Top 10 Horror Movies So BAD They Were Pulled From Theatres

We’ll start our list with a question: is there such a thing as a “sacred cow?” Something that stands above parody or satire? Hong Kong may have thought so when it pulled the controversial 2023 film, “Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey” from theaters. The film’s plot repurposes classic childhood characters from the Hundred Acre Wood, and positions them in a slasher movie. The reception to “Pooh” was largely poor from critics, with some laying out the film’s failure at capitalizing on its one-note premise with story, humor or believable special effects. Hong Kong unceremoniously gave this silly old bear the hook, citing “technical reasons,” but we wouldn’t be surprised if it went beyond that considering Pooh’s contentious history with China.

Some movies do better in some countries than others. The 2021 “Resident Evil” reboot, subtitled “Welcome to Raccoon City,” performed decently at the United States box office, despite negative critical response. The situation was different in the United Kingdom, however, when the Odeon theater chain refused to screen the film. There seems to be two stories here, with Odeon claiming they couldn’t come to a distribution agreement with Sony Pictures, while other conjecture surmises mixed test screenings impacted Odeon’s decision. “Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City” certainly didn’t do boffo box office, but the film never even stood a chance of making any headway in the U.K.

The 1970s were a halcyon era for big budgeted and expansively cast disaster flicks. “The Swarm” was no exception, although this 1978 effort dared to bring a “when animals attack” sense of horror to the proceedings. Today, “The Swarm” is largely seen as “laughable” in this regard, and the flick is mostly relegated to “so bad it’s good” irony and meta appreciation. However, “The Swarm” failed to rake in proper numbers against its budget, was panned by critics, and didn’t last more than a fortnight before it was pulled from screens.

Horror films are traditionally solid money makers… if they stay under budget. “The Disappointments Room” from 2016 wasn’t only saddled with a nonsensical title, but also a $15 million price tag. This didn’t add up when the movie opened up to only $1.4 million on opening weekend before dropping down to less than $400 thousand on week two. The film was pulled from over 1,500 theaters to just thirty-six, eclipsing “Gigli” with regard to this historically sharp drop in screenings. The film didn’t even have positive word of mouth going for it on rental and VOD, as “The Disappointments Room’s” title is largely considered to be something of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Eli Roth’s 2002 feature “Cabin Fever” is largely considered to be among his best. It’s certainly one of the most successful, having raked in over $30 million at the box office against a $1.5 million budget. The remake from 2016, however? Not so much. The film, admittedly, was released to limited theaters during its modest original run, and was actually pulled from theaters in the UK and Argentina after barely two weeks. “Cabin Fever” 2016 has received grief from both horror fans and critics alike, with many claiming that the remake was simply extraneous to need.

There’s plenty of retroactive good will to be had with a lot of Disney’s PG-rated experiments from the 1980s. “Return to Oz,” “The Black Cauldron,” “Midnight Madness” and “Tron” are all great examples of this experiment working in spades. “The Watcher in the Woods” is too… but it only took a long time to reach that point. That’s because this Disney horror film was considered a colossal gaffe back in 1980, with its opening run at New York’s Ziegfeld Theatre cut short after only ten days. The public’s negative response actually predicated Disney’s reshooting the ending, although by then it was too little, too late. It wouldn’t be until television reruns and home video that “The Watcher in the Woods” would be reappraised.

There was a lot of hype prior to the release of “A Cure for Wellness” in 2016. From viral marketing campaigns to a quirky Super Bowl ad, Fox was gearing up for what they hoped would be the next, big horror shocker. And there are those (like the person writing this video) who absolutely LOVED “A Cure for Wellness.” However, the critical response to director Gore Verbinski’s film was mixed at best, and “A Cure for Wellness” bombed financially. The film’s revenue dropped so dramatically that “A Cure for Wellness” was cut from 2,704 to eighty-eight theaters after its second weekend, a record-breaking number. It just… wasn’t the sort of record Verbinski likely wanted on his resume.

It’s perhaps one of the most infamous examples of the Streisand Effect in horror movie history. The release of “Silent Night, Deadly Night” in 1984 could’ve been an otherwise innocuous addition to the holiday-themed series of slashers. However, Yuletide defenders rallied hard against the film’s depiction of a killer dressed up as Saint Nicholas, to the point where “Silent Night, Deadly Night” lost its advertising and theater screenings as a result of the negative publicity. All of this did, however, was to make people want to see it more, to the point where “Silent Night, Deadly Night” more than tripled its production budget, and received multiple sequels. Good job, protesters!

It’s one of the UK’s “video nasties,” a censored and banned film with a complicated history. “I Spit on Your Grave” was originally titled “Day of the Woman,” doing a modest run at drive-ins until a retitling and re-distribution gained the film worldwide infamy. The plot of a woman being repeatedly assaulted and getting her bloody revenge may have resulted in a modern era series of remakes and sequels, but the original “I Spit on Your Grave” failed at this wider box office. It was also reportedly yanked from a Chicago theater a week after release, and critically lambasted by Siskel and Ebert. Today, however, “I Spit on Your Grave” exists as a cult classic and, to some, a misunderstood (if graphic) allegory for feminism.

Uwe Boll is a maverick filmmaker with his own way of doing things, and he doesn’t care what the critics say about his films. However, this adversarial relationship didn’t stop his 2005 film adaptation of the “Alone in the Dark” video game from failing at the box office. The film is a consistent part of the conversation when it comes to worst films ever made, and “Alone in the Dark” only made $12 million theatrically on a $20 million budget. Furthermore, Boll’s film only lasted three weeks in the theater (we see a trend here), although home video markets were more kind to Boll’s, ahem, “creative vision.”\