Which Films Were Underappreciated in Their Time? A Statistical Analysis
Which movies slipped through the cracks but eventually found their audience?
Intro: The Two Legacies of Fight Club
Fight Club is a film with two distinct legacies, one as an incendiary disappointment and one as an American classic. Helmed by Se7en director David Fincher, the film is a slick satire of consumer culture and misguided masculinity, detailing the collective discontent of alienated men who channel their frustrations through organized fighting and some light anarcho-terrorism. It's a gleefully nihilistic movie that skewers everything and stands for nothing—a film that spawned great debate surrounding its ideology (or lack thereof).
Marketing Fight Club was a nightmare for 20th Century Fox, who couldn't decide whether the project was an art film or an action movie. Ultimately, Fox chose the latter, advertising Fincher's film during World Wrestling Federation broadcasts, a move fervently protested by the director. Initial screenings indicated a 61% male and 39% female moviegoer split, with 58% of audiences under the age of 21—which led to its classifications as "the ultimate anti-date movie."
Upon Fight Club's release, politicians and cultural critics seized on the film for its depictions of violence and fetishization of anarchy. In a masterstroke of pre-Twitter trolling, Rosie O'Donnell publicly urged viewers to avoid Fight Club, punctuating her disapproval by revealing the film's twist ending on national television. The movie was censored globally, including a Chinese version where Edward Norton's character gets arrested and is sent to an asylum rather than watching a cityscape of buildings crumble.
Ultimately, Fight Club grossed an underwhelming $100M, unable to turn a profit once marketing costs and movie theater revenue splits were factored into the equation. The film left theaters an epic disappointment—an ambitiously iconoclastic movie bound to fade from collective memory. And then the Fight Club DVD was released.
Fight Club thrived on home media, selling over 6 million copies on DVD and video within the first ten years and grossing over $55 million in rentals. Users of online cinema sites embraced Fincher’s film, which currently ranks 13th on IMDB's list of the top 250 films and 159th on Letterboxd's list of greatest movies. Fight Club became a great American classic, but only years after its release.
Many films, like Fight Club, slip through the cracks only to be rediscovered after their theatrical run. In a world of IMDB, Letterboxd, and streaming, movies can live second lives that outshine their initial exhibition. So today, we'll explore the films whose secondary viewership greatly surpasses that of their initial release and the qualities unique to these movies.
Methodology: How do you Quantify Underappreciation?
Movies can be appreciated in two distinct periods: during their run in movie theaters or via a second life on physical media and streaming. Our goal is to identify situations where there is an imbalance between these periods. For theatrical recognition, we'll use box office gross—how many people saw the film in theaters—and for long-term legacy, we'll utilize online review counts—a proxy for how many people saw the movie in theaters and at home.
When we look at the relationship between online review count and adjusted box office, we find a decently strong correlation—movie grosses and rating volumes typically move in tandem.
This relationship allows us to ascertain a theoretical box office gross based on a film's review count—we'll call this projected box office. We can then compare this estimation with a film's actual box office numbers to establish the difference between long-term legacy and immediate cultural impact.
We consider a film “underappreciated” when its projected box office (derived from review counts) greatly surpasses its actual theatrical gross, which is the case for works like Reservoir Dogs, American History X, and Dazed and Confused.
Consider Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused, which earned a paltry $16M upon its initial release (when adjusted for inflation) but subsequently became a cult classic on VHS and DVD. When we translate Dazed and Confused's high online review volume into a box office projection, we estimate the film should have theoretically grossed $143M, which makes for a -$127M difference between initial ticket sales and our projected figure—a massive discrepancy between the project's theatrical reception and cultural longevity.
Now consider Forrest Gump, which grossed an enormous $1.32B in adjusted box office in 1994. In comparison, our projections indicate that the movie's online review volume roughly translates to $1.41B in grosses. According to our calculations, Forrest Gump's long-term legacy is comparable to its initial reception.
To find the most criminally overlooked films, we'll narrow our list to movies that grossed less than $25M in inflation-adjusted box office (which excludes Fight Club, unfortunately).
Movies Not Appreciated in Their Time
Whenever I suggest seeing a movie in theaters, I typically prepare a pitch for my wife in an attempt to sell her on the film. I'll show her a trailer, tell her about the movie's leading actors, and attest to the project's decent reviews. She'll take that information, run it through whatever algorithm exists in her head, and provide a quick thumbs up or down. It could be a Martin Scorsese film or Paul Thomas Anderson epic, but if she can't wrap her head around the movie based on these limited details, then she's (understandably) not interested.
Meanwhile, I, an obsessive moviegoer, anticipate films months in advance, following conversations on Reddit, researching production details, and studying director filmographies. Movie marketing is not intended for me. I will see The Holdovers, Dune 2, or Poor Things, even if studios spend $0 on marketing— though this is not the case for 99% of moviegoers who base their decisions on a few trailers, late-night interviews, and some billboards. Said otherwise, a film's theatrical attendance is precarious—heavily influenced by advertising efficacy. If a movie is mis-marketed, it can easily slip through the cracks.
To get a broader sampling of cinematic works, I split our group of underappreciated films into two lists: movies predating 2000 and films from the 21st century.
1. The Most Underappreciated Movies of the 20th Century
Our list of 20th-century films features a myriad of cult classics, works that became popular movie store rentals and DVD library additions. Most of the films on this list were released late in the 20th century, which is likely the product of recency bias (internet reviews capturing contemporary works), the rise of home media in the 80s and 90s (which greatly facilitated rediscovery), as well as an explosion of cinematic content from the indie film revolution of the 90s (more films with smaller budgets and lesser distribution).
Some Observations:
The Failure of Genre Movies: A "genre movie" adheres to the conventions and styles of a specific genre, such as horror, sci-fi, or crime. Sci-fi films like Gattaca, Videodrome, and Cube and crime films like Blue Velvet and Reservoir Dogs are densely plotted and challenging to market, with premises not easily conveyed via a movie poster or tagline.
Box Office Failures From Well-Known Auteurs: Auteur theory dominates modern film discourse. To analyze a movie is to see it through the prism of a filmmaker's entire body of work. Sites like Letterboxd and IMDB emphasize the primacy of film directors and encourage further exploration of an auteur's filmography. Many of the movies on this list are commercial low points in the careers of otherwise distinguished directors, like Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, David Cronenberg's Videodrome, or David Lynch's Blue Velvet. It's hard for these films to fade away as they are part of esteemed portfolios. People still dedicate serious time to watching and re-watching the films of Sofia Coppola or David Lynch, which means classics like The Virgin Suicides and Lost Highway will forever endure.
1990s Independent Cinema: In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a rise in accessible high-quality camera equipment and globalized distribution led to increased production of indie films, bringing us classics like Clerks, The Virgin Suicides, and Reservoir Dogs. These films were small in scope, shot on micro-budgets, and garnered substantial buzz at film festivals. Unfortunately, film festival triumph does not translate to overwhelming box office success. Later, these movies would find a much larger audience in rental stores and online.
2. The Most Underappreciated Movies of the 21st Century
Our list of overlooked films from the 21st century are gems exalted on Letterboxd and streaming. It's hard to know whether these movies qualify as cult classics, whether they're too new to earn such a title, or whether cult classics still exist within a world of infinite streaming choice.
Some Observations:
Science Fiction Plays Poorly in the Short-Term: Five of the films on our list qualify as works of science fiction, including Predestination, Equilibrium, and Moon. Science fiction is arguably the most challenging genre to market, given the world-building central to these stories. At the same time, well-executed science fiction can communicate ideas worthy of online discussion (think The Matrix's red/blue pill presentation or 2001: A Space Odyssey's rendering of technological progress gone awry). These films are difficult to explain to everyday moviegoers but serve as fodder for later debate.
All These Films are Rated 'R': Conventional Hollywood wisdom says that "mainstream" movies should be accessible to all ages—which means a PG or PG-13 rating. To make an R-rated film is to severely limit your audience, either alienating conservative moviegoers with transgressive subject matter or disqualifying specific age ranges. For example, Requiem for a Dream is a movie about a heroine addiction, with each of its four characters’ stories ending in an incredibly depressing manner—it’s a hard movie to sell to most audiences.
The Stupidity of The Interview: The Interview is a goofball comedy detailing an attempt to assassinate North Korea's supreme leader—a fictional account that eventually stirred a real-life international crisis. The buzz surrounding this movie was bizarre—was it wrong to see such a politically dangerous film? While damaged by controversy, the intrigue shrouding this movie was enough to warrant later viewership.
Why Donnie Darko?: Somehow, Donnie Darko, a highly polarizing cult film that I strongly dislike, tops this list. To have been on the internet in the 2000s was to suffer through zealous Donnie Darko fandom and apoligism. Typically, I’m fond of cult films finding their audience, but not in this case. Apologies to the Darko-lovers out there.
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What are the Hallmarks of Underappreciated Films?
Consider these two film pitches (taken from IMDB loglines):
Pitch one: On an isolated island in Brittany at the end of the eighteenth century, a female painter is obliged to paint a wedding portrait of a young woman.
Pitch two: Dominic Toretto and his crew of street racers plan a massive heist to buy their freedom while in the sights of a powerful Brazilian drug lord and a dangerous federal agent.
Which movie is easier to understand? Do these one-sentence descriptions adequately convey each project's emotional payoff?
Pitch two, which is the plot of Fast Five, tells you everything you need to know about this project: Vin Diesel, fast cars, and a daring heist. Look no further if you want to experience the visceral joy of things going fast.
Pitch one is for 2019's Portrait of a Lady on Fire, an intricately crafted period piece detailing the sexual affair between two young women during a time of great repression. Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a French film that currently ranks 34th on Letterboxd's list of greatest films, while Fast Five did not make the cut. Meanwhile, Fast Five and its fast cars made over $626M.
Simplicity often dictates consumer appeal. Movies have greater theatrical potential if their premise can be boiled down to a single sentence or image. As such, a story's complexity is often heavily associated with a given genre and that format's perceived entertainment value. Mission Impossible and John Wick do not require heavy plotting or compelling character work to appreciate their stunts and explosions.
When we look at box office underperformance by genre, we see specialized story formats like crime, horror, and mystery underperforming during their initial theatrical runs. Meanwhile, mainstream categories like action, animation, and adventure overperform in theaters.
These figures are as much a product of commercial viability as they are rewatchability. Horror fans often enjoy repeat home viewings of the same films—a phenomenon I do not understand. Films like Halloween and Friday the 13th have been re-watched ad nauseam, with a zeal that surpasses their already incredible theatrical runs. In fact, there are numerous streaming services dedicated to nothing but horror movies, including Shudder, Screambox, and Shout Factory. Somehow, the menacing and macabre warrants repeat home viewership.
Indeed, provocative subject matter generally plays better on streaming. Our movie dataset features numerous keywords related to the story points of a given film, like "love," "drugs," "1980s," or "children." When we look at the keywords most associated with underappreciated films, we find terms conducive to darker stories, such as "murder," "drugs," "dystopia," "noir," and "serial killer."
We also see that films from female directors are typically underseen in theaters, a weirdly persistent and highly regrettable trend. You could effortlessly construct a movie logline from this assortment of keywords: "A New York City detective in the 1970s investigates a series of murders carried out by a drug-dealing serial killer, directed by Kathryn Bigelow." Personally, I'd love to see this movie, and I'd endure my 100th Nicole Kidman AMC promo to do so—but I may be one of the few. Most people will likely skip the Kidman advertisement and watch the film on Netflix.
Final Thoughts: Can a Movie Still be Underappreciated?
It used to be easier for movies to slip through the cracks. There was no Letterboxd, IMDB, Reddit, or Rotten Tomatoes. Couple this with a time when movies were at the center of popular culture, and you find yourself wading through a plethora of high-quality films, with some works simply evading your awareness.
Flash forward to today, where we have a shortage of acclaimed movies and an abundance of information. Avid moviegoers will see anything half-decent, even if it's a Michael Bay film.
At the same time, movies can still slip through the cracks. One of my all-time favorite films is Everybody Wants Some! by Richard Linklater, a 2016 slice-of-life comedy centered on college camaraderie (that plays like a spiritual sequel to Linklater's Dazed and Confused). Unfortunately, the film flopped in theaters, grossing a lowly $5.4M and quickly fading from the zeitgeist. Years later, I discovered the film on Netflix and have since developed a deep and abiding love for this movie, a genuine diamond in the rough. There's something special about loving a movie that's all your own—proof that I'm a unique snowflake with remarkable taste. I love throwing on this film and luxuriating in its vibes—it's a wonderful hang-out movie.
But what if Everybody Wants Some! was better marketed during its theatrical run? What if the film slipped in some action scenes that played better in trailers, earning the movie instant recognition? Could Everybody Wants Some! retain its uniqueness while also appealing to mainstream audiences? Would I still have a special connection to this film if it were optimized for box office success? Probably not.
Sometimes, the best works are noteworthy for their complexities, eccentricities, and mood—traits that are nearly impossible to convey in a standard marketing campaign. These movies will never find immediate commercial success; they aren't designed to do so. Fortunately, the internet allows every film a second chance to find viewership. In an age of information abundance, most movies will eventually find their people.
Want to chat about data and statistics? Have an interesting data project? Just want to say hi? Email daniel@statsignificant.com
I like it. My only suggestion is to log your axes before performing the regression. The residuals are not normally distributed, and you'll likely get an even stronger correlation this way. Although from visual inspection I don't think it's going to change the results very much if at all.
Where do you find information on how well a movie does after its theatrical release with streaming and DVD sales? I'm curious to find out how well "Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning" and "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" performed after they left the theaters.