Hey guys, hope you all are doing good! How many of you have watched horror movies based on true stories?
Well, today’s article is for those who are fond of watching horror movies based on true stories.
There are nights when all we want to do is curl up in bed and watch horror movies based on true stories. Isn’t it?
We all love doing that, but what makes a horror movie extremely horrific is knowing that it is based on a true story.
I mean, yeah! We all can agree with this, Knowing that somebody actually went through that terror, in reality, is something that does not let one sleep easily.
You often end up feeling horrific in your home sweet home, at least for a night for sure.
One needs a strong heart to watch horror movies based on true stories. In case, if you have one, then let’s just dive straight into the list of 15 Horror movies based on true stories.
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1- The Exorcist (1973)
The Exorcist, a 1973 American supernatural horror film directed by William Friedkin and written for the screen by William Peter Blatty, based on his 1971 novel of the same name.
The film stars Ellen Burstyn, Max von Sydow, Lee J. Cobb, Kitty Winn, Jack MacGowran (in his final film role), Jason Miller, and Linda Blair.
It is the first installment in The Exorcist film series and follows the demonic possession of a young girl and her mother’s attempt to rescue her through an exorcism conducted by a pair of Catholic priests.
2- The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a 1974 American horror film produced and directed by Tobe Hooper from a story. One of the horror movies based on true stories.
It is a screenplay by Hooper and Kim Henkel. It stars Marilyn Burns, Paul A. Partain, Edwin Neal, Jim Siedow, and Gunnar Hansen, who respectively portray Sally Hardesty, Franklin Hardesty, the hitchhiker, the proprietor, and Leatherface.
The film follows a group of friends who fall victim to a family of cannibals while on their way to visit an old homestead.
The film marketed as being based on true events to attract a wider audience and to act as a subtle commentary on the era’s political climate; although the character of Leatherface and minor story details inspired by the crimes of the murderer Ed Gein, its plot is largely fictional.
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3- A Nightmare On Elm Street (2010)
A Nightmare on Elm Street, a 2010 American supernatural slasher film directed by Samuel Bayer and written by Wesley Strick and Eric Heisserer.
The film stars Jackie Earle Haley, Kyle Gallner, Rooney Mara, Katie Cassidy, Thomas Dekker, and Kellan Lutz.
Produced by Michael Bay and Platinum Dunes, it is a remake of Wes Craven’s 1984 film of the same name in the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise.
The film is set in a fictitious town in Ohio and centers around a group of teenagers living on one street who are stalked and murdered in their dreams by a disfigured man named Freddy Krueger. One of the horror movies based on true stories.
The teenagers discover that they all share a common link from their childhood that makes them targets for Krueger.
4- Child’s Play (1988)
Child’s Play, a 1988 American supernatural horror film directed by Tom Holland, from a screenplay by Holland, Don Mancini, and John Lafia, and based on a story by Mancini.
It is the first film in the Child’s Play series and the first installment to feature the character Chucky.
It stars Catherine Hicks, Chris Sarandon, Alex Vincent, Dinah Manoff, Tommy Swerdlow, and Jack Colvin, with Brad Dourif as the titular character.
Its plot follows a widowed mother who gives a doll to her son, unaware that the doll is possessed by the soul of a serial killer.
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5- The Amityville Horror (2005)
The Amityville Horror, a 2005 American supernatural horror film directed by Andrew Douglas and starring Ryan Reynolds, Melissa George, and Philip Baker Hall.
It also features the debut of actress Chloe Grace Moretz. Written by Scott Kosar, based on the novel The Amityville Horror by Jay Anson, which previously adapted into the 1979 film of the same name.
It is the ninth film in the Amityville Horror film series, which documents the experiences of the Lutz family after they move into a house at 112 Ocean Avenue, Long Island. In 1974, real-life mass murderer Ronald DeFeo Jr. killed six members of his family at the same house in Amityville, New York.
6- Psycho (1960)
Psycho, a 1960 American psychological horror-thriller film produced and directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
The screenplay, written by Joseph Stefano, was based on the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert Bloch.
The film stars Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Vera Miles, John Gavin, and Martin Balsam. One of the horror movies based on true stories.
The plot centers on an encounter between on-the-run embezzler Marion Crane (Leigh) and shy motel proprietor Norman Bates (Perkins) and its aftermath, in which a private investigator (Balsam), Marion’s lover Sam Loomis (Gavin), and her sister Lila (Miles) investigate her disappearance.
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7- The Girl Next Door (2007)
Jack Ketchum’s The Girl Next Door (also known as Jack Ketchum’s Evil), a 2007 American horror film directed by Gregory M. Wilson.
It is a screenplay by Daniel Farrands and Philip Nutman. Based on Jack Ketchum’s 1989 novel of the same name, which was inspired by the real-life murder of Sylvia Likens, to whom the movie is dedicated.
8- The Conjuring (2013)
The Conjuring, a 2013 American supernatural horror film directed by James Wan and written by Chad Hayes and Carey W. Hayes.
It is the inaugural film in The Conjuring Universe franchise.
Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga star as Ed and Lorraine Warren, paranormal investigators, and authors associated with prominent cases of haunting.
Their purportedly real-life reports inspired The Amityville Horror story and film franchise. One of the horror movies based on true stories.
The Warrens come to the assistance of the Perron family, who experienced increasingly disturbing events in their farmhouse in Rhode Island in 1971.
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9- Deranged (1974)
Deranged, a 1974 psychological horror film directed by Alan Ormsby and Jeff Gillen, and starring Roberts Blossom.
Its plot, loosely based on the crimes of Ed Gein, follows Ezra Cobb, a middle-aged man in a rural Midwestern community who begins a string of serial murders and grave robberies after the death of his mother, a religious fanatic who raised him to be a misogynist.
Though based on Gein, the film’s title is misleading since Gein never experimented with necrophilia; although a necrophile also defined as “an obsessive fascination with death and corpses.
10- Ravenous (1999)
Ravenous, a 1999 horror Western cannibal film directed by Antonia Bird and starring Guy Pearce, Robert Carlyle, Jeffrey Jones, and David Arquette.
The film revolves around cannibalism in 1840s California and some elements bear similarities to the story of the Donner Party and that of Alferd Packer.
Screenwriter Ted Griffin lists Packer’s story, as recounted in a couple of paragraphs of Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man, as one of his inspirations for Carlyle’s character.
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11- The Rite (2011)
The Rite is a 2011 supernatural horror film directed by Mikael Håfström and written by Michael Petroni.
It is loosely based on Matt Baglio’s book The Rite. One of the horror movies based on true stories.
The Making of a Modern Exorcist, which itself is based on actual events as witnessed and recounted by American then-exorcist-in-training.
Father Gary Thomas, and his experiences of being sent to Rome to be trained. And work daily with veteran clergy of the practice.
12- The Haunting In Connecticut (2009)
The Haunting in Connecticut is a 2009 American supernatural horror film, produced by Gold Circle Films and directed by Peter Cornwell.
The film alleged to be about Carmen Snedeker and her family.
though Ray Garton, author of In a Dark Place. The Story of a True Haunting (1992), has publicly distanced himself from the accuracy of the events, which he depicted in the book.
The film’s story follows the fictional Campbells as they move into a house, to mitigate the strains of travel on their cancer-stricken son, Matt.
The family soon becomes haunted by violent and traumatic events from supernatural forces occupying the house.
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13- Borderland (2007)
Borderland, a 2007 American-Mexican horror film written and directed by Zev Berman.
It is loosely based on the true story of Adolfo de Jesús Constanzo, a drug lord and the leader of a religious cult that practiced human sacrifice.
Costanzo and his followers, called the Narco-Satanists, kidnapped and murdered University of Texas junior, Mark J. Kilroy, in the spring of 1989.
14- The Strangers (2008)
The Strangers, a 2008 American psychological horror film written and directed by Bryan Bertino, in his directorial debut.
The plot follows Kristen (Liv Tyler) and James (Scott Speedman) whose stay at a vacation home is disrupted by three masked criminals who infiltrate the home.
The screenplay inspired by two real-life events. The multiple-homicide Manson family Tate murders and a series of break-ins that occurred in Bertino’s neighborhood as a child.
Some journalists noted similarities between the film and the Keddie cabin murders, that occurred in Keddie, California in 1981, though Bertino did not cite this as a reference.
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15- The Entity (1982)
The Entity, a 1982 American supernatural horror film directed by Sidney J. Furie, and written by Frank De Felitta, who adapted his 1978 novel of the same name. The film stars Barbara Hershey as a single mother in Los Angeles.
The one who is raped and tormented by an invisible assailant.
Despite being filmed and planned for a release in 1981,
the movie was not released in worldwide theaters until September 1982 and February 1983 in the United States.
