Horror movies based on real-life events

Director James Wan returns with the sequel of the successful film "The Conjuring," which was based on a real life experience. "The Conjuring 2" is releasing in the U.S. on June 10, 2016. There are many horror movies in Hollywood that are inspired from real life events. How many of these have you seen?




The Girl Next Door (2007)

Blythe Auffarth plays the teenage girl who is horridly tortured and abused by her aunt, while a neighborhood boy fails to report the crime. The horror element in the film has been taken from the story of 16-year-old Sylvia Likens, who in 1965 was left in the care of an acquaintance - Gertrude Baniszewski - by her parents. Baniszewski, her children and two neighbors were eventually convicted of Sylvia's torture and murder.




The Hills Have Eyes (2006)

One of the all-time great horror classics (from 1977) undergoes a frighteningly good reworking via director and co-screenwriter Alexandre Aja. The hills are alive with the sound of terror as a family of vacationers tangles with a clan of psycho mutants in the New Mexico desert. Wes Craven, who directed the original, serves as one of the producers. The real life tale is supposedly based on the Sawney Bean Clan, a legendary family of thieves and cannibals from 16th century Scotland.




The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)

This potent and powerful meld of courtroom drama and shocking horror details the case of a priest (Tom Wilkinson), who is charged with negligent homicide when a possessed 19-year-old (Jennifer Carpenter) dies during an exorcism. The film is loosely based on a 1976 incident in Germany where 22-year-old Anneliese Michele was subjected to exorcism after her mental condition was misidentified, and died at her home. The parents and priest were sentenced to six months in jail for their actions.





Wolf Creek (2005)

A bunch of backpackers stranded in the Australian outback befriend a local. Much to their horror, he turns out to be a sadistic psychopath. The movie is loosely based on the crimes of two hitchhiker killers: Ivan Milat, who killed seven people in the 1990s; and Bradley John Murdoch, murderer of Peter Falcanio in 2001.





Open Water (2003)

Daniel Travis and Blanchard Ryan play the unfortunate couple in this movie, based on the true story of American tourists Tom and Eileen Lonergan, who were accidentally left behind in the open sea by their team during a diving tour. Their absence was eventually noticed by the diving company after two days and a search team dispatched; but the couple could not be found, nor were their bodies ever recovered.





The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

The Jonathan Demme-directed classic thriller had Jodie Foster playing Clarice Starling, a student at the FBI Academy, who is assigned to interview a former psychiatrist and cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) in prison to nab another serial killer by the name of Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine). Bill's character is based on at least three real-life criminals - Ed Gein (who used to skin his victims), Ted Bundy (who pretended to be injured in order to bait his victims) and Gary Heidnick (who kidnapped women and kept them in a pit in his basement).





Dead Ringers (1988)

The film follows the rise of identical twins who are gynecologists (Jeremy Irons) and their path toward addiction, obsession and, finally, self destruction. The plot is inspired by the book "Twins" by Bari Wood and Jack Geasland, who in turn based it on the true story of Cyril and Stewart Marcus that caught attention of the press and media in the 1980s.




The Shining (1980)

Stanley Kubrick directed this psychological horror film, which was inspired by events at Colorado's Stanley Hotel. The hotel indeed has a reputation of having paranormal activities. Author Stephen King wrote his iconic horror novel, "The Shining" (on which the movie is based) during his stay at The Stanley Hotel with his wife in 1973.




The Amityville Horror (1979)

An adaptation of the deeply controversial novel of the same name, which claims to tell the true story of the Lutz family. In 1974, Ronald DeFeo Jr. killed six members of his family in their home in Long Island. The following year, the new owners, George and Kathy Lutz and their three children, abandoned the house claiming that they had been terrorized by supernatural phenomena relating to the murders. Although their claims have been widely debated and questioned, the incidents spawned the novel and a film franchise that now spans 14 movies.





Jaws (1976)

A team of three experts set out to stop a shark that is killing people, in this Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster. The movie was based on a book by Peter Benchley, who in turn based his thriller on two real-life incidents: a series of shark attacks that occurred off the coast of New Jersey in 1916; and the hauling in of a 3,450-pound shark off the coast of Montauk, New York, in 1964 by fishermen Frank Mundus and Donnie Braddick.





Eaten Alive (1976)

The movie's plot features a Texan psychopath who feeds his enemies to a pet crocodile. The plot is loosely based on American serial killer Joe Ball, the so-called "Alligator Man," who is believed to have killed several people and used alligators to dispose of their remains.




The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

The movie's monstrous villain Leatherface was inspired by notorious American serial killer Ed Gein, who created trophies from bodies he exhumed from local cemeteries. The film, which centers on a family of cannibals who abduct victims from their Texas gas station, has spawned six sequels and numerous pop culture spin-offs, including graphic fiction and video games.





The Exorcist (1973)

When a young girl begins acting strangely, her mother seeks out a priest, who is convinced the child is possessed by a demon. The hit movie starred Linda Blair as Regan MacNeil and Max von Sydow as Father Merrin. The events in the film were based on the story of 'Roland Doe,' which was the protective pseudonym given to a famous case of alleged demonic possession in 1949.





Psycho (1960)

One of Alfred Hitchcock’s ultimate thrillers sees motel owner Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) go around killing guests in his mother's guise. The screenplay of the film was based on Robert Bloch’s 1959 novel of the same name, who in turn based it on criminal Ed Gein. Bloch lived just 40 miles (64 km) away from Gein in Wisconsin. Both Norman and Gein show similar traits of keeping shrines of their mother, cross-dressing, and having had a dominant female figure in life.





Rope (1948)

This Alfred Hitchcock film, adapted from the 1929 play of the same name, featured Jimmy Stewart in the lead. The plot was inspired by the real-life story of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, two young men from wealthy backgrounds who killed 14-year-old boy Bobby Franks purely because they wanted to commit a "perfect crime."





The Conjuring (2013)

Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farminga) battle a malevolent entity that's haunting a family living in a remote farmhouse in this terrifying tale of the supernatural. In real life, the Warrens actually helped a family, the Perrors along with their five daughters, who experienced ghostly occurrences in their Rhode Island farmhouse, after shifting home in 1971.