The Best Horror Movies Based On Reality From Exorcist Emily Rose To Monsters
In This Article/Video, We Look At Some Of The Best Horror Movies Inspired By Hard-Hearted Killers And Incredible Real-World Crimes.
When we sit down to watch horror movies, one of our defenses to brace ourselves is to keep reminding ourselves that “it’s all okay; It’s empty.” But what if that movie starts with the words “based on a true story”? Then not only can we no longer attribute the fears of the film to the author’s imagination, but the knowledge that the film’s events have taken place somewhere close to our ears pulls the wick of fear even higher. So we decided with this video/article to list some of the best horror movies inspired by heartless killers and unbelievable real-world crimes.
18- The Amityville Horror
The Horror of Aminiville (1979)
Stuart Rosenberg’s “The Amityville Horror,” released in 1979, is perhaps the most famous film based on the 28-day haunting of the Lutz family. On November 13, 1974, a house in Amityville, Long Island, became the scene of a massacre: 23-year-old Ronald Defeo Jr. shot his entire family around three in the morning. His victims are Ronald Defeo (44 years old), his father and Louise Defeo (42 years old), his mother; and his four siblings: Don (18 years old), Alison (13 years old), Mark (12 years old), and John Matthew (9 years old). Defeo’s parents were shot twice, while the children were all killed by a single shot. Physical evidence showed that Louise Defeo and her daughter Alison were awake at their deaths. According to the police, all the victims were lying on their stomachs in bed. Ronald, who was sentenced to life imprisonment, died in prison in 2021.
Their stay in this house was full of supernatural activities that led to the legendary fame of this house and the source of inspiration for countless books, documentaries, and movies. George Latz, the father of the family, claimed that he woke up every morning at 3:15 a.m., which was around the time of Ronald’s murders; The Latz family claimed that they smelled terrible odors in the house, a slimy green liquid oozed out from inside the walls and keyholes, and they felt cold in certain parts of the house; They claim that one day a priest will go there to bless this house. In one of the house’s rooms, he hears a voice shouting: “Get out!”.
The priest tells the family never to sleep in this room; Another paranormal activity they experienced in the house is familiar: the garage door opening and closing, an invisible spirit dropping one of the kitchen knives, a pig-like beast with red eyes staring through the window at George and his son Daniel, and George He found his wife suspended between the ground and the air on her bed. The Amityville home was sold to an undisclosed new owner in February 2017 for $605,000, $200,000 less than the original asking price. Since the murders, four other families have lived in this house.
17- The Sacrament movie
Ritual | (2013)
“Ritual,” directed by Ty West, who is known these days for creating “X” and its predecessor “Pearl,” is placed in the subgenre of “found images” and specifically from the mass suicide of the members of the cult “People’s Temple” led by Jim Jones. has taken. Jim Jones fled to his headquarters in Guyana (a country in northeastern South America) known as “Jonestown” to escape the police investigation. Jonestown, the inspiration for a similar religious town in the film, was advertised as a communist utopia. Still, it served as a cover for Jones’ mistreatment and abuse of his followers. In 1978, the media published news of suspected human rights violations in Jonestown in Guyana. Subsequently, Leo Ryan, one of the representatives of the American Congress who was active in the field of human rights, went to this city to investigate.
On his way back, some Jim Jones cult members break away from the cult to return to the United States with him. Leo Ryan is gunned down while boarding a plane with the defectors and early companions by Jones’ armed bodyguards to prevent his followers from returning to the United States. Although there is no mention of politicians in Ty West’s film, the story is about a crew that goes to the sect’s headquarters by helicopter to prepare a report. Their attempt to let some separatists escape led to the shooting. During the shooting, Jim Jones asked his followers to drink soda that contained the poisonous substance cyanide. This mass suicide led to the death of 909 people, 300 of whom were children. This incident was considered the giant killing of American civilians before the September 11 terrorist attacks. Thanks to the use of found footage, the movie “Ritual” portrays this very familiar event from a new perspective; “Ayin” is not a biographical film, but it recreates the experience of going through those terrible conditions movingly.
16- Borderland movie
Borderland (2007)
“Borderland” is based on Adolfo Constanzo’s serial murders; Constanzo was a Cuban/American born in 1962 in Miami, Florida. After his father died in infancy, his mother moved to Puerto Rico and remarried there. They returned to Florida again in 1972, and his stepfather died shortly after, leaving a large inheritance. His mother remarries, but this time to a man involved in drug trafficking and the occult (or occult sciences such as astrology). Constanzo’s stepfather teaches him a philosophy that becomes his terrifying worldview for the rest of his life: he tells Constanzo that he must profit from the infidels’ stupidity while they kill themselves with drugs.
In 1984, Constanzo moved to Mexico City, where he began a profitable business as a fortune teller and fortune teller using tarot cards for fortune-telling and fortune-telling for his clients. He becomes the founder and leader of a cult. His expensive spell-casting ceremonies to bring good luck included sacrificing chickens, goats, snakes, zebras, and even lion cubs. Many of Constanzo’s clients were assassins and smugglers who enjoyed the violence of his magic shows. For a time, Constanzo used human bones in his spells by stealing them from cemeteries, but his cult decided that using live human sacrifices was more potent than the bones of the dead. In this way, his murders began, and their number reached more than 20 people. In 1988, Constanzo moved to a house in the desert in Santa Elena, where he committed his most sadistic ritual murders (some strangers, others traffickers from rival gangs). “Borderland” narrates the story of the murder of Mark Kilroy, an American student who Constanzo’s henchmen kidnaped, tortured, and finally sacrificed with the motive of protecting the cult against the police. “Borderland” faithfully follows Palo Mayombe’s rituals; instead of simplifying them or removing them to make the film more popular, it becomes scarier by dealing with real superstitions and traditions practiced in our world. “Borderland” narrates the story of the murder of Mark Kilroy, an American student who Constanzo’s henchmen kidnaped, tortured, and finally sacrificed with the motive of protecting the cult against the police. “Borderland” faithfully follows Palo Mayombe’s rituals; instead of simplifying them or removing them to make the film more popular, it becomes scarier by dealing with real superstitions and traditions practiced in our world. “Borderland” narrates the story of the murder of Mark Kilroy, an American student who Constanzo’s henchmen kidnaped, tortured, and finally sacrificed with the motive of protecting the cult against the police. “Borderland” faithfully follows Palo Mayombe’s rituals; instead of simplifying them or removing them to make the film more popular, it becomes scarier by dealing with real superstitions and traditions practiced in our world.
15- Snowtown movie
Snowtown | (2011)
Snowtown, directed by Justin Kerzel, is based on a series of real-life serial murders committed between 1992 and 1999 by not one person, but a group of four: John Bunting, Robert Wagner, James Velasakis, and Mark Haydon (who The last one was responsible for destroying the bodies). Known as some of the most feared serial killers in Australian history, the four tortured and killed 12 people before dumping their dismembered bodies into plastic barrels and leaving them in a disused bank vault.
John Bunting had convinced other gang members that their victims deserved to die for being child abusers, heterosexuals, or “weak.” They mainly targeted their friends and family members (for example, two of them were ex-girlfriends of Bunting and Wagner, one of them was Mark Haydon’s ex-wife, and one was the half-brother of James Velasakis). Before killing their victims, they tortured them by dismembering their genitals or breaking their toenails with pliers. Their trial, which lasted almost 12 months, is considered the longest in the history of the state of South Australia. “The Snowtown Murders” achieves an unbearable level of horror thanks to the filmmaker’s commitment to detailing these horrific crimes in the most stark and realistic way possible.
14- Ten Rillington Place movie
Number 10, Rillington neighborhood (1971)
More than 50 years since its birth, Number 10 Rillington is recognized as one of the groundbreaking films of the actual crime subgenre and adapts the story of one of Britain’s most notorious serial killers: John Christie. Active in the late 1940s and early 1950s, he murdered at least eight people, including his wife, by strangling them in his apartment in Rillington, London. After he moved out of his apartment, the bodies of three of his victims were found behind the wallpaper in his kitchen; Also, the remains of two of them were discovered in the garden of the house, and the body of his wife was hidden under the wooden floor of the living room.
Two of Christie’s victims were Mrs. Beryl Evans and her infant daughter Geraldine, who, along with Beryl’s husband, Timothy Evans, were tenants in building number 10 during 1948-49. Christie later confessed to murdering Ms. Evans, and subsequent investigations revealed that he had also killed Timothy Evans’ young daughter. Timothy was convicted of murdering his wife and daughter and was hanged in 1950. So when Christie’s crimes were discovered three years later, the validity of Timothy’s conviction was questioned. If it weren’t for the wrong investigation by the police, not only would Timothy Evans not have been wrongly executed, but Christie’s failure to leave would not have led to the killing of four other women.
13- The movie Stuck
Stuck (2007)
Have you ever given up hope on humanity? Have you ever concluded that maybe people are inherently selfish and stupid? Has it happened to you that you believe in the absurdity of the world? “Stuck” is one movie that doesn’t make you feel better. On October 26, 2001, a 25-year-old nurse’s aide named Shante Joan Mallard crashed her car with a 37-year-old homeless man named Greg Glenn Briggs. The force of the collision was such that Briggs was stuck in the car’s windshield. But Mallard continues to drive home and parks his car in his garage with the man still stuck in the windshield. Not only did Mallard not call the police, but she also refused medical attention, even though she was a nurse at the time. He returned to the garage occasionally to check on the man.
After Briggs dies a day or two after the accident while still stuck in the car window, Mallard calls a male friend, and they leave the body in a park and part of the car to destroy evidence. They set fire. Although he went into hiding for a while, about four months later, he exposed himself: he had told the story of his accident with a white man while laughing and talking at a party. “Stuck” is the latest film from Stewart Gordon, who has made horror classics such as “Re-Animator,” “From Beyond,” and “Freak Castle.” This one is like Theirs is a rough and tumble black comedy that turns into a crazy, funny, and shocking ride thanks to its fast-paced rhythm and brutally excessive violence.
12- Hounds of Love movie
Whips of Love (2016)
The Australian film “Love Whips,” directed by Ben Young, was inspired by the serial crimes of David and Catherine Burney in 1986; A couple kidnapped four women, sexually abused them, and then killed them; Their fifth victim escaped from their hands. “Love Whips” is about their latest victim, his experience with his captors (John and Evelyn White in this film), and his eventual escape. David and Kathryn Burney committed their crimes over five weeks and should pick up young women on the side of the road from passing cars. Catherine watched as David raped the girls. Then, they would kill their victims and bury them in shallow graves. Seventeen-year-old Kate Muir (on which Vicky Maloney’s character is based) manages to escape when Catherine forgets to chain her to the bed before leaving the house.
“Tazian Eshgh” never reduces the terrifying experience of its subject to a means of cinematic pleasure and excitement. Still, it reaches an unbearable annoyance by refusing to portray much of its violence and leaving its details to the viewer’s imagination. The filmmaker’s restrained, non-Hollywood style of direction serves not to entertain the audience but to shock them by following the helplessness of a young girl in a desperate situation and staring into the eyes of unforgettable evil. Kate crawled out the window, found help, and led the police to the Bernie couple’s home.
11-Targets movie
Objectives (1968)
Targets, Peter Bogdanovich’s directorial debut, tells two separate storylines that intertwine during the film’s climax: the first focuses on Bobby Thompson, a seemingly ordinary and cheerful young man who commits mass murder without provocation. And the second storyline revolves around Byron Orlock, a famous horror movie actor who is thinking about retirement; Because the real-world news is so violent that no one is afraid to watch his horror movies anymore. The character of Bobby Thompson was inspired by a natural killer named Charles Whiteman; He, who was an engineering student and a former US Marine, killed his mother and his wife with a knife on August 1, 1966, and then took a position on top of the central tower of the University of Texas at Austin, and for 96 minutes, shot at Others killed 14 people and injured 32 others. Quentin Tarantino has said in the description of “Targets” that this film is still one of the most influential films in the field of the necessity of establishing gun control laws. In Tarantino’s words, “Targets” is not a thriller with a social critique buried within, but a social commentary with a thriller buried within. Also, he introduces “Goals” as one of the best first films in cinema history and the best film produced by Roger Corman.
10- Open Water movie
Open Waters (2003)
There are as many shark movies as hairs on our heads, but what sets “Open Waters” apart is that the plight of two real people inspired it. On January 25, 1998, an American couple named Tom and Eileen Lonergan left the coastal city of Port Douglas in Australia by boat to dive in the “Great Barrier Reef” east of this country. They were not alone. Twenty-six passengers boarded the diving boat. After they reached their desired place for diving, they put on their gear and dived into the waters of the Coral Sea. This is the last thing that can be said with certainty about the condition of this 33-28-year-old couple. But what can be imagined is this: Probably, when they returned to the water after their 40-minute diving session, they were faced with nothing but an all-blue sky and an all-empty sea that continued to the horizon; The boat they came with was neither in front of them nor behind them. They were just two confused divers who realized their group had left them 25 miles off the coast.
You guessed it: Tom and Eileen’s companions had inadvertently forgotten them and returned home without them. Leaving the divers in the middle of the sea does not necessarily mean signing their death certificate. Still, in this case, the problem was that the boat’s crew only noticed the absence of the Lonergan couple two days after the accident. On the boat’s deck, the steward comes across a bag containing the Lonergan couple’s belongings, wallet, and passports. Although an extensive air and sea operation was conducted in search of the missing couple, after three days of searching, all that was found was some of the Lonergans’ diving equipment; One of these devices was an underwater note-taking device that read: “Monday, January 26, 1998, at eight o’clock in the morning. To anyone who can help: We were stranded on the Agincourt Sea Cliff at three o’clock in the afternoon on January 25, 1998. Please help us. Save us before we die. Help!!!”. Although the couple’s bodies were never found, Chris Kentis, in the film “Open Waters,” the director speculated that they had become shark hunters.
Filmed on a shoestring budget in a natural ocean with live sharks, “Open Waters” translates the Lonergan couple’s experience during that day into a full-blown cinematic nightmare. They had suffered a lot of trouble and expenses to be left alone in the middle of the sea! Being in danger of losing your life is one thing, but having hours and hours to think about it is an entirely different horror. In the words of Roger Ebert: “We paid to do this” may be the most infuriating line in the entire film.
9- A Nightmare on Elm Street movie
Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
At first glance, the supernatural story of Freddy Krueger, who invades the sleep of his young victims with his sharp metal claws, cannot be inspired by the real world. Still, the truth is that Wes Craven, the creator of the series, confirmed the idea of young people being attacked in their sleep. An Assassin Meets was sparked in his mind by reading about an actual event in the newspaper: the Cambodian genocide. After Cambodia’s civil war ended in the 1970s, the Cambodian Communist Party took control of the country and killed more than a million people. The place where this genocide took place is known as “killing fields.” The Communist Party planned to create peasant socialism based on Stalinist and Maoist ideas in Cambodia. The policies of this group for forced migration and adjustment and relocation of the population from the outskirts of the cities, torture, and mass executions through starvation, malnutrition, and disease caused the death of two million Cambodians, which was a quarter of the country’s population at that time. But what did not inspire Wes Craven was not the genocide itself but the story of a Cambodian family that fled to the United States.
One of the children of this immigrant family still had terrible dreams about being murdered. He was so afraid of sleeping that he wouldn’t take the pills prescribed by the doctor and always had a pot of coffee in his room, ready to stay awake. Once, he was watching TV downstairs at midnight when he fell asleep, his family found out, and they moved him to his bed. The whole family returns to their beds, happy that he is finally asleep. But an hour later, they hear his screams from his room, and when they reach him, they realize that he is dead; He was destroyed in the middle of his nightmare. But the scary part of the story is that the incident described by Craven was not rare and unrepeatable. During the 80s, many Southeast Asian immigrants in America died in their sleep for unknown reasons; Those who contracted this mysterious disease were usually immigrants from Laos, a small landlocked country in Southeast Asia.
The CIA used the Hmong ethnic group to fight against South Vietnamese soldiers during the Vietnam War. After the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, Laos became a communist country, and the new government viewed the Hmong as traitors for their cooperation with the United States. Many survivors of the war left their homeland for Thailand and the United States. The phenomenon was so widespread that it was officially classified as “Unexplained Sudden Nocturnal Death Syndrome.” The CIA used the Hmong ethnic group to fight against South Vietnamese soldiers during the Vietnam War. After the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, Laos became a communist country, and the new government viewed the Hmong as traitors for their cooperation with the United States. Many survivors of the war left their homeland for Thailand and the United States. The phenomenon was so widespread that it was officially classified as “Unexplained Sudden Nocturnal Death Syndrome.” The CIA used the Hmong ethnic group to fight against South Vietnamese soldiers during the Vietnam War. After the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, Laos became a communist country, and the new government viewed the Hmong as traitors for their cooperation with the United States. Many survivors of the war left their homeland for Thailand and the United States. The phenomenon was so widespread that it was officially classified as “Unexplained Sudden Nocturnal Death Syndrome.”
8- The Clovehitch Killer movie
The silent killer (2018)
“The Silent Killer” tells the fictional story of a family man named Donald Burnside, who is also a serial killer. If this summary of the story seems familiar to you, you are not wrong; Because this character was inspired by Dennis Rader, known as the BTK killer (abbreviation of “bind, torture, and kill”). Between 1974 and 1991, he killed ten people in Wichita and Park City, Kansas, and sent sarcastic letters to police and newspapers detailing his crimes. After a decade-long hiatus, he resumed sending letters in 2004, which led to his arrest in 2005. He is currently serving his life sentence at El Dorado Prison in Kansas.
The story of this movie revolves around a sixteen-year-old boy scout named Tyler Burnside. He lives in a small town in Kentucky with his religious family, who regularly go to church, A city that holds a memorial service every year to mourn the ten women killed by a dreaded killer. The killer, known for tying up, torturing, and then strangling his victims, has never been caught, but the psychological scars from his years of activity are still fresh. Also, his wife and children are just as shocked as Dennis’s family to discover he is a murderer. Ten years have passed since the last murder of Khaft-Duper, who became known as his beloved Garh (Kheft-Duper), and people want to leave behind and forget that violent time.
Tyler’s father, Donald, the leader of the Boy Scouts, seems like a perfectly normal faithful, and honorable American father as a man who jokes with his little girl, loves his wife, and makes delicious pancakes for breakfast. But Tyler accidentally comes across scary photos in his father’s storage, which leads to a terrifying question in his mind that grows like a poisonous mushroom and surrounds the entire space of his skull: Could his father be the famous serial killer of the city? The more Tyler searches, the more damning clues he comes across.
7- Monster movie
monster | (2003)
Charlize Theron won 17 awards, including the Oscar for Best Actress, for portraying Eileen Wuornos as a sex worker turned serial killer. Eileen Wuornos was a sex worker who shot and robbed seven male clients along Florida highways between 1989 and 1990. Wuornos claimed that his clients had either raped or attempted to rape him and that the killings were motivated by self-defense. After 12 years of waiting in the execution hall, Vornos was finally executed by lethal injection in 2002. Not only was Vornos’ father in prison for raping a 7-year-old girl at the time of his birth (he later committed suicide in prison), but his mother had abandoned him and his brother when he was four.
Vornos and his brother lived with their alcoholic grandparents. Vornos had said that his grandfather had abused him as a child. At fourteen, she was raped by one of her grandfather’s friends and became pregnant. After her grandmother dies, her grandfather kicks her out of the house at the age of fifteen, and she is forced to live in the woods around her old home and make ends meet through prostitution. In other words, the story of Eileen Wuornos is a clear example of the adage: “Monsters are not born; they are made.” The most outstanding achievement of “Monster” is that it avoids exploiting its subject’s story, but instead, without ignoring her crimes, it portrays a woman who has been so cruelly crushed by the hands of life that it is as if a good spring has dried up inside her. Still, however, when he experiences love for the first time, he becomes determined to become a better person. The problem is that he lacks the intelligence and empathy to survive the difficult path leading to his goal. So watching him turn into a serial killer isn’t shocking; it’s terrifyingly tragic.
6- Dead Ringers movie
Perfect similarity (1988)
David Cronenberg’s Perfect Resemblance was inspired by two real people: Stewart and Cyril Marcus; They were identical twins who practiced obstetrics and gynecology in New York City. Their death was strange; Because not only were there no signs of violence, but the tests also showed that they did not die from the consumption of drugs or other chemical substances. On July 19, 1975, the janitor of the building where the Marcos brothers live discovered their bodies by checking their locked apartment, emanating a stench. Each of the brothers had died in separate bedrooms. The coroner concluded four days had passed since Stewart’s death and only two days since Cyril’s death.
The Marcus brothers’ case inspired David Cronenberg’s psychological horror film, starring Jeremy Irons as genius twins Beverly and Elliott Mantel. They are so similar that they are used to putting themselves in each other’s place. For example, Elliot, who is more socially confident and dominant, seduces women. After he gets tired of romancing them, he turns them over to his shy twin brother (without the women knowing they have changed). With his machine gun classics, Cronenberg was known as an unstoppable force during the 80s. However, when it comes to his best films, all of them are from “The Fly,” which hosts one of the most amazing special effects in the history of cinema, or from “Videodrome,” which contains the most famous dialogue of his career (“Long live the new meat.”
5- Compliance movie
Compliance | (2012)
The film “Adaptation” directed by Craig Zobel, is based on a series of serial crimes between 1992 and 2004. These crimes, mostly in remote and remote areas of the United States, were a person calling a fast food restaurant or supermarket and introducing himself as a police officer, asking managers to strip-search female employees. Persuasive (one even involved a male employee searching a woman’s body cavities for hidden drugs). More than 70 of these crimes were reported in 30 different US states. Finally, in 2004, one of these events in Mount Washington, one of the cities of the state of Kentucky, led to the arrest of David Richard Stewart. Police discovered that the call had come from a public phone at a supermarket in Panama City, Florida, and that the caller had used a calling card that Walmart stores are the largest retailer of. Then, using the purchase history of the Walmart store in this city, which showed the time of purchase of this phone card, the police managed to identify the buyer of the card with the help of CCTV cameras.
Although Stewart insisted he never bought a phone card, detectives checked his home phone records. They found that he had called nine restaurants over the past year (including one in Idaho on the same day a phone scam contacted the restaurant’s manager was tricked). Also, the police found in his house an application for employment in the police department, hundreds of police magazines, police-like uniforms, and a gun, which they believe showed that the suspect aspired to become a police officer. Despite this, a jury acquitted Stewart of the charges. Similar phone scams stopped after Stewart’s arrest, according to police reports, but since his acquittal in 2006, similar incidents were reported in 2009. Although “Adaptation” fairly faithfully recreates the final call that led to the arrest of the con artist, it heightens its shock by adding more saucy sexual details. In the sixties, a psychologist named Stanley Milgram designed an experiment to measure people’s obedience to authority in doing things against their conscience.
The results of these experiments, which you can google, were deeply shocking. It turned out that we can justify doing things that we would never do in a normal situation if we got an order from an authority figure. This movie is about this. On the one hand, Conformity is one of those movies that makes you yell at its stupid characters for obeying dubious signboard orders. Still, on the other hand, the voice of someone posing as a police officer is so convincing. And it is spellbinding that the film forces the audience to admit a challenging truth:
4- Wolf Creek movie
Wolf Creek | (2005)
The slasher film “Wolf Creek,” directed by Australian Greg McLean, tells the story of three so-called “backpackers” who hunt a psychotic killer named Mick Taylor in the remote and abandoned deserts of Australia and must try to escape from his torture cell. McLean has said in his interviews that he created the character of Mick Taylor based on two real serial killers. The first is Ivan Milat; he was active between 1989 and 1993, killed seven people (5 foreigners and two Australians), and became known as the “backpack killer.” He would pick up his victims who were unaware from everywhere in the state of New South Wales and take them to a large forest in this state instead of reaching their destination and killing them with various weapons. For example, one of Milat’s victims was found shot ten times in the head.
The second influential killer in the creation of Mick Taylor’s character is Bradley Johnson Murdoch, who was convicted in 2005 of murdering a British tourist named Peter Falconio and kidnapping Falconio’s girlfriend, who survived the murder. Falconio’s body was never found, and he was presumed dead. His girlfriend had escaped by hiding in the bushes and finding her way to the road for help. In describing the process of creating the villain of his film, McLean said that he wanted to make Mick Taylor a representative of all the xenophobia, racism, sexism, and all the other negative anti-human feelings Australians do not bring upon themselves and suppress but still exist.
۳- فیلم The Exorcism of Emily Rose
Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)
“The Exorcism of Emily Rose” was inspired by the case of a German girl named Anneliese Michel. Although Anneliese was diagnosed with epilepsy at 16 and struggled with severe depression, by the time she was 20, her condition had not only not improved but had worsened despite taking medication. So, Anneliese’s religious family, who had become convinced that their daughter’s problem stemmed from demonic possession, refused medical treatment and resorted to exorcism ceremonies. After enduring 67 sessions of exorcism, Anneliese finally died due to malnutrition and dehydration, her weight had reached 30 kg, and at the time of her death, she was also suffering from a broken knee and pneumothorax. In 1974, the court convicted Anneliese’s parents and the priests who performed the exorcism of negligent homicide.
The movie “The Exorcism of Emily Rose” has chosen the structure of a courtroom drama to adapt this case: the film revolves around a lawyer named Lara Linney; An agnostic, Lara is hired as a defense attorney for a priest who is on trial for the manslaughter of a young girl named Emily Rose. On the other hand, the judiciary, represented by a godly and faithful lawyer, believes that Emily suffered from severe but curable diseases and that the priest’s insistence on the girl’s possession caused her death. “The Exorcism of Emily Rose,” by choosing a neutral way to narrate this story, knows that what makes it interesting is not the firm confirmation of one of these two points of view but instead adding fuel to the fire of the viewer’s doubts.
2- The movie Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
Henry: Portrait of a serial killer (1986)
If you’re looking for the most disturbing film on this list, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer is the genre itself. This film tells the story of Henry Lee Lucas, who worked between 1960 and 1963. Although Lucas was convicted of three murders, including his mother, it was speculated that he had committed eight other murders (he claimed to have killed more than 100 people!). Lucas is a clear example of a wandering killer; This means that he did not kill in one place and with a unique method but moved from place to location and killed people randomly, making his arrest more difficult.
But Lucas’s crimes are not limited to murder: rape, robbery, child abduction, and many other terrible crimes. What makes “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer” particularly frightening is that it’s shot like a family film; The shaky camera, grainy visuals, dirty look, and low budget make watching it feel like watching a private videotape kept out of reach in a wardrobe. What sets “Portrait of a Serial Killer” apart from many horror films of its time is its commitment to telling its story from the killer’s point of view in the most honest and unglamorous way possible. This film is not about the thrill of chasing the hero and his attacker or the investigation of the detectives to decipher the killer’s identity, but about drowning the audience inside the mind of a sick person who commits these crimes in the end in cold blood; It is about removing the gap between the audience and the killer to the point where it seems as if we are both breathing in the same space. The film opens with a shot of one of Henry’s victims, and then we cut to Henry himself putting out his cigarette: for him, taking human lives is as simple as choking on a cigarette.
1- فیلم The Girl Next Door
The girl next door (2007)
In the description of “The Girl Next Door,” that’s all, Stephen King introduced it as the most shocking film he had seen since “Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.” “The Girl Next Door” was inspired by the Sylvia Likens murder case in October 1965 in Indianapolis, USA. Sylvia was a 16-year-old girl who was captured in the basement of her house by a woman named Gertrude Banishevsky, her temporary caretaker; She was tortured to death by Gertrude’s children and other neighborhood children. Sylvia’s torture lasted for three months, finally leading to the poor girl’s death due to the severity of her injuries and malnutrition. Although this film has changed the names of the people involved in the case and some events, it remains faithful to the essence of the original topic.
“The Girl Next Door” is about the fact that a person can justify doing any heinous act if there is a person in charge and an orderer who acknowledges his crimes; The filmmaker makes the most of the dramatic use of the contrast between the beautiful and nostalgic appearance of America in the 50s and the stinking darkness that crawls like a worm behind closed doors. What makes the film especially shocking is that as a director, Greg Wilson avoids reducing these real pains and sufferings to entertainment and empty shocks and forces the audience to stare into the depths of hell directly and in the coldest possible way. The result of the film is profoundly nauseating and immeasurably heartbreaking that, in the end, you wish it was nothing more than a product of a writer’s imagination, but unfortunately, it is not.
