's Tenacious The Guest was largely sold as a horror film
03:30and 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, an apparent army buddy of their dead son,
03:40set audiences up to anticipate a twisted, seemingly horrifying reveal involving David's true identity.
03:46Yet by Act 3, the guest slaloms seamlessly into vaguely sci-fi action thriller territory
03:51when we learn that David was actually a test subject in a military super soldier experiment
03:56and is programmed to kill anyone who might compromise his identity.
03:59What follows is a bloodbath as David mows down anyone who gets in his way
04:03before the film morphs again into a slasher flick when David chases remaining family members Anna and Luke through a haunted house.
04:09Hilariously though, Wingard defies our expectations once more as the film ends with Anna and Luke making it to her parents' safety
04:15albeit while a presumed dead David resurfaces once more, having somehow survived a brutal stab wound and disappears into the night.
04:23Needless to say, audience has considered many possible endings for the guest
04:26but a third act that weaved between three distinct genres, sci-fi action and horror, probably wasn't on their minds.
04:336. Miracle Mile
04:36Cult 80's thriller Miracle Mile does a frankly magnificent job of luring the audience into a false sense of security.
04:42The first twenty-ish minutes introduce us to lead Harry and his love interest Julie without even a hint of the horrors awaiting them.
04:49The establishing scenes are styled in the vein of a corny cutesy romcom as Harry and Julie meet, quickly fall for one another
04:55and agree to meet as a coffee shop after her work shift ends.
04:59But oh shucks, a power cut means that Harry doesn't wake up on time.
05:03It sounds like a totally banal misunderstanding on which to hinge a perfectly mediocre indie romcom
05:08and yet writer-director Steve Deschanet has something else in store altogether.
05:13As it turns out, Harry answers a payphone at the coffee shop and is informed by the person on the other end of the line
05:18that nuclear war is apparently set to break out within 70 minutes.
05:22At this point, Miracle Mile morphs into a paranoid suspense thriller in which Harry attempts to entertain the truth while making contact with Julie.
05:29And as almost polar opposite to their adorable date at the start of the movie, it ends with the pair trapped in a helicopter
05:35that's sinking into La Brea Tar Pit, the very place they met at the start of the film.
05:40With no means of escape, they resign themselves to their fate, their only solace being that a direct hit from a nuke would turn them into diamonds.
05:46Lovely.
05:47Number five, Kill List.
05:50Ben Wheatley's 2011 crime flick Kill List offers a straightforward yet intriguing premise as two former British soldiers, Jay and Gal,
05:57take a job to carry out three killings in exchange for a hefty payday.
06:01Though 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.
06:08It isn't until the final 15 minutes that things finally come into focus.
06:12As 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.
06:22Gal is then mortally wounded by the cultists while Jay is knocked unconscious and wakes up in a field
06:27where he's stripped, fitted with a mask and told to kill his final target, the Hunchback, who is armed with a knife.
06:33Jay complies only to learn that the Hunchback was in fact his wife, Shell, and son, Sam, hidden under a mask and coat.
06:39The film then ends ambiguously with the cult seemingly crowning Jay as their new king.
06:44For a film that was lastly presented as a gritty low-budget crime thriller, the sharp left turn into folk horror,
06:50even with the preceding weirdness leading up to it, was a bracingly effective shock.
06:544. Hancock
06:56Hancock starts off as A Damn Fun Time, an incredibly silly and puerile comedy in which an alcoholic superhero,
07:02John Hancock causes all manner of destruction across LA before PR specialist Ray Embry steps in to try and help rehabilitate his image.
07:10Though that basic set-up sounds like the recipe for an entertainingly broad comedy,
07:14the script, co-written by Breaking Bad's Vince Gilligan, had something else in mind.
07:18At the start of the third act, we learn that Ray's wife, Mary, is also a superhero,
07:23and more to the point, she and Hancock were previously married until Hancock lost his memory in an accident 80 years earlier and she left him.
07:30Moreover, the closer together Hancock and Mary are, the more mortal they become,
07:34and in order to maintain their powers, they must again split up.
07:37And so, Hancock's finale becomes a far more dour and earnest story than the hour of silly fun times that preceded it,
07:43offering up a mawkish pondering on the nature of god-like entities,
07:47and a thoroughly sappy ending in which Hancock takes leave so that Mary and Ray can reconcile.
07:523. Bone Tomahawk
07:54S. Craig Zala's Bone Tomahawk is a western quite like no other,
07:58despite the fact that it seems to be a totally conventional entry at first sight.
08:02Even with a bloody opening sequence in which two brigands are brutally murdered by a local native,
08:07Zala's film seems to be operating fully within the tradition of a good old-fashioned pulpy western romp.
08:12At the end of the first act, Sheriff Franklin Hunt forms a rescue party to retrieve a number of locals
08:17believed to have been kidnapped by troglodytes, that is, a tribe of inbred murderous cannibals.
08:22Even with the troglodytes' nature being clearly described to us so early on,
08:26most of the movie's remainder plays out as a fairly familiar, albeit well-crafted, western journey.
08:31That is, at least, until we reach Act 3 and Hunt's party finally comes face-to-face with the troglodytes themselves.
08:37At this point, Bone Tomahawk mutates into a nauseatingly violent horror film,
08:41in 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,
08:49as Hunt and his fellow survivors escape their imprisonment,
08:52and attempt to murder the troglodyte horde, which they largely do in wildly grisly fashion.
08:572. Sorry to Bother You
08:59Sorry to Bother You starts off as an apparent workplace satire in the vein of office space,
09:03albeit 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.
09:12For most of the movie, we observe Cash rising through the company's ranks,
09:15and as he becomes wealthy, seemingly abandoning his prior pro-worker idealism.
09:20But writer-director Boots Riley pulls a sharp handbrake turn in Act 3,
09:24when Cash attends a party held by his company's CEO, Steve Lift,
09:28and discovers a group of human-horse hybrids shackled up.
09:31Bet you didn't see that one coming.
09:33It turns out Lift is using a gene-modifying power to transform his employees into Equi Sapiens,
09:39who are stronger and more obedient, and therefore generates more money for the company.
09:43At film's end, Cash himself begins to sprout three horse-like nostrils,
09:47and then leads an army of revolting Equi Sapiens to break down the front door of Lift's home.
09:52Did a single living soul see such an insane shift coming from black comedy to surreal fantasy sci-fi?
09:591. 10 Cloverfield Lane
10:02Even with the word Cloverfield in the title, Paramount and producer JJ Abrams decided to market their spin-off,
10:0710 Cloverfield Lane, as a claustrophobic, self-contained thriller,
10:11largely taking place in a single location.
10:14And indeed, it kicks off with protagonist Michelle
10:16crashing her car and waking up in an underground bunker,
10:19alongside survivalist Howard and another resident Emmett.
10:23Howard claims that apocalyptic situation above ground
10:25makes it impossible for them to leave the compound for a few years,
10:28and both Michelle and we as viewers are basically immediately distrustful of him.
10:33Yet 10 Cloverfield Lane veers suddenly off course in the last 10 minutes
10:36when Michelle escapes Howard to the outside world
10:38and learns that he was basically sorta right.
10:41She soon enough spots an alien biomechanical craft in the distance
10:44and spends the movie's remaining minutes battling a creature which drops from it.
10:48Even though many expected to see an alien monster at some point in the film,
10:51by this time it was so close to wrapping up
10:53that many had just assumed that 10 Cloverfield Lane
10:55would indeed be a mere psychological thriller set within the Cloverfield universe.
11:00It finally shifted gears at the very end,
11:02in a move which some criticise as tacked on and unnecessary,
11:05while others appreciated it as fans of the original Cloverfield.
11:09And that's the list!
11:10Let us know what you thought of this video down in the comments below,
11:13and any other films that you can think of that change genre halfway through.
11:17Make sure you like this video, share it with your friends,
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11:21I've been Cy for WhatCulture, and have a good week!
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