The Big Picture

• Horror films based on true stories have an added element of fear, making them even scarier.
• The Amityville Horror is based on a true mass murder, but the claims by the family are harder to prove.
• The Girl Next Door depicts the true torture and murder of Sylvia Likens, with no one attempting to help her.

Horror movies are, for all intents and purposes, a license to print money. Notoriously cheap to make with a built-in audience, a horror film doesn’t need to make much in order to turn a profit. And, if the studio is lucky and/or smart, a unicorn arrives that rakes in the cash, à la The Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity. Yet there’s a decided marketing edge with the addition of five simple words: Based on a True Story. It’s bad enough when a film scares your pants off, but that added element that it happened in real life? Or, even worse, it's still happening? That means... shiver... it could happen to you. Sweet dreams.

1 The Amityville Horror (1979)

112 Ocean Avenue, Amityville, Long Island: the address of what is arguably the most famous haunted house in America. The film starts with newlyweds George (James Brolin) and Kathy Lutz (Margot Kidder) moving into their new home with their three children, despite knowing it was the site of a mass murder. After 28 days of terror that include George's troubling personality changes, cries of "GET OUT," Jody, a malevolent 'imaginary' friend of their daughter, and 3:15 am wake-ups that coincide with the time of the murders, the family flee the house. The mass murder is definitely true, with 23-year-old Ronald DeFeo Jr. shooting his entire family - parents and four younger siblings - on November 13th, 1974, allegedly on the insistence of demonic voices. The claims made by the Lutz's are harder to prove, of course, but both did pass lie detector tests, so who knows?

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2 My Friend Dahmer (2017)

The repulsive acts of Jeffrey Dahmer are well known by now: the murder and dismemberment of 17 men and boys, episodes of necrophilia and cannibalism, and the preservation of body parts, all committed between 1978 and 1991. My Friend Dahmer is a dramatization of a graphic novel of the same name written by John Blackderf, a teenage friend of his. It captures Dahmer's high-school years, with Ross Lynch playing the role of Dahmer as he reacts awkwardly with others, collects and dissolves road kill, and creepily stalks a jogger in the neighborhood. The first steps towards the monster he would become.

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3 The Watcher (2016)

The film is based on the real-life story of a Westfield, NJ couple who bought a house but never moved into it. Why? The previous homeowners neglected to tell the couple that the house was the focus of a stalker, "The Watcher." The Watcher would send numerous letters to the residence, with excerpts like 'Have they found what is in the walls yet? They will' and 'Will the young bloods play in the basement.' In the movie, of course, the couple do move into the house, where Emma (Erin Cahill) and Noah (Edi Gathegi) receive letters from "The Raven." Fun fact: The Watcher has never been found.

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4 The Conjuring (2013)

Take your pick - all three of The Conjuring films are based on the exploits of Ed and Lorraine Warren, paranormal investigators: The Conjuring recounts the haunted farmhouse of the Perron family, The Conjuring 2 dramatizes the Enfield Poltergeist case, and the third, The Conjuring 3: The Devil Made Me Do It, sees the ghost hunters seeking evidence to support the 'demonic possession' defense in the murder trial of 19-year-old Arne Johnson (Ruairi O'Connor). The first is the best, where the Warrens (Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga) come to the Perron home to find it is indeed haunted by one Bathsheba Sherman (Joseph Bishara), an accused witch who sacrificed her baby to the devil and hung herself in 1863. The film contains easily one of the greatest jump scares in horror movie history - but to tell you what it is takes the fun away.

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5 The Girl Next Door (2007)

Of all the films on this list, The Girl Next Door is far and away the most disturbing and sickening. After losing their parents in a car accident, Meg Loughlin (Blythe Auffarth) and her sister Susan (Madeline Taylor) move in with her Aunt Ruth (Blanche Baker) and her three sons. What happens to her next is indescribable, and quite honestly is hard to even write about. For reference, rape is one of the less traumatic things that happen to Meg. And not just Ruth and her boys abuse her. Neighborhood kids are invited to come and do vile things to her. The film paints a pretty accurate picture of the torture and murder of sixteen-year-old Sylvia Likens. The Hollywood ending has a boy that tried to help her escape, killing the aunt in the process. Not one person tried to help Likens.

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6 Open Water (2003)

A vacationing couple opt to go on a scuba diving day trip, only to surface and find that the tour boat is gone, having miscounted the number of divers on board. With little else they can do, Daniel (Daniel Travis) and Susan (Blanchard Ryan) wait for someone to come back for them, but the only creatures that come for them are jellyfish and sharks. 'Dead men tell no tales,' as they say, so the film is a fictionalized account of what probably happened to Tom and Eileen Lonergan, who were left behind in the waters off Australia due to a miscount in real life.

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7 Borderland (2007)

Looking to party hearty, three friends take a road trip for a week-long hedonistic foray in Mexico. Funny how plans change when a group of drug smugglers - satanic, Mexican drug smugglers - happen to be looking for fresh tourists to sacrifice. The film is based loosely on the disappearance of one Mark J. Kilroy in Matamoros in 1989, who fell victim to Adolfo de Jesús Constanzo: serial killer, drug dealer, and, yes, cult leader who murdered people for human sacrifices.

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8 Annabelle (2014)

The 'true story' part of Annabelle starts off the film, the same opening scene from The Conjuring (Annabelle is the second film in The Conjuring movie franchise). Two young nurses recount the series of events that happened once Annabelle was brought into their apartment to Ed and Lorraine Warren, including finding her in different rooms, finding notes that read "Help Me" on paper that wasn't even in the place, and bloody claw marks across the chest of a visiting boyfriend. The film then switches to a fictionalized account of Annabelle's antics beginning one year prior to being taken into the apartment. Technically, only the beginning and the end of the film are true, including the Warren's locking up Annabelle in their Occult Museum, but still a decent flick. Fun fact: the doll in the movie is radically different and far creepier than its real life counterpart, a Raggedy Ann doll.

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9 The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015)

A highly accurate depiction of a real event, The Stanford Prison Experiment is about a psychological experiment held by a team of researchers, led by Philip Zimbardo (Billy Crudup) at Stanford University. In 1971, undergraduate student volunteers were given roles as either prisoners or as guards, living in a mock prison. The experiment was intended to run for two full weeks but was shuttered after only six days due to an increasing level of cruelty and tyranny by the 'guards', and a disorienting depression suffered by the 'prisoners'.

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10 The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976)

In 1946 Texarkana, Arkansas, a serial killer, his head hidden by a hood, stalks victims after sundown. Nicknamed the 'Phantom Killer' by the Texarkana Gazette, he kills at least five people, possibly more, before he disappears. It's a film that depicts the 'Texarkana Moonlight Murders' somewhat accurately, but some odd narrative choices, including a victim being stabbed in the back with a knife that's attached to a trombone the killer plays, takes away from the true terror that befell the community in real life. Fun fact: The Phantom Killer was never found, so he and The Watcher could be waiting for you.

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11 Snowtown (2011)

John Bunting (Daniel Henshall), a violent man who hates homosexuals and pedophiles, becomes a father figure to 16-year-old Jamie (Lucas Pittaway). It doesn't take long until Jamie is drawn into mirroring the extreme actions of John, including murder and hiding bodies in barrels stored in an abandoned Snowtown bank's vault. It's the true story of 'The Snowtown Murders' which occurred between 1992 and 1999 in an Australian suburb. While relatively faithful to facts, Jamie is propped up as a tragic innocent in the film as opposed to perpetrator.

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12 Zodiac (2007)

On July 4, 1969, Darlene Ferrin (Ciara Moriarty) and Mike Mageau (Lee Norris) ARE attacked by an unknown man with a handgun in Vallejo, California. Mike survives. Darlene does not. And thus begins Zodiac, the riveting and highly acclaimed film from director David Fincher about the early days of the manhunt for a serial killer who terrorized the San Francisco area from the late 1960s to the early 1970s: the infamous Zodiac Killer. The film is based on the real-life investigation as recounted in books by Robert Graysmith (played by Jake Gyllenhaal in the film), a true crime writer and former political cartoonist, who had helped decipher the killer's cryptic letters to the press. The film remains faithful to the facts of the investigation all the way to its open-ended conclusion; as the case, to this day, remains open. Fun fact: the Zodiac Killer story inspired the Clint Eastwood classic Dirty Harry, quite possibly making the killer's day.

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13 Angst (1983)

Rare is the horror film that scores 100% on Rotten Tomatoes, and 1983's Angst is one such film. It's a movie that places the viewer into the mind of its antagonist, known only as The Psychopath (Erwin Leder). Angst is just as much an experience as it is a film, with clever use of camera shots and the Psychopath's narrative that brings the audience to a point where they are no longer simply voyeurs, but active participants in the horrors perpetrated by its lead. The film is based on the acts of Austrian mass murderer Werner Kniesek, who killed Walter Altreiter, his mother Gertrude, and his sister Ingrid over the course of one horrific night. The depraved and horrendous things that Kniesek did to the family over 11 hellish hours are depicted quite accurately in the film — so be warned before throwing this one on.

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