- 6 weeks ago
We all got duped.
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00:00The one reassurance you get when you finish a particularly scary horror movie is that
00:04it's okay because it's not real. Monsters and ghosts and the undead can't taunt you
00:09because they don't exist. So actually, it's pretty horrifying when you're then led to
00:13believe that the risks you see are all too real, and the events you watched unfold on
00:17screen could happen to you at any time. So, I'm Amy from WhatCulture, and here are 10
00:23horror movies that were scarier for making you think they were real.
00:2610. Lake Mungo In the decade plus since its release, Australian
00:31mockumentary Lake Mungo has become a cult classic. It depicts a family attempting to come to terms
00:36with the death of their daughter, Alice. Ever since her drowning, the family home has taken
00:40on a lingering ghostly presence. Despite being unabashedly supernatural in nature,
00:44the film is constructed so as to appear real, using lo-fi video sources for the most part to
00:49capitalize on the eerie ambiguity of the imagery. Between the convincing performances of the cast
00:54in the spot-on docu-style format, Lake Mungo locks viewers in an anxious vice grip all the way to
00:59its gut-wrenching conclusion, ending with a haunting closing image which, while being objectively a work
01:04of fiction, is sure to linger in the mind long after. Though the film didn't have any sort of
01:09Blair Witch-esque marketing campaign pushing it as a real documentary, the technical and psychological
01:13plausibility of the piece make it feel real even in its more outlandish moments, and it's all the
01:18more chilling as a result. 9. Cannibal Holocaust
01:21The infamous film follows a group of American anthropologists who head into the Amazon rainforest
01:26to locate a missing film crew. As you can imagine, this doesn't go well for them, and upon its release,
01:31many believed that Cannibal Holocaust was in fact a snuff film. This was largely a result of not only
01:35the film's believably gritty visual style and stunningly realistic gore effects, but also the fact
01:40that the cast had to sign contracts saying that they wouldn't appear in anything else until a year
01:45after the film's release. The film's director was subsequently brought into court in Italy on
01:49charges of obscenity and murder, requiring him to get the actors to come together for a TV interview
01:54and confirm their living status. In addition to this, he also had to show the court how certain
01:58special effects, namely the impalement scene, were achieved without harming anyone. Though the director
02:03was eventually cleared and sanctions against the film were lifted, Cannibal Holocaust remains hugely
02:07controversial today due to its real depictions of animal slaughter, and for decades on, it's not lost a
02:13shred of its queasy believability. 8. Noroi The Curse
02:16Noroi The Curse is an expertly constructed mockumentary, revolving around the disappearance
02:20of documentary filmmaker character Masafuvi Kobayashi as he makes his latest film. While the
02:25cast mainly consists of actors who will be relatively unknown to Western audiences, the movie doesn't need
02:30big stars to give it value. In fact, the film's realism benefits from its unknown cast. The film's
02:35production values feel entirely faithful to what you'd expect to see in an actual documentary.
02:39Even with a beefy two-hour runtime, most of Noroi is defined by its thick atmosphere and lo-fi chills
02:45rather than over-the-top scare sequences. This is to the extent that, if you stumbled across the
02:49movie on the TV in the early hours of the morning, you'd be forgiven for assuming it was an actual true
02:53crime doc. 7. Paranormal Activity
02:56It cannot be underestimated just how buzzed about Paranormal Activity was ahead of its 2009 release.
03:02Marketed on the strength of its minimalist style, defined largely by handheld camera work and static
03:07night-vision surveillance footage, critics gladly dubbed the film the new Blair Witch Project,
03:12and in a way, they were right. Though there's no denying that audiences have become decidedly
03:16savvier to the tricks of the genre in the decade between these two movies, Paranormal Activity
03:20nevertheless felt like a horror film for the YouTube generation, especially with the characters'
03:25obsessive focus on self-documentation as they investigate a possible supernatural presence in
03:29their home. Though most rational viewers will eventually appreciate the increasingly reality-breaking
03:33set pieces to be acts of artifice. For a great deal of its runtime, the minimalism on offer,
03:38defined by ambient creaking noises and subtle movements in the frame, is eerily relatable to
03:43anyone staying up in the early hours. 6. Poltergeist
03:46To be clear, Tobey Hooper's 1982 horror masterpiece, Poltergeist, is not a found footage film or a
03:52mockumentary. It is an actual piece of typical narrative horror filmmaking. So, whilst nobody watching
03:56believed it was real in a documentary style, the story surrounding Poltergeist's production has nevertheless
04:01made it the most believably cursed horror film in history. The curse is largely centered on the
04:06unexpected deaths of two young actors from the original movie in the years that followed.
04:1022-year-old Dominique Dunn, who played the Freeling's daughter Dana, was strangled to death by her ex-boyfriend
04:15mere months after the film's release. And 12-year-old Heather O'Rourke, who played Carol Ann in all three
04:20films, died of a bowel obstruction several months before Poltergeist 3's premiere. The urban legend
04:24surrounding the curse only grew in more recent years, when it was revealed that the crew used real
04:29skeletons for the sequence in which Diane Freeling is dragged into the family's swimming pool and
04:33encounters a bunch of skeletons. Whilst conventional logic of the world around us says that these
04:37happenings were nothing more than a spooky coincidence, that doesn't stop many fans from
04:41believing the curse to be true.
04:435. The Last Broadcast
04:45The Last Broadcast is a found footage mockumentary released the year prior to The Blair Witch Project,
04:50and though certainly lacking the same scrappy commitment to plausibility as its successor,
04:54it is nevertheless a deeply unsettling piece of filmmaking. The film investigates the murder of a TV
04:59crew who head into New Jersey's Pine Barrens in order to hunt down the mythic creature known as
05:03the Jersey Devil. It thrives on the strength of its authentic, lo-fi documentary style, taking full
05:08advantage of its minimal resources to muster an all-encompassing, eerie atmosphere. Though the
05:12film was widely criticised for its twist ending, which lifts the mockumentary veil for a shocking
05:17meta-twist, everything leading up to that point was a shockingly persuasive piece of investigative
05:22journalism.
05:234. Ghostwatch
05:24On Halloween night 1992, the BBC broadcasts the exceptionally well-crafted TV movie Ghostwatch,
05:31which presented itself as a legitimate news-style investigation of a supposedly haunted English
05:35house. The film's success is largely a result of its production values, which feel entirely
05:40consistent with what audiences expected from actual BBC news broadcasts. The film cuts between
05:45studio footage of well-known BBC presenter Michael Parkinson and a supposedly live broadcast from the house
05:50itself, where an assortment of increasingly bone-rattling scares take place. Aided by the
05:55extremely strong performances of the central cast and a faultless presentation, the BBC ended up
06:00receiving 30,000 phone calls from distressed viewers, causing a tabloid wildfire in the days that
06:05followed. Ghostwatch was so effective that the Beeb refused to re-air or release it on home video for
06:11an entire decade, and in the years since, its esteem has grown as one of the most ingenious blurrings of
06:16fact and fiction in TV history. 3. Guinea Pig 2 – Flower of Flesh and Blood
06:22The Japanese guinea pig franchise is infamous for its revoltingly realistic depictions of torture and
06:28murder. Framed as found footage intended to document the extent to which human beings can tolerate pain.
06:33The series remained controversial throughout its six-movie run, but never more so than with the release of
06:381985's Guinea Pig 2 – Flower of Flesh and Blood. Though the sequel was directed by Hidishihino and adapted from his own
06:44manga, the sequences of a woman being drugged, kidnapped, and dismembered by a psychotic samurai
06:49were nevertheless deemed horrifyingly believable, enough so to get the attention of the FBI.
06:54The film was investigated by the FBI after, out of all people, Charlie Sheen brought it to their
06:59attention, thinking that it was a snuff film that depicted real murder. The authorities eventually
07:03dropped their investigation after viewing a making-of documentary confirming the contents to be
07:07fabricated. But even so, it's easy to see why Sheen felt compelled to contact them. Given that Guinea Pig 2
07:13could easily pass muster as a terrifying, real snuff film today, almost three decades ago,
07:18there was far less of a reason to be skeptical. 2 – The Blair Witch Project
07:22The legacy of The Blair Witch Project truly cannot be underestimated. Released in 1999,
07:27it's largely accepted to be the father of modern-day found footage film. It followed three student
07:32filmmakers – Heather, Michael, and Joshua – as they headed into the Burkittsville, Maryland
07:36Woods to investigate the mythical Blair Witch. For audiences of the time, The Blair Witch Project
07:41represented a practically unfathomable level of gritty authenticity. From the highly believable
07:45trio of actors, the rough-hewn digital camera work, and highly minimalist approach to scares,
07:50everything slotted into place to make the end result just believable enough.
07:54Aiding things immeasurably was the movie's ingenious marketing campaign, focused on a website that
07:59claimed that the cast members were missing for real, while the actors maintained a low profile ahead
08:03of the film's release. The film's ambiguity only makes it that much more believable as a piece of actual
08:08found footage. And, arriving as it did shortly before internet adoption enjoyed a worldwide uptake,
08:13it was able to play its clever trick on the world largely unimpeded.
08:161 – Antrim – The Deadliest Film Ever Made
08:20Antrim is a mockumentary about a supposedly lost, cursed 1979 film which contains subliminal images
08:26and sounds. It's supposedly linked to the deaths of almost 90 people, apparently as a result of the
08:32secret messages coded within. The bulk of the so-called documentary is composed of Antrim itself,
08:36which the documentary crew receives a copy of. And, though the resulting footage is undeniably
08:41unsettling, the true genius here is in so believably framing this mockumentary as an
08:46objective account of a supposedly real piece of lost media. This resulted in many social media
08:50users believing that 1979's Antrim is completely real, and ultimately speculating on whether or not
08:56the movie's subliminal messaging, which largely consists of signs and sigils, genuinely actually
09:01led to anyone's death. Though it's ultimately a well-executed gimmick above all else, it's
09:05impressively effective for such a modern movie, especially with regard to the period detail and
09:10grotty visuals of the Antrim faux film itself.
09:13And with that, we've reached the end of this list of 10 horror movies that were scarier for
09:16making you think they were real. Did you fall for any of these? Don't worry, we won't judge.
09:20Let us know in the comments down below. And remember to check out whatculture.com for more lists and
09:24articles like this every single day. As always, I've been Amy from WhatCulture, and I'll catch you next time.
09:29Bye-bye.
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