Taylor Sheridan made a forgotten horror movie before Yellowstone and it’s “awful”

In a post-Landman and Yellowstone world, there’s only one thing left to do: dig out the oldest and most obscure work of Taylor Sheridan.

1923 Season 2 is on the way to fill the gap left behind by Sheridan’s last round of Yellowstone, but until then, there’s a whole slate of TV shows and movies from the creator you can watch.

There are the obvious choices. Wind River and Hell or High Water brought the Dutton deity a level of prestige, with the latter even earning him an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay.

But if you want to watch something far more schlocky, there’s a forgotten 2011 horror movie you can watch instead. But be warned: it’s pretty low in the rankings.

2011 Taylor Sheridan horror movie Vile was called a “ripoff”

In 2011, Taylor Sheridan directed Vile, a horror that continued to ride the wave of torture-based movies left over from films like Saw and Final Destination.

Vile follows ten people held captive in a locked room, who are given 22 hours to escape, all while enduring horrific levels of pain and humiliation.

Inception Media Group

Technically speaking, the horror (which sits at 30% on Rotten Tomatoes) would have been Sheridan’s feature directorial debut. However, the Yellowstone creator has since tried to downplay this particular part of his filmography.

As he described it, his decision to direct Vile was a favor to a friend, who had produced the movie and backed out of directing under Sheridan’s advice.

“I would say this [Wind River] is my feature debut,” Sheridan said in 2017 [via Rotten Tomatoes]. “A friend of mine raised — I don’t know what he raised — 20 grand or something, and cast his buddies, and wrote this bad horror movie, that I told him not to direct.

“He was going to direct it and produce it, and he started and freaked out, and called and said, ‘Can you help me?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll try.’ I kind of kept the ship pointed straight, and they went off and edited, and did what they did. I think it’s generous to call me the director.”

Sheridan did give some credit to the experience, adding, “I think he was trying to say thank you, in some way. It was an excellent opportunity to point a camera and learn some lessons that actually benefited me on Wind River.”

On the audience front, Vile is generally considered to be mild fun at best, and complete failure at worst.

As one Reddit user wrote, “Sheridan must really hate having this film on his record, at the time ‘Wind River’ was coming out he even said he doesn’t consider this film his directorial debut. It’s not hard to see why.

“It blows my mind that some people are so lucky to get their very own film financed, and then just produce utter garbage like this.”

Another directly called it a “ripoff of Saw 2,” with another adding, “It really is just a sh*tty version of Saw 2 lol.”

For some real scares, check out list of the best horror movies coming in 2025. You can also take a look at some of the most violent horror movies of all time, and see what new movies are out this month.