watching fearfest on amc reminded me of seeing "from dusk till dawn" for the first time as a 12 year old.

IIRC, it wasnt marketed as a horror/vampire movie but more an action one (though i might be wrong). I just wanted to see R rated movies at that age.

What are some other good examples of movies that are best suited to knowing as little about the plot as possible before viewing?

I'd say Alien.

I was 12 when my dad took me to see it in the summer of 1979. I went into it knowing it was a monster movie, but expecting something more like a Godzilla type monster. Not a f*****g bug thing that would haunt my nightmares for many years to come. My dad had looked at the poster and saw the tag line (In space no one can hear you scream) and I guess he focused on the In space but overlooked the rest of it, and thought it would be another Star Wars-like science fiction movie.

The Matrix

So, I didn't watch any of the marketing material for Inception before going to the movie. One of the best movie experiences I've had in the past 20 years.

Edge of Tomorrow - I got bored one college day and thought it was just going to be a weird Tom Cruise alien movie with very little expectation. I left texting my roommates and friends asking them when they were free so I could see it again with them.

Walked into Stargate in San Antonio after the football team had the Tie with SMU ('94?) and we just wanted a distraction from the game.

Had no idea what the movie was about, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Still a favorite

GiveEmHellBill said:

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There haven't been many movies that I've seen where I did not know what the movie was about prior to seeing it.

The Matrix was one.......................and then there was this one:



All I knew was that it was a sci-fi action movie with Bruce Willis. And it blew me away.

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Fifth Element is a great choice. That movie's style and costumes are so amazing. Some of my favorite Bruce Willis and Gary Oldman scenes.

Cinco Ranch Aggie said:

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I'd say Alien.

I was 12 when my dad took me to see it in the summer of 1979. I went into it knowing it was a monster movie, but expecting something more like a Godzilla type monster. Not a f*****g bug thing that would haunt my nightmares for many years to come. My dad had looked at the poster and saw the tag line (In space no one can hear you scream) and I guess he focused on the In space but overlooked the rest of it, and thought it would be another Star Wars-like science fiction movie.

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I have a similar story, only it was for Aliens. My dad took me to see it when I was only 10. He gave me a brief overview of the original film before we went in, but I was in no way prepared for what I was about to see. To this day, one of the best theater experiences of my life.

Beetlejuice.

My girlfriend and I went to the theater to watch a certain movie (I can't remember what), but it had rotated out. My hometown theater only had two screens. In its place was a movie starring Michael Keaton as a ghost of some sort. So we elected to stay and watched it. Loved every second of it.

July of 1988, on a free day during Student Council camp at Trinity University, a group of 12 of us (and our sponsor) decided to see a movie called "Die Hard". None of us knew a thing about it, other than the guy from Moonlighting was in it.

That sponsor (who in my mind was in his 60s) must have been scared to death that he was going to get fired for taking a bunch of 16 and 17 year olds to see a 132 minutes of F-bombs. We didn't help matters by starting every sentence the rest of the trip with "Yippee ki yay".

Phantom Thread for me. I knew it was Paul Thomas Anderson & Daniel Day Lewis, but it was pretty awesome to go in blind and definitely wish I did it more with movies. I tried with Annihilation but had seen a few trailers.

Some movies I saw cold that seem good for that:

My mom basically forced me to watch Silence of the Lambs while I was visiting her, because she liked it so much, but I'd barely heard of it. At one point she mentioned that I was literally on the edge of my seat.

Shawshank. My boys always want to know what a movie is about before I show them, so they didn't quite go in cold ("It's about a couple of guys having a hard time in prison"). But even at 10, they were like "Okay, that was pretty good."

Master and Commander introduces life on the ship for about three minutes, and then bam.

The Gods Must Be Crazy. I was bored and about 12 and hey, there were some Bushmen boobies at the start, and I like nature documentaries, so I figured I'd stick it out. What a weird, awesome movie.

The Hunt For Red October, though I guess a lot of the Cold War stuff is lost on today's youth

I went into Pulp Fiction cold. Dude.

You let two 10 year olds watch Boggs rape Andy dufrene?

Crying Game at 15 with my dad. Dear God. It was basically a good IRA movie until...

Cinco Ranch Aggie said:

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I'd say Alien.

......

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yep, my parents still get a laugh talking about how wide eyed I was when they picked me up.

All of them

MuckRaker96 said:

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You let two 10 year olds watch Boggs rape Andy dufrene?

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It's alluded to, not shown. I won't be screening Pulp Fiction for them anytime soon. Anyway, they're pretty good with mature themes.

Aunt took me and sister to see Jurassic Park when I was 9. She thought it was a kids movie like Land Before Time. Pretty sure she left the theater, I thought it was awesome.

donnie darko is great submission. i will also add "Event horizon" along those lines. i remember it being sold as a star trek/sc-fi type of movie.

slingblade and shawshank
Also the Sixth Sense

Shawshank. We went to watch something else that sold old so we went to Shawshank! Amazing!

Sixth Sense

I worked at a summer camp and we'd seen or heard nothing about it. All we knew was what we saw on the poster outside the ticket booth, which was a picture of Bruce Willis and the name of the movie. We all guessed that it was like Die Hard, but he was also psychic or something.

Seeing dead people was the last thing I was expecting that kid's problem to be, and we didn't believe him even when he said it. We all thought he was just a compulsive liar or delusional or something until they went to the girl's funeral.

Considering I realized the kid actually saw dead people only about 10...maybe 12 minutes before the big reveal, that ending will probably go down as my favorite ending of all time.

Leaving Las Vegas.

I rented it for a date night one time when i meant to grab some comedy movie w/ Vegas in the name. Needless to say, we were quite surprised.

The boondocks saints

Saw Matrix on a first date - neither of us had heard anything about it but it was the movie that fit our post-dinner timeline. We went and had coffee afterwards and talked about the movie for hours.

Office Space - went in totally blind. It was so perfect. I worked in IT for a tech company in Austin at the time which made it extra funny since half of it felt like a documentary.

Forrest Gump....rising senior in HS, rest of my buddies wanted to see some crap comedy, and I picked Gump instead. Loved it. Pretty sure it was my first time to hear Free Bird.

The English Patient...a small group of us drove from Small Town Salado to Austin to see Evita, only it was sold out. Went to The English Patient instead. I'll admit that I'm an "epic" junkie, and I was blown away. Was pumped when it won Best Picture. (Seinfeld is great, but missed the mark here.)