The most underappreciated movie of the 21st century, according to science

Any movie that gets called underrated, overlooked, unsung, or underappreciated is something that’s usually based on taste and personal preference. After all, art is completely subjective and one person’s trash is often another’s treasure and vice versa, so it’s often handy to have science step in and make a definitive assessment.

Cult classics can’t be engineered or manufactured, but if anyone were to ask the filmmakers responsible for any feature to fit the criteria if they’d rather it take years and decades for their film to catch on or have it make a killing at the box office the first time around, there’s only going to be one answer.

Almost every motion picture is made for the express purpose of turning a profit, and as everybody knows, the best movies rarely make the most money. If anything, the opposite is true, with the ongoing obsession with franchises, sequels, remakes, and reboots ensuring that any given year’s highest-grossing titles are rarely original works.

Admittedly, there’s no set ironclad methodology to separate the underappreciated wheat from the overrated chaff, but Stats Significant gave it a shot anyway. A number of factors were considered to decide which film to release since the turn of the millennium didn’t make the splash it deserved.

Firstly, the movie in question had to have earned less than $25million at the domestic box office to ensure no actual hits were under consideration. Secondly, the number of tickets it sold during its initial theatrical run was weighed against how many critical and user reviews it’s accumulated in the years since across multiple platforms where anyone with an opinion can make it known.

The former is viewed as its short-term legacy, while the latter becomes its long-term. By comparing the immediate cultural impact to its continued maintenance of a foothold in the cinematic consciousness, science declares that Richard Kelly’s breakthrough sensation, Donnie Darko, is the 21st century’s most underappreciated film.

The psychological sci-fi thriller didn’t even rustle up $1.5m in ticket sales during its time spent playing on the big screen in the United States but has since gone on to amass thousands upon thousands of user-generated reviews across all corners of the internet in the years since, creating the biggest discrepancy between ticket sales and audience interaction by the metrics used.

Some people might argue that Donnie Darko isn’t underappreciated at all, but let’s not forget the fandom that grew around Kelly’s mind-bender following its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2001 was as small as it was vocal and bordering on frenzied during a time when internet obsession was still a fairly new and niche thing. It wasn’t a hit at the time, and it’s maybe not remembered as fondly today as it once was, but feel free to argue with the science calling it the century’s most underappreciated.

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