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15 Movies With a Perfect First Half and a Terrible Second Half

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Ignacio Weil

Galleries - October 30th 2026, 18:30 GMT+1

I Am Legend 2007 — 1. I Am Legend (2007)

Will Smith talking to mannequins in an abandoned video store is more compelling than an army of digital monsters. The early stretches of *I Am Legend* understand how loneliness corrodes a person, giving Robert Neville routines that look practical until you notice how desperately he needs them. Once other survivors arrive, that unsettling character study gives way to explanations, a siege, and the theatrical ending’s heroic sacrifice. The alternate ending offers a more interesting reckoning with Neville’s experiments; the cinema version mostly offers a grenade. | © Warner Bros. Pictures

Cropped Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom — 2. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)

Rescuing dinosaurs from an erupting volcano is an excellent way to spend blockbuster money. *Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom* delivers stampedes, desperate escapes, and a stranded Brachiosaurus that briefly makes this franchise heartbreaking again. Leaving the island, however, means trading that spectacle for an underground dinosaur auction and another genetically engineered killing machine. J. A. Bayona supplies some handsome haunted-house imagery, but the increasingly ridiculous conspiracy makes these magnificent animals feel like expensive props in a very silly burglary. | © Universal Pictures

War of the Worlds 2005 — 3. War of the Worlds (2005)

Dust turns out to be human remains. Clothes drift down from the sky. Steven Spielberg makes the opening invasion in *War of the Worlds* feel horribly immediate, with Tom Cruise playing a father who can barely manage his children, never mind an apocalypse. The extended basement section eventually slows that panicked momentum, shifting attention toward Tim Robbins’s unstable survivor. Although the aliens’ biological defeat comes from H. G. Wells, the remarkably tidy family reunion is harder to swallow after so much carefully established devastation. | © Paramount Pictures

Hancock 2008 1 — 4. Hancock (2008)

A superhero who saves your life and leaves you furious about the repair bill: now that’s a premise. *Hancock* gets considerable mileage from Will Smith’s abrasive, drunken rescuer and Jason Bateman’s optimistic attempt to make him publicly tolerable. Their rehabilitation project could have supported the whole film. Instead, a revelation involving Charlize Theron sends the second half into ancient history, supernatural coupling, and conveniently adjustable vulnerabilities. Watching this scruffy superhero comedy become a solemn relationship mythology is like discovering your bar fight requires genealogical research. | © Columbia Pictures

Spectre 2015 1 — 5. Spectre (2015)

Mexico City supplies the spectacle, Rome supplies the sinister secret meeting, and Daniel Craig supplies the expression of a man who would rather punch someone than attend either. For a while, *Spectre* enjoys being a lavish James Bond adventure. Its later insistence that Blofeld orchestrated Bond’s recent suffering, with childhood jealousy folded into the explanation, makes an international criminal empire feel embarrassingly domestic. Add an elaborate torture sequence with surprisingly little lasting impact, and the menace starts depending on everyone politely respecting the villain’s presentation. | © EON Productions

Die Another Day 2002 — 6. Die Another Day (2002)

Fourteen months in North Korean captivity leave Pierce Brosnan’s Bond bearded, furious, and abandoned by his own side. That unusually bruising setup gives *Die Another Day* some actual personal stakes, while the subsequent investigation and vicious fencing match suggest a worthwhile farewell for this 007. Iceland apparently freezes the screenplay’s judgment. An invisible Aston Martin, an ice palace, and a satellite weapon crowd out the espionage, before a notorious digital surfing escape makes Bond look less indestructible than unfinished. Brosnan deserved a better exit ramp. | © Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Insidious 2010 — 7. Insidious (2010)

Check the corner of the room. James Wan has probably put something horrible there. *Insidious* builds its early scares around domestic spaces that no longer feel safe, helped enormously by Rose Byrne and Patrick Wilson behaving like exhausted parents rather than disposable horror victims. Moving house doesn’t solve their problem, either. Once the explanation arrives, astral projection and the foggy realm of the Further turn creeping uncertainty into a guided supernatural rescue mission. The more clearly this nightmare maps its territory, the less frightening its inhabitants become. | © FilmDistrict

The Village 2004 — 8. The Village (2004)

Roger Deakins’s photography and James Newton Howard’s score make the woodland settlement in *The Village* feel both inviting and deeply wrong. Add Bryce Dallas Howard and Joaquin Phoenix’s tender courtship, and M. Night Shyamalan has considerably more going for him than creatures beyond the trees. The later revelations steadily dismantle that carefully cultivated dread, asking the mechanics of a concealed modern community to carry the emotional weight. Its argument about fear and control remains interesting; the practical questions become considerably louder than the monsters ever were. | © Touchstone Pictures

Law Abiding Citizen 2009 — 9. Law Abiding Citizen (2009)

How is a prisoner arranging murders from behind bars? That question gives *Law Abiding Citizen* an irresistible engine, with Gerard Butler’s bereaved avenger making Jamie Foxx’s prosecutor scramble to understand the rules. Their confrontations also expose the ugly distance between winning cases and delivering justice. The eventual tunnel explanation reduces the apparent impossibility to an elaborate access problem, while the finale lets the prosecutor resolve his moral predicament by killing his opponent. For a thriller so angry about shortcuts, it develops quite an affection for them. | © The Film Department

Knowing 2009 — 10. Knowing (2009)

Nicolas Cage, a time capsule, and a page of numbers predicting mass casualties make a persuasive argument against helping with school projects. *Knowing* initially turns that discovery into an ominous puzzle, punctuated by disaster sequences that Alex Proyas stages with unnerving force. As the predictions expand toward global extinction, however, investigation gives way to alien intervention and increasingly explicit biblical imagery. The destruction is spectacular, but the chosen-children escape route supplies a cosmic explanation where the earlier thriller had made uncertainty far more disturbing. | © Summit Entertainment

The Island 2005 — 11. The Island (2005)

Breakfast restrictions, compulsory exercise, and a suspiciously desirable lottery give *The Island* a wonderfully unpleasant version of communal living. Ewan McGregor’s growing doubts about this sealed environment make the opening an engaging science-fiction mystery, with Scarlett Johansson sharing the discovery that their lives exist for somebody else’s benefit. Once they escape, Michael Bay puts the ethical questions behind the wheel and immediately crashes several vehicles into them. The chase sequences have muscle, but their sheer quantity leaves the implications of human cloning gasping by the roadside. | © DreamWorks Pictures

Downsizing 2017 — 12. Downsizing (2017)

Financial freedom is apparently five inches tall. *Downsizing* finds sharp comedy in the sales pitch that ordinary people can shrink themselves into luxury, and the clinical details of Matt Damon’s transformation make the absurd technology feel convincingly bureaucratic. His wife backing out adds a wonderfully cruel complication. The subsequent story wanders through inequality, romance, and an extinction-conscious Norwegian community, gradually sidelining the miniature society we came to explore. Hong Chau gives it much-needed emotional force, but even she cannot make every detour feel like part of the same film. | © Paramount Pictures

Sunshine 2007 — 13. Sunshine (2007)

Oxygen calculations and damaged equipment are plenty terrifying when the nearest help is back on a freezing Earth. Danny Boyle’s *Sunshine* makes its mission to revive the dying sun compelling through difficult decisions, fragile cooperation, and images that suggest humanity has wandered somewhere it cannot comprehend. Introducing the burned, murderous Pinbacker shifts that tension toward a more familiar pursuit through corridors. The final stretch still produces extraordinary imagery, but an identifiable attacker feels like a reduction in threat when the crew was already confronting an entire star. | © DNA Films

Last Night in Soho 2021 — 14. Last Night in Soho (2021)

Anya Taylor-Joy stepping into a glamorous London nightclub is almost enough to sell time travel on its own. Through Thomasin McKenzie’s aspiring designer, *Last Night in Soho* initially makes the attraction of another era feel intoxicating, then reveals the exploitation beneath its lovely clothes and songs. That unsettling discovery gets buried under repeated ghostly pursuits and a murder mystery overloaded with reversals. Edgar Wright keeps the images busy, but the late revelations scramble the film’s sympathies just when its two central women need more room to breathe. | © Focus Features

Dreamcatcher 2003 — 15. Dreamcatcher (2003)

The friendships in *Dreamcatcher* have a history you can feel before you fully understand it. Four men reconnect at a snowy cabin, childhood memories suggest something uncanny, and an unexpected visitor introduces a particularly disgusting reason to fear the bathroom. Lawrence Kasdan establishes enough intimacy to make the isolation matter. Expanding into a military operation, alien possession, and a race to prevent contamination scatters that focus across competing plots. Damian Lewis’s extravagant Mr. Gray performance becomes the main attraction, which is unfortunate for almost everything surrounding it. | © Castle Rock Entertainment

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An hour in, you’re ready to recommend it to everyone. By the credits, you’re wondering how much of that recommendation you can legally retract. These 15 movies start strong, with gripping mysteries, sharp scripts, or characters worth caring about, then spend their second halves testing that goodwill. Some explain away the very thing that made them interesting; others chase a twist that requires everyone on screen to lose several IQ points. Spoilers ahead—we have some disappointing second halves to discuss.

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An hour in, you’re ready to recommend it to everyone. By the credits, you’re wondering how much of that recommendation you can legally retract. These 15 movies start strong, with gripping mysteries, sharp scripts, or characters worth caring about, then spend their second halves testing that goodwill. Some explain away the very thing that made them interesting; others chase a twist that requires everyone on screen to lose several IQ points. Spoilers ahead—we have some disappointing second halves to discuss.