12 Great Movies With Wildly Misleading Trailers

Even great movies can sometimes be sold to audiences with wildly misleading trailers. It is hard to make a great trailer. Theoretically, a perfect promo should offer viewers a glimpse of a movie’s story and a compelling promise of things to come, but shouldn’t give away too much or spoil the story. This is easier said than done and, as a result, trailers often end up telling viewers the entire plot and revealing every major set piece, or offering viewers too little and giving them no reason to get invested.

However, there are also plenty of trailers that change a project’s tone, omit pivotal details, or otherwise mislead viewers completely. While the movie performed well with critics upon release, Mean Girls 2024’s trailers barely admitted that the movie was a musical with the promos featuring no singing and minimal shots of choreography. This sort of misleading editing can be used to make a dark movie feel lighter, to make a slow story feel more fast-paced, or to otherwise twist out-of-context clips into something more commercial.

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12 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

This indie dramedy was not the goofy Jim Carrey rom-com viewers were promised

2004’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is a deeply moving dramedy wherein a troubled man undergoes an experimental procedure designed to remove all his memories of a failed romantic relationship. The critically acclaimed hit features one of Carrey’s best performances as a brittle, heartbroken antihero, but the infamously bad trailer made the movie out to be a wild rom-com in the vein of Bruce Almighty. Viewers who were met with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’s poignant ending were in for a huge shock.

11 Return to Horror High

This 1986 horror-comedy was far sillier than its trailer seemed

The trailer for 1986’s Return to Horror High implies that the movie is a follow-up to an earlier supernatural horror movie, with the camera slowly zooming in on a skeletal cheerleader. In reality, Return to Horror High is a standalone meta horror-comedy about a movie crew getting killed off as they shoot an exploitative slasher movie based on a real-life string of killings. Silly, satirically sharp, and criminally underrated, this horror-comedy’s lack of recognition might be due to its inaccurate advertising.

10 Seven Psychopaths

Martin McDonagh’s 2012 thriller was slower and more thoughtful than its trailer

Although the 2012 movie was marketed as an action comedy, Seven Psychopaths is nowhere near as light-hearted or action-packed as the trailer suggests. It is actually a thoughtful meditation on the nature of violence and vengeance, with many of the trailer’s most explosive action beats taking place in dreams and fantasies. This pattern was repeated in earlier and later movies by Seven Psychopath’s director Martin McDonagh, with both In Bruges and The Banshees of Inisherin getting the same treatment.

9 Better Watch Out

This horror-comedy was heavier on the horror and lighter on the comedy

Although 2016’s Better Watch Out is one of the best Christmas horror movies ever, it would be hard to guess its tone from the movie’s trailer. This festive horror-comedy’s promotional materials heavily implied it was a home invasion movie about a boy and his babysitter evading attackers, akin to a bloodier, R-rated Home Alone. In reality, Better Watch Out tells a far darker story about a sociopathic, murderous child holding his babysitter hostage.

8 Pan’s Labyrinth

Guillermo del Toro’s haunting Gothic fantasy wasn’t as family-friendly as its trailers

The trailers for Guillermo del Toro’s 2006 hit Pan’s Labyrinth made the movie look like a children’s fantasy story, downplaying the many elements that made the story unsuitable for younger audiences. Any references to the fascist backdrop of the story were elided, as were the scarier scenes of the movie. As a result, del Toro’s moving masterpiece was inaccurately sold as something the whole family could enjoy without any subsequent sleepless nights.

7 Hereditary

Ari Aster’s debut implied one character would stick around for much longer

2018’s Hereditary was promoted with a string of trailers that heavily focused on Milly Shapiro’s young Charlie, a creepy child who was seemingly central to the movie’s supernatural horror story. Then, in a death that completely changes the movie’s story, Charlie dies in a brutal accident before the end of Act One. The A24 horror movie then turns into a more grounded family drama before the wild ending places it firmly back in the horror genre.

6 Mysterious Skin

This dark drama about abuse was inexplicably sold as an alien mystery movie

Director Gregg Araki’s 2004 drama Mysterious Skin is a dark, heavy story about the ways that two boys process their shared childhood abuse. While one child does misremember his abuse as an alien abduction, this doesn’t explain the weird promotional tactics used to sell the project. Bizarrely, this tragic, deeply disturbing drama about child abuse was marketed as an offbeat sci-fi story, with trailers playing up the mystery of one hero’s apparent abduction without addressing the tragic character drama that forms the movie’s main focus.

5 Edge of Tomorrow

Tom Cruise’s action-thriller was way more fun than its advertising suggested

Judging by its trailer, 2014’s Edge of Tomorrow seemed to be another self-serious sci-fi action movie from Tom Cruise. Since the actor had just appeared in Oblivion, viewers were primed to expect more of the same, and the fact that Gravity was a recent box-office hit didn’t hurt. As such, many critics and fans were understandably surprised to discover that the movie was actually much more light-hearted and fun than its trailer, mining a lot of black comedy from the many deaths of Edge of Tomorrow’s hero.

4 Bridge to Terabithia

This moving coming-of-age story seemed a lot lighter and more fantastical

The trailer for 2007’s Bridge to Terabithia made the novel adaptation look like The Spiderwick Chronicles, The Chronicles of Narnia series, or any number of other children’s fantasy movies greenlit during the height of Harry Potter’s popularity. In its opening act, the movie lived up to this promise as the heroes went on adventures through the imagined fantasy land. However, when one of the lead characters died suddenly midway through Bridge to Terabithia, the tone changed drastically, and it became clear that its trailer was less than forthcoming.

3 Drive

Nicholas Winding Refn’s bleak drama wasn’t as fast-paced as its trailer implied

2011’s Drive was a superb neo-noir thriller dripping with atmosphere. However, it also featured so little racing action that one theatergoer infamously tried to sue Drive‘s creators for false advertising. While it has a few tense chase sequences, Drive’s gruesomely violent scenes, shockingly slow pace, and romantic plot line mean it was nothing like the Fast and Furious clone that its trailers seemingly promised.

2 Rules of Attraction

2002’s Bret Easton Ellis adaptation wasn’t a wild party comedy

2002’s Rules of Attraction was not, in fact, the American Pie-style romp suggested by its trailers. Instead, the adaptation was a cold drama about deeply troubled college students. There were moments of pitch-black humor studded throughout the plot’s debauchery, drug abuse, and tragedy, but the trailers for Rules of Attraction that advertised a raucous sex comedy in the vein of Van Wilder were deeply misleading.

1 Jennifer’s Body

Diablo Cody’s cult hit wasn’t the goofy horror-comedy viewers anticipated

2009’s Jennifer’s Body suffered due to its misleading advertising, with the movie underperforming at the box office and faring poorly with critics. None of this was down to the movie itself, a haunting teen horror that features one of the most tragic horror villain deaths in cinema history. Instead, it was the decision to sell Jennifer’s Body as a raunchy horror comedy that doomed screenwriter Diablo Cody’s sophomore effort, since it was a tragic, subversive horror drama.