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Some movies are more than meets the eye. This compilation explores films with clever subtext and surprising twists that defy audience expectations. Find out which horror movie isn't about a monster and which culinary story is actually an allegory for Hollywood burnout.
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00:00Subtext is a wonderful thing, and though many movies have other things bubbling up beneath
00:05the surface of a seemingly simple, straightforward story, occasionally the subtext is sly enough
00:11that you might end up missing it entirely.
00:13And that's absolutely possible with the following movies, each of which could easily be taken
00:18at mere face value as crowd-pleasing genre films where what you see is pretty much what
00:23you get.
00:23However, each have a wealth of other meanings that might only become apparent on repeat
00:28viewings, if at all.
00:30So with that being said, these are 10 movies that aren't about what you think.
00:33Chef
00:34Jon Favreau's Chef may seem like a pretty surface-level movie about an elite chef, Karl
00:39Casper, played by Favreau, who builds his own food truck business after growing frustrated
00:43with cynical restaurant owners and obnoxious critics.
00:46But look beyond the admittedly gorgeous food, and Favreau's film is really a thinly-veiled
00:51reflection of his own time directing 2010's superhero blockbuster, Iron Man 2.
00:57The sequel to the hit superhero flick received middling notices from critics and reportedly
01:02suffered from serious executive interference behind the scenes, in turn dulling Favreau's
01:07creative vision for the project.
01:09And so, Chef was a pure reaction to this, using food as a tight symbol of Favreau's attempts
01:14to cook in Hollywood.
01:16The food truck is really a metaphor for Chef.
01:18The movie itself, a comparatively inexpensive enterprise full of heart, following on from
01:23a soulless, big money exercise that left the creative in question feeling burnt out.
01:28The Wolf of Snow Hollow.
01:30If you were a police officer and everyone was trying to tell you that the local murders
01:34in your town were actually being carried out by a werewolf, well, you'd probably think
01:39you were the only sane person left.
01:40Luckily for you though, you're probably not this police officer, and when you're watching
01:44a horror movie literally called The Wolf of Snow Hollow, and gory murders are being attributed
01:49to a lycanthrope, you're probably not going to hesitate in assuming that the case has been
01:54cracked no matter how daft it may sound, especially when a big bad wolfy figure is seen lurking
02:00in the shadows.
02:01Consequently, you spend most of the runtime of The Wolf of Snow Hollow assuming you're
02:04watching a pretty effective modern werewolf flick, but the final act reveals that this
02:08isn't the case at all.
02:10It turns out that the murders aren't supernatural, but they're still technically kinda caused
02:15by a werewolf.
02:16Confused?
02:16Well, bear with me.
02:18It turns out that the very human serial killer committing the crimes does so while dressing
02:22up in a gigantic werewolf costume, ripping his victims' bodies apart while indulging
02:28in his cosplaying hobby every full moon.
02:30Drag Me To Hell
02:31Sam Raimi's unhinged horror comedy, Drag Me To Hell, is actually about far more than
02:37a woman trying to shake off a curse which threatens to drag her into the fiery below in three days.
02:42It's about eating disorders.
02:43Within days of the film's 2009 release, fans began to speculate that Raimi had actually
02:48crafted it as a symbol for protagonist Christine's struggles with food.
02:52For one, we learn early on that Christine was an overweight child, and given that so many
02:57of the film's hallucination scenes revolved around food or vomit, they've been interpreted
03:02as a result of her eating disorder rather than having a genuine supernatural origin.
03:07While Raimi himself hasn't ever confirmed this reading of the film, it's so perfectly spot-on
03:12that it becomes tough to consider the movie any other way on subsequent viewings.
03:17And even if Raimi went ahead and refuted it, we'd invoke some death of the author here
03:21and say that Drag Me To Hell doesn't belong to him anymore.
03:24The theory has firmly taken root, and that's that.
03:27It Comes At Night
03:27It Comes At Night was a victim of misjudged expectations when it first released.
03:31It was marketed as something of a creature feature, and as such fans took the title quite
03:37literally.
03:37It was presumed that this movie would be about something haunting a cast of heroes in the
03:42night, as a result of a virus that had otherwise eliminated humanity.
03:47When it came out though and fans finally got to the bottom of this mystery established in
03:50the marketing, the film revealed that the something wasn't actually a monster or a creature
03:55at all.
03:56It was actually just the paranoia of the human characters.
03:59Ultimately, It Comes At Night is as much of a family drama as it is a horror movie.
04:03It follows a small family who survived the virus by keeping isolated coming into contact
04:07with another family in need, and the stressors of the two living together each thinking that
04:12the other is a threat.
04:13What comes at night then is the worry for each character, the worry that putting their trust
04:18in other people will result in the death of the people that they're supposed to protect.
04:22Ultimately, it's a great film, but not quite the straight creature feature some fans
04:26wanted.
04:27On the Waterfront The masterful best picture winning drama On the
04:31Waterfront follows boxer turned dock worker Terry Malloy, played by Marlon Brando, as he's
04:36compelled to expose the crimes of a local mob boss in order to put a stop to the rising
04:40tide of violence.
04:41Though it's easily missed if watching the film today without its full historical context,
04:46On the Waterfront was actually the director's response to those who criticised him for his
04:511952 testimony for the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
04:55Director Elia Kazan identified eight communists in the film industry, in turn contributing
05:00to the infamous Hollywood blacklist, which saw named communists denied work throughout
05:05Hollywood.
05:05This led Kazan to become a pariah in many industry circles, and in short, he remained a controversial
05:11figure for the rest of his life.
05:12Kazan defiantly defended his decision to testify for years afterward, and On the Waterfront
05:18is largely accepted to be his attempt to explain or even celebrate the very act of informing.
05:24While it doesn't make Elia Kazan's film any less brilliant, it does cast a strange,
05:29uneasy shadow over its accomplishments, especially given that history hasn't been remotely kind
05:35to Kazan's decision to turn in his colleagues.
05:38Come to Daddy
05:38Come to Daddy is one of the most delightfully surprising horror movies in recent years.
05:42Lord of the Rings star Elijah Wood has always been drawn to weird, eccentric genre picks since
05:47hanging up his hairy feet as Frodo Baggins, but this 2020 effort is easily his strangest project
05:53yet.
05:53Ostensibly, it's about a young man, played by Wood, who attempts to reconnect with his
05:57father after not seeing him for decades.
06:00The thing is, even this whole set up is steeped in mystery, as it's unclear why Wood's character
06:05was contacted out of the blue and why his father, who constantly berates him when he arrives,
06:10is so hostile towards his son.
06:12You expect then the movie to explore this dynamic, and have some kind of sinister reveal explaining
06:17why the two needed to reconnect, or why the father was missing in the first place.
06:21However, the father actually dies from a heart attack before the end of the first act.
06:25It then becomes a film about the son having to live with the body of his dead dad as the
06:30morgue is too busy to pick it up, all the while strange noises keep him up at night.
06:34Is the father haunting the house, or is something else supernatural afoot?
06:38Well, no.
06:39It turns out that his real father is actually alive, and being held hostage in the basement,
06:44and consequently is in a bit of a predicament.
06:47Come to Daddy then has twists within twists, and the movie that you think you're in for
06:51at the beginning resembles nothing of the one you're stuck with at the end, The Strangers
06:55Prayer Night.
06:56Fans waited a decade for a sequel to The Strangers, and when it finally arrived, it was far from
07:01what they expected, but not in a bad way.
07:03Initially, the second movie seems like the natural continuation of the first, with the titular
07:08family of strangers hunting down a series of victims in a trailer park.
07:12Though not a home invasion in the regular sense, all the beats are still hit here.
07:16Phones are destroyed, people are stalked, and characters are killed in brutal ways.
07:21After this though, the sequel shifts focus entirely, and becomes less a movie about the
07:25villains killing a band of hapless victims, but rather the victims fighting back and taking
07:30out each member of the murderous family.
07:32It inverts the slasher trope completely, as the remaining heroes kill off their tormentors
07:37one by one.
07:38I mean, that's one way to get fans from spending years begging for another sequel,
07:42I suppose.
07:43Jurassic World.
07:44Much as the fourth Jurassic Park movie is in many respects emblematic of Hollywood's
07:48tireless need to keep creatively bankrupt IP going, a subversive throughline is nevertheless
07:54suffused within its script.
07:55The film's most interesting idea is that the titular theme park is now successful enough
08:00that mere cloned dinosaurs have become something of a bore to the general public, prompting
08:05Park Bigwig to create the Indominus Rex, a genetic hybrid dinosaur which predictably turns
08:10out to be incredibly volatile.
08:13This need for the park to keep one up in itself holds a mirror up to Hollywood itself, where,
08:18in an era of blockbuster excess, the thrills made possible by CGI-soaked $200 million tentpoles,
08:24have become ordinary, even expected and, in turn, actually less thrilling.
08:30It's fitting to insert this commentary into a movie franchise, which itself toyed with
08:34the notion of introducing gun-wielding dinosaurs at one point, surmising that few spectacles
08:39are ever grand enough to truly please audiences.
08:42And almost a decade later, where tentpole budgets are skyrocketing wildly out of control
08:47and regularly struggling to turn a profit, this thematic has aged exceptionally well.
08:52Piercing.
08:53For the first act of piercing, you think you can pretty much sketch out where the story
08:57is going.
08:57In the very first scene, the movie introduces you to Reed, a family man with a wife and
09:02newborn child.
09:03The thing is, the guy is a total psycho, and in this first scene, he's shown standing
09:08over his kid's crib with an ice pick.
09:10From here, the audience is quickly informed that he's a wannabe serial killer, and is using
09:15the cover of a business trip to rent a hotel room and indulge in his bloodlust by inviting
09:19over a sex worker.
09:21If you've seen American Psycho, it seems pretty cut and dry where this one's going.
09:25However, if you've ever read a book by Ryu Murakami, the author who provided the source
09:29material for this movie, then you know to never expect a straightforward story.
09:34Consequently, things take a turn when Jackie, the sex worker, turns up and understands exactly
09:38what this dude plans to do.
09:40It turns out that she's a little twisted as well, and the power dynamic is then inverted,
09:45resulting in one of the strangest psychosexual horrors in recent memory.
09:48Reed turns from the predator into the prey, and things only get stranger from there on
09:53out.
09:54Henry, portrait of a serial killer?
09:56This is not.
09:57Antebellum.
09:57Now, a lot of you might already understand exactly what Antebellum is about, but that's
10:02because the trailers for it, for whatever reason, decided to just outright spoil the
10:07big twist that the entire movie is built around.
10:10Which is a huge shame, because the film itself does so much work to hide the big mid-movie reveal,
10:16and only really has any suspense at all if you don't know it's coming.
10:20But I'm getting ahead of myself, let me first explain.
10:22Antebellum opens on Eden, a Civil War Eva slave who recently attempted to escape a plantation
10:27in Louisiana, resulting in a bunch of her fellow slaves being murdered.
10:31The first act essentially follows her daily life, as she's forced to work, is routinely
10:36assaulted by Confederate soldiers, and slowly hatches a plot to escape.
10:40Well, that is, until one night when she suddenly hears a modern phone ringing outside, and
10:46then the flick flashes back a few weeks prior.
10:48Here, it turns out that Antebellum isn't a period piece at all, but rather takes place
10:52in the present day.
10:54Eden, really a beloved author called Veronica, has been kidnapped along with a bunch of other
10:58black people by the white owners of a Civil War reenactment centre.
11:02It is absolutely bonkers, and doesn't totally work, but it's certainly not what you expect
11:07from the first half an hour.
11:09Enemy.
11:09Denis Villeneuve's 2013 psychological thriller Enemy follows a college professor, Adam Bell,
11:15who learns that he has a doppelganger, an actor named Anthony.
11:18What follows is a deeply bizarre and intoxicating mystery thriller largely concerned with identity
11:24and sense of self, but it's also secretly about something else entirely – male fear of
11:30commitment.
11:31Spiders are a recurring visual motif throughout the film, culminating, of course, in the terrifying
11:35final view of Adam staring down at a gantic tarantula, which has suddenly replaced his
11:40wife, Helen.
11:41Rather than recalling fear, though, Adam simply stares at the spider with disinterest, even
11:46boredom.
11:47Of the many fascinating interpretations of the film and its ending, the most widely accepted
11:51reading is that the spiders represent a fear of intimacy and romantic commitment.
11:56After all, it's clear that both Adam and Anthony aren't entirely happy in their relationships,
12:00indicated by their eventual pursuit of each other's partners with fatal consequences.
12:05A film's end when Adam has assumed Anthony's life, including living with an unknowing
12:10Helen.
12:10A sudden transformation into a spider indicates his innate revulsion to domesticity, that
12:15he already views her as a mere obstacle to him living a free life.
12:19The Empty Man has received a whole bunch of buzz with writers and fans alike, praising it
12:24as an overlooked gem from 2020.
12:27However, after watching it, it is pretty clear why this didn't make much of a dent, and
12:31that's because it's impossible to market.
12:33A horror movie that runs an epic two and a half hours is already a tough sell, but it
12:37doesn't help when it also blends completely different subgenres and tells a story that's
12:42intentionally designed to keep you in the dark.
12:44So if you read the synopsis, you might go into it expecting something like The Bye Bye
12:48Man, where a bunch of kids are being haunted by a supernatural entity who only grows stronger
12:53the more you think about them.
12:55And that is what the movie is about… for around 20 minutes.
12:59See, the thing about The Empty Man is that it's essentially three movies in one.
13:03The prologue essentially acts as its own short horror film set in the snowy mountains,
13:07then we get the teen slasher, and finally we stumble into a cult conspiracy and doomsday prophecy.
13:13Consequently, as soon as you start thinking you know what the movie is going to be about,
13:16it switches gears and turns into something else.
13:19One Cut of the Dead.
13:20Just when you think the zombie subgenre has no new ideas to offer, something like One Cut
13:25of the Dead comes along.
13:26Now, this movie is a regular on the WhatCulture horror channel, but it simply couldn't be
13:30left off a list about movies that aren't about what you think.
13:33That's because One Cut of the Dead is three different movies in one, but it pulls each
13:37one off better than The Empty Man does.
13:39Initially, it starts out like a regular low budget zombie flick, but it's quickly revealed
13:44that this is actually a movie being filmed within the movie.
13:47The real story is about a zombie outbreak happening while this camera crew is recording their fictional
13:52zombie movie, and the confusion and chaos that comes from that situation.
13:57However, the film pivots yet again halfway through to show that this story isn't real either,
14:01by flashing back and showing how this apparently realistic zombie outbreak is also part of a fictional film.
14:08So, we're actually watching a movie about how a bunch of fictional people made a zombie movie about a group
14:14of people making a zombie movie.
14:16It sounds much more confusing.
14:18Talk To Me.
14:18The breakout horror hit Talk To Me follows a group of teenagers who learn that they can contact
14:23spirits by touching a severed, embalmed hand and saying, Talk To Me.
14:27It's a terrific, fiercely original concept, but with this being an A24 horror film, of course, there's more to it
14:33than that.
14:34In the vein of all elevated horror, Talk To Me is really about something else.
14:38It's actually a veiled metaphor for drug abuse as a coping mechanism for grief.
14:43Teenage protagonist Mia, played by Sophie Wilde, effectively becomes addicted to the hand's influence,
14:48using it as a source of comfort following the recent death of her mother.
14:52That the hand is passed around at parties only makes the drug parallel that much more apparent.
14:57While certainly not the most subtle thing on this list, Talk To Me is more than a mere wild horror
15:02film.
15:02It's a sad and potent examination of how people can lose their sense of self to outside forces while trying
15:09to deal with crippling loss.
15:11Crimson Peak. Marketing plays a huge role in setting audience expectations.
15:15And Crimson Peak is one of the best examples of a movie's advertising completely misrepresenting its actual content.
15:21Guillermo del Toro's gothic romance is certainly steeped in horror.
15:24There are supernatural creatures ready to deliver jump scares and plenty of gore to go around.
15:29But it's far from a conventional horror movie.
15:31Which makes it so weird then that the trailers sold it as your regular multiplex fare.
15:36A horror closer to the conjuring or Ouija.
15:39Now there's nothing wrong with those kinds of movies of course.
15:41But it meant that audiences going into Crimson Peak were expecting a straightforward ghost tale.
15:46And were left with few scares and mainly a family melodrama and a lengthy opening that keeps the horror elements
15:52to the minimum.
15:53As one character makes clear this isn't a ghost story. It's more a story with a ghost in it.
15:58The ghost is just a metaphor. The boy.
16:00After Annabelle reminded everyone that horror movies about killer dolls can bring in stacks and stacks of cash.
16:06It was unsurprising when similar films were quickly put into the works.
16:09One of these was the unimaginatively titled The Boy.
16:12A horror that swapped out the dishevelled Annabelle for an eerily well dressed doll called Brams.
16:17The trailers promised the kind of scares that act as this subgenre's bread and butter.
16:22You know the ones.
16:22The little doll kicking back in a rocking chair.
16:25Very slowly turning his head when people aren't looking.
16:28And returning unharmed when his own is thrown away.
16:30And for the majority of the movie this is exactly what it delivered.
16:34Audiences got to see the killer doll tropes played straight.
16:37As a family move into a house and become wary of Brams.
16:41Until a later reveal throws all that on its head.
16:44That's because as it turns out this isn't a killer doll movie at all.
16:47But rather a movie about a human killer who lives in the walls of the house.
16:51Brams the doll had no supernatural properties at all.
16:54Well, not until he was given some via a sequel retcon.
16:57And the real Brams was a disturbed man living in secret passageways the whole time.
17:02An officer and a spy.
17:03Roman Polanski's 2019 film An Officer and a Spy is a dramatisation of the Dreyfus Affair.
17:09An infamous miscarriage of justice.
17:11In which French Jewish artillery officer Alfred Dreyfus was falsely convicted of treason.
17:17And initially sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island.
17:21While in the hands of most other filmmakers.
17:22The movie would have been taken as a mere historical drama.
17:26Based on a fascinating true story.
17:28Given that Polanski has been an exile from the US government since 1977.
17:32When he fled the country after pleading guilty to having unlawful sex with a minor.
17:37It's impossible to view it this way.
17:39While the film depicts Dreyfus as an exile.
17:41Numerous prominent critics drew parallels between this and Polanski's story.
17:45Something Polanski himself even admitted as inspiration while making the movie.
17:49But while Polanski evidently sees kinship between himself and Dreyfus.
17:53It's worth noting that Dreyfus was innocent.
17:56While Polanski pleaded guilty.
17:57Which only made the discourse surrounding the film's release that much more bitter.
18:02Though the films largely praised Polanski's filmmaking.
18:04They were less thrilled at the neon signposted implication.
18:08That he too suffered a miscarriage of justice.
18:10When the stated facts of his case suggest otherwise.