4 Movies Based On True Stories That You’ll Wish Were Fiction

Sometimes, real life can be scarier than any horror movie out there (especially these days).

Realistically speaking here – you wouldn’t typically end up in a situation where there is a killer clown, or someone forcing you to play games to save your life. However, movies based on true stories you can’t assume they /won’t/ happen to you, or even just /know/ that humans are capable of such horrors – especially watching movies as scary as these. With that here’s to hoping they won’t happen to you, but check them out just in case you need to be prepared for the worst, or want to know what the worst of humanity looks like.

‘The Girl Next Door’ (2007)

The Girl Next Door centers on Meg, a teenage girl who, orphaned and in need of a guardian, is placed with her aunt and cousins in a house that appears to be the picture-perfect suburbia home. On the inside, the house transforms into her personal hell. Meg is starved, beaten, humiliated, and tortured not only by her guardian but by a pack of neighborhood children that are allowed – encouraged – to participate in the abuse. Nobody will intervene on Meg’s behalf. The adults around her choose to ignore what happens while others participate, except one young boy, David who watches and attempts to defend her, but has no power to stop the violence that spirals further and further out of control. The worst aspect of The Girl Next Door lies in how long Meg endures the abusive treatment. Days. Weeks. Months. All lines are crossed over and over again, until there’s nothing left except for survival. Sadly, eventually, even her life is taken away.

It’s based on the real-life case of Sylvia Likens, who endured an almost identical ordeal in 1960s Indiana. Except in real life, there was no David. Nobody came to save her. The woman who masterminded the abuse only served a little over two decades in prison before being released from prison. The movie never indulges in gore for gore’s sake, it’s shocking because of the reality that this happens in basements, in neighborhoods that look just like yours.

10 Rillington Place (1971)

10 Rillington Place dramatises the real-life murders committed by serial killer John Christie in his West London home over the 1940s and early 1950s. It opens with Christie tricking a woman, Muriel Eady, to his home with an offer to cure her bronchitis. He gas attacks her while she’s unconscious, strangles her, then rapes her dead body, burying it in the garden, a few feet from a body of one of his previous victims. The film then jumps forward to focus on the Evans family of Timothy, his pregnant wife Beryl, and their infant daughter Geraldine who move into the upstairs flat in 1949. Beryl goes looking for an abortion, and Christie offers to perform the operation.

Christie sends his wife away before gassing Beryl to death and persuading Tim that it was an accident. He advises Tim to leave and drives him out of the house while promising to place the baby with another family. He strangles the child, then hides both bodies in the washroom. When Tim confesses to police, the story he thinks happened, no one questions Christie. Tim is charged, convicted, and hanged for two murders he didn’t commit. Two years later, following an argument with his wife Ethel who had told him she was moving in with family as he’d been so violent in recent months, so Christie kills her as well and hides her body beneath the floorboards. He goes on to murder at least three more women and stuffs their bodies behind a kitchen wall. It’s only after Christie moves out, in 1953, that a new tenant peels back the wallpaper and uncovers the bodies, but he was ultimately only charged with one murder after a long trial leading to his execution.

‘Open Water’ (2003)

Open Water is a survival horror film stripped down to its most terrifying core, being forgotten out at sea. It follows Daniel and Susan, a couple on vacation who join a diving group off the coast of a tropical island. After surfacing from a routine dive, they realize the boat is gone. A miscount by the crew left them stranded twenty miles offshore, alone in open ocean. At first, they stay calm, convinced someone will notice. As the sun beats down, hours pass, and sharks begin to circle, that confidence turns into dread. Overnight, things unravel. They’re stung by jellyfish, they grow weak and Daniel suffers a shark bite and eventually dies (possibly from blood loss, possibly from shock.) Susan, left alone, removes her gear and slips below the surface, accepting the inevitable.

Open Water is actually based on the real 1998 disappearance of Tom and Eileen Lonergan, an American couple diving the Great Barrier Reef with a commercial tour group. Due to a botched headcount, the boat left without them. It wasn’t until two days later that the crew realized they were missing. A massive search followed, but their bodies were never recovered. Only some of their gear washed ashore, damaged by coral, not sharks. The case sparked theories, including foul play, suicide, even staged disappearance,v but none were ever confirmed. The film exaggerates some elements, especially the shark encounters but the core truth remains two people, left behind, without help, in one of the most unforgiving environments on Earth.

 The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)

The Exorcism of Emily Rose is a courtroom horror that uses the trial of a priest to retell the story of a botched exorcism that ended in the death of a young woman. Erin Bruner, a lawyer, defends accused a priest of negligent homicide after his exorcism of Emily, a 19-year-old woman, results in her death after a harrowing five days and nights of exorcisms. Flashbacks are shown of Emily suffering from seizures, violent fits, and visions, before she dies. Was she actually possessed by the devil or merely mentally ill and failed by all around her?

The film’s story is based on the real life experiences of Anneliese Michel, who died following 67 Catholic exorcisms in 10 months at the age of 23 in 1976. Diagnosed as having temporal lobe epilepsy, Anneliese suffered a range of severe physical and psychological symptoms, including convulsions, religious delusions and hallucinations, self starvation, and increasingly bizarre and violent behaviour. She also believed she was possessed by a number of demons, primarily Lucifer, Judas, and Hitler. In her final days, Anneliese broke bones in her arms from so much praying and eventually weighed only 66 pounds. Her parents, in consultation with two priests, continued to perform the exorcisms against the advice of their doctors, until they all died of malnutrition and dehydration. The four were convicted of negligent homicide, but the priests received suspended sentences, and the parents did not serve any jail time.