10 directors who were one-hit wonders
Every now and again, a film will come along that will completely floor anyone who watches it. Whether it’s due to inventive cinematography, mind-bending special effects or just a good ol’ fashioned, well-acted story, everyone can think of a film that bowled them over. Critics and audiences will praise the film, and the directors will be rewarded. That’s what should happen, anyway. But that’s not always the case.
Throughout the decades of cinema, fantastic films have been delivered by clearly capable directors – only for the filmmakers never to reach those same artistic heights again. Sometimes, they’ll try and fail, unable to tap into whatever magic they were channelling the first time. Other times, they’ll be so unhappy that they’ll disown their films forever.
In fact, it’s not unusual for some directors to be considered one-hit wonders. You may wonder (pun intended) time and time again why they keep delivering inferior work, or perhaps you realise how their great film was a fluke – a lucky combination of other talented writers, actors and cinematographers that happened to convene for that one project.
In other, much more astounding cases, the director will turn in a masterpiece and seemingly vanish from existence, never to make another feature again. This is by far the most disturbing. To this day, some films are firmly cemented in cinema history as among the greats, and yet the filmmakers behind them never got to reap the rewards. We can only speculate as to why. Let’s take a look at…
10 one-hit wonder directors:
10. Peter Hewitt – Thunderpants (2002)
While it may not seem like the most apparent loss to cinema, we never saw a good film again from Peter Hewitt. Having previously overseen a very decent adaptation of Mary Norton’s The Borrowers in 1997, the British director helmed this iconic early 2000s film starring Rupert Grint, based on his own story.
Smartly written, wonderfully designed and featuring genuinely charming performances from its two child stars, Thunderpants tells the tale of a prodigal child scientist who harnesses the power of his friend’s mega-farts to propel him to space. It was a knock-out children’s film with a palpable and unique sense of style which heralded the arrival of what should have been a regular contributor to great British family films, à la Paddington. Instead, Hewitt next gave us the terrible live-action Garfield, followed by… a straight-to-video Goosebumps movie.
9. Behn Zeitlin – Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012)
In 2012, an unknown young filmmaker called Benh Zeitlin directed one of the most definitive titles of the ‘magical realism’ sub-genre – where stories grounded in realistic (and often bleak) settings use a light touch of the fantastical to elevate the themes. Out of nowhere, Beasts of the Southern Wild absolutely swept audiences off their feet and dominated that year’s conversations about film.
Based on a one-act play by co-writer Lucy Alibar and co-scored by the director, Zeitlin’s film won the Caméra d’Or at Cannes and garnered four Oscar nominations. It broke records with its young starlet, Quvenzhané Wallis, who became the youngest nominee for ‘Best Actress’ at nine years old. And then, after all the buzz – nothing. Zeitlin vanished for nearly eight years, returning with a loose Peter Pan adaptation called Wendy in 2020 that seemed to come and go without any fanfare whatsoever.
8. Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez – The Blair Witch Project (1999)
Love it or hate it, those who remember The Blair Witch Project coming out can’t deny the unprecedented shockwaves it sent through cinema. Effectively re-inventing the found-footage format, this low-budget horror film played out as the final hours of a fatal camping trip, which saw four young men and women fall into the abstract yet terrifying grasp of an unseen evil.
After grossing nearly $250million worldwide and general praise for its ingenuity, it looked like the directors were on a surefire trajectory to becoming Hollywood superstars. Instead, they split up, went solo, and started making the most generic and uninspired horror films imaginable. Have you heard of Solstice? Have you heard of Altered? No, and for good reason. Eventually, both tried to claw back their former glory with more found-footage films, Skyman and Exists – to no avail.
7. Josh Trank – Chronicle (2012)
In 2012, director Josh Trank flipped the superhero genre on its head by presenting a found-footage film about three unlikely friends who develop supernatural powers. It was raw and candid, yet equally thrilling and spectacular, and, drawing inspiration from the 1988 anime Akira, it infused the genre with an almost Shakespearean level of tragedy.
If ever there was a calling card for Hollywood, this was it. The film was a categorical critical and commercial success and should have set Trank up for life. Instead, Trank’s career was seriously stalled due to a mixture of personal issues and an unfortunate penchant for calling people out on Twitter. His follow-up, the Fantastic Four reboot, was a catastrophic failure, and then 2020’s Al Capone biopic, Capone, was pulled from theatres and went to VOD.
6. Neill Blomkamp – District 9 (2009)
Like Chronicle, District 9 also utilised the found-footage style – but on an even more epic scale. Set in an alternate Johannesburg occupied by an alien mothership and has seen a new form of segregation introduced against the extra-terrestrials, Neill Blomkamp’s debut sci-fi feature was a masterclass in world-building and how to use special effects wisely.
The result was a nail-biting thriller that simultaneously played out like a thought-provoking political commentary, marrying deep and complex themes with visceral, stunning-to-look-at-action set-pieces. From the pacing to the performances, the film was a finely tuned and perfectly pitched piece of cinema. Unfortunately, while offering a similar VFX spectacle, neither Elysium, Chappie, nor Demonic came remotely close to the filmmaking skill of Blomkamp’s first. His newest film, Gran Turismo, doesn’t look like it will inspire much, either.
5. Marlon Brando – One-Eyed Jacks (1961)
You would think an actor as highly revered and critically acclaimed as Marlon Brando could make endless films, even if they were all stinkers. Wouldn’t you? One-Eyed Jacks was Brando’s only directorial effort, and what makes it all the stranger is that it’s absolutely excellent.
With Brando also starring in the lead role, the film follows an outlaw, Rio, who breaks out of a Mexican prison to wreak vengeance on those who double-crossed him. The film is universally loved, with Quentin Tarantino even listing it as one of his three favourite westerns. So what happened? We’ll never know. The poster reads, “The motion picture that starts its own tradition of greatness.” Well, that tradition seems to have died before it even got started.
4. Charles Laughton – The Night of the Hunter (1955)
After a solid 20 years of turning in some of the most critically acclaimed performances in cinema history, thespian juggernaut Charles Laughton decided to try his hand at directing, and boy, what a masterpiece he made. Based on the book of the same name by Davis Grubb, released two years earlier, The Night of the Hunter starred Robert Mitchum as a terrifying serial killer who poses as a preacher.
Audacious, dreamlike and extremely frightening, the film feels like an early David Lynch work, combining a solid plot with extremely expressionistic sequences. Unfortunately, it was utterly panned at the time. It’s now regarded as a masterpiece, but Laughton was so upset by the reception that he never tried again.
3. Mary Harron – American Psycho (2000)
This movie, based on the book of the same name by Bret Easton Ellis, remains so iconic that images of it can be seen on social media nearly every day, thanks to the endless meme-ification of its main character, Patrick Bateman. A searing indictment of yuppie culture and corporate America in the 1980s, it follows a Wall Street banker who commits utterly heinous crimes, mainly against other women.
Director Canadian filmmaker Mary Harron, the film understood its source material perhaps more than any other adaptation and featured Christian Bale in a truly career-making role. And yet, since then, none of Harron’s films have reached the same calibre, quality or cultural relevance.
2. James Foley – Glengarry Glen Ross (1992)
Considering the sheer brilliance of this film, it is utterly astounding the direction James Foley’s career took afterwards. Based on the play of the same name by the esteemed David Mamet, Glengarry Glen Ross depicted the small yet fiercely competitive world of real estate salesmen, populated by Hollywood greats like Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Ed Harris and Alec Baldwin.
It’s one of the most well-respected films of the 1990s, set the template for tales of power-hungry competition that would come after it, and is generally considered one of the best adaptations of all time, and yet what did Foley go on to do? A string of awfully received films that culminated in, of all things, the last two instalments of the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy franchise.
1. Richard Kelly – Donnie Darko (2001)
There’s a reason this one is at the top of our list. Of all the films on here, this is the one that most proudly announced the arrival of a bonafide, genuine auteur genius – someone who would have been up there with the likes of Paul Thomas Anderson or Christopher Nolan. Conceptually, tonally and aesthetically, Richard Kelly’s debut film Donnie Darko was nothing short of a singular masterpiece.
Following Jake Gyllenhaal as the titular character, the film presented us with a cerebral yet gut-punching emotional tale of love, suburbia, and time travel. So then, what happened? Five years later, in 2006, he released Southland Tales, a frenzied post-apocalyptic satire that was completely toppled over by its own scale and ambition. Three years later, he gave us The Box, a Cameron Diaz-led, mildly trashy thriller based on a short story that had already been adapted for an episode of The Twilight Zone. And nearly 15 years later, we’ve not seen anything else from the director.
