The answer to this question is easy.
The Thing (1982) Dir. John Carpenter. Star. Kurt Russel.
You literally cannot move for people saying how much they love this movie today, there are die hards out there that will put out a contract on your favourite pet if you so much as indicate you were slightly bored by it. It has an 8.1 rating on IMDB, supposedly putting it up there with the gratest movies ever made.
When it was released?
It charted at just 8th upon it's opening weekend, stayed at no.8 the following weekend, dropped to 9th the next, then drifted out the charts.
It had to have last minute desperate reworks because everything was going wrong in the pre-screenings:
After one market research screening, Carpenter queried the audience on their thoughts, and one audience member asked, "Well what happened in the very end? Which one was the Thing…?" When Carpenter responded that it was up to their imagination, the audience member responded, "Oh, God. I hate that."
The critics pretty much hated it & it got a widespread panning for all the right reasons: it was boring, it was cold (emotionally), it was a bit late to the space monster party, etc etc.
It even got nominated for a razzie for it's musical score.
It temporarily ruined John Carpenter's career:
The impact on Carpenter was immediate—he lost the job of directing the 1984 science fiction horror film Firestarter because of The Thing's poor performance.[88] His previous success had gained him a multiple-film contract at Universal, but the studio opted to buy him out of it instead.[89] He continued making films afterward but lost confidence, and did not openly talk about The Thing's failure until a 1985 interview
I also remember it as being a nothing much of a film beyond some interesting special effects at the time & it was never something that flew off the shelves at video shops. And yet, at some point, who knows where and who knows why and who knows when it started, but an extremely aggressive cult now surrounds the movie with the kind of passion one would expect of a religious zealot.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯