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.
00:07Monsters and ghosts and the undead can't haunt you because they don't exist.
00:10So actually, it's pretty horrifying when you're then led to believe that the risks you see
00:14are all too real, and the events you watched unfold on screen could happen to you at any
00:19time.
00:20So, I'm Amy from WhatCulture, and here are 10 horror movies that were scarier for making
00:25you think they were real.
00:2610.
00:27Lake Mungo
00:28For more than a decade-plus since its release, Australian mockumentary Lake Mungo has become
00:32a cult classic.
00:34It depicts a family attempting to come to terms with the death of their daughter, Alice.
00:37Ever since her drowning, the family home has taken on a lingering ghostly presence.
00:42Despite being unabashedly supernatural in nature, the film is constructed so as to appear
00:47real, using lo-fi video sources for the most part to capitalize on the eerie ambiguity
00:51of the imagery.
00:52Between the convincing performances of the cast and the spot-on docu-style format, Lake
00:56Mungo locks viewers in an anxious vice grip all the way to its gut-wrenching conclusion,
01:01ending with a haunting closing image which, while being objectively a work of fiction,
01:05is sure to linger in the mind long after.
01:07Though the film didn't have any sort of Blair Witch-esque marketing campaign pushing it
01:11as a real documentary, the technical and psychological plausibility of the piece make it feel real
01:16even in its more outlandish moments, and it's all the more chilling as a result.
01:209.
01:21Cannibal Holocaust
01:22The infamous film follows a group of American anthropologists who head into the Amazon rainforest
01:26to locate a missing film crew.
01:27As you can imagine, this doesn't go well for them, and upon its release, many believed
01:31that Cannibal Holocaust was in fact a snuff film.
01:34This was largely a result of not only the film's believably gritty visual style and
01:38stunningly realistic gore effects, but also the fact that the cast had to sign contracts
01:42saying that they wouldn't appear in anything else until a year after the film's release.
01:46The film's director was subsequently brought into court in Italy on charges of obscenity
01:50and murder, requiring him to get the actors to come together for a TV interview and confirm
01:55their living status.
01:56In addition to this, he also had to show the court how certain special effects, namely
01:59the impalement scene, were achieved without harming anyone.
02:02Though the director was eventually cleared and sanctions against the film were lifted,
02:06Cannibal Holocaust remains hugely controversial today due to its real depictions of animal
02:10slaughter, and four decades on, it's not lost a shred of its queasy believability.
02:158.
02:16Noroi the Curse
02:17Noroi the Curse is an expertly constructed mockumentary revolving around the disappearance
02:21of documentary filmmaker character Masafumi Kobayashi as he makes his latest film.
02:25While the cast mainly consists of actors who'll be relatively unknown to Western audiences,
02:29the movie doesn't need big stars to give it value.
02:31In fact, the film's realism benefits from its unknown cast.
02:34The film's production values feel entirely faithful to what you'd expect to see in an
02:38actual documentary.
02:39Even with a beefy two-hour runtime, most of Noroi is defined by its thick atmosphere and
02:44lo-fi chills rather than over-the-top scare sequences.
02:47This is to the extent that, if you stumbled across the movie on the TV in the early hours
02:51of the morning, you'd be forgiven for assuming it was an actual true crime doc.
02:547.
02:55Paranormal Activity
02:56It cannot be underestimated just how buzzed about Paranormal Activity was ahead of its
03:012009 release.
03:02Marketed on the strength of its minimalist style, defined largely by handheld camera
03:06work and static night-vision surveillance footage, critics gladly dubbed the film the
03:10new Blair Witch Project.
03:12And in a way, they were right.
03:13Although there's no denying that audiences have become decidedly savvier to the tricks
03:17of the genre in the decade between these two movies, Paranormal Activity nevertheless felt
03:21like a horror film for the YouTube generation, especially with the characters' obsessive
03:25focus on self-documentation as they investigate a possible supernatural presence in their
03:29home.
03:30Though 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
03:42to anyone staying up in the early hours.
03:45Fix.
03:46Poltergeist
03:47To be clear, Tobe Hooper's 1982 horror masterpiece Poltergeist is not a found-footage film or
03:52a mockumentary.
03:53It is an actual piece of typical narrative horror filmmaking.
03:55So, whilst nobody watching believed it was real in a documentary style, the story surrounding
03:59Poltergeist's production has nevertheless made it the most believably cursed horror film
04:03in history.
04:04The curse is largely centered on the unexpected deaths of two young actors from the original
04:08movie in the years that followed.
04:1022-year-old Dominique Dunne, who played the Freelings' daughter Dana, was strangled to
04:13death by her ex-boyfriend mere months after the film's release.
04:17And 12-year-old Heather O'Rourke, who played Carol-Anne in all three films, died of a bowel
04:21obstruction several months before Poltergeist 3's premiere.
04:24The urban legend surrounding the curse only grew in more recent years, when it was revealed
04:28that the crew used real skeletons for the sequence in which Diane Freeling is dragged
04:32into the family's swimming pool and encounters a bunch of skeletons.
04:35Whilst conventional logic of the world around us says that these happenings were nothing
04:38more than a spooky coincidence, that doesn't stop many fans from believing the curse to
04:42be true.
04:435.
04:44The Last Broadcast
04:45The Last Broadcast is a fan-footage mockumentary released the year prior to The Blair Witch
04:49Project, and though certainly lacking the same scrappy commitment to plausibility as
04:53its successor, it is nevertheless a deeply unsettling piece of filmmaking.
04:57The film investigates the murder of a TV crew who head into New Jersey's Pine Barrens in
05:01order to hunt down the mythic creature known as the Jersey Devil.
05:04It thrives on the strength of its authentic lo-fi documentary style, taking full advantage
05:08of its minimal resources to muster an all-encompassing eerie atmosphere.
05:12Though the film was widely criticized for its twist ending, which lifts the mockumentary
05:16veil for a shocking meta-twist, everything leading up to that point was a shockingly
05:20persuasive piece of investigative journalism.
05:234.
05:24Ghostwatch
05:25On Halloween night 1992, the BBC broadcast the exceptionally well-crafted TV movie Ghostwatch,
05:31which presented itself as a legitimate news-style investigation of a supposedly haunted English
05:35house.
05:36The 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.
05:44The film cuts between studio footage of well-known BBC presenter Michael Parkinson and a supposedly
05:49live broadcast from the house itself, where an assortment of increasingly bone-rattling
05:53scares take place.
05:55Aided by the extremely strong performances of the central cast and a faultless presentation,
05:59the BBC ended up receiving 30,000 phone calls from distressed viewers, causing a tabloid
06:04wildfire in the days that followed.
06:06Ghostwatch was so effective that the Beeb refused to re-air or release it on home video
06:10for an entire decade, and in the years since, its esteem has grown as one of the most ingenious
06:16blurrings of fact and fiction in TV history.
06:193.
06:20Guinea Pig 2, Flower of Flesh and Blood
06:22The Japanese guinea pig franchise is infamous for its revoltingly realistic depictions of
06:27torture and murder.
06:29intended 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
06:37with the release of 1985's Guinea Pig 2, Flower of Flesh and Blood.
06:41Though the sequel was directed by Hideshi Hino and adapted from his own manga, the sequences
06:45of a woman being drugged, kidnapped, and dismembered by a psychotic samurai were nevertheless deemed
06:50horrifyingly 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
06:59to their attention, thinking that it was a snuff film that depicted real murder.
07:02The authorities eventually dropped their investigation after viewing a making-of documentary confirming
07:07the contents to be fabricated, but even so, it's easy to see why Sheen felt compelled
07:11to contact them.
07:12Given that Guinea Pig 2 could easily pass muster as a terrifying real snuff film today,
07:16almost three decades ago, there was far less of a reason to be skeptical.
07:202.
07:21The Blair Witch Project
07:22The legacy of The Blair Witch Project truly cannot be underestimated.
07:26Released in 1999, it's largely accepted to be the father of modern-day found-footage
07:31film.
07:32It followed three student filmmakers, Heather, Michael, and Joshua, as they headed into the
07:35Burkittsville, Maryland woods to investigate the mythical Blair Witch.
07:38For audiences of the time, The Blair Witch Project represented a practically unfathomable
07:43level of gritty authenticity.
07:45From the highly believable trio of actors, the rough-hewn digital camera work, and highly
07:49minimalist approach to scares, everything slotted into place to make the end result
07:53just believable enough.
07:54Aiding things immeasurably was the movie's ingenious marketing campaign, focused on a
07:58website that claimed that the cast members were missing for real, while the actors maintained
08:02a low profile ahead of the film's release.
08:04The film's ambiguity only makes it that much more believable as a piece of actual found-footage,
08:09and arriving as it did shortly before internet adoption enjoyed a worldwide uptake, it was
08:13able to play its clever trick on the world largely unimpeded.
08:161.
08:17Antrim – The Deadliest Film Ever Made
08:20Antrim is a mockumentary about a supposedly lost, cursed 1979 film which contained subliminal
08:26images and sounds.
08:27It's supposedly linked to the deaths of almost 90 people, apparently as a result of
08:31the secret messages coded within.
08:34The bulk of the so-called documentary is composed of Antrim itself, which the documentary crew
08:37receives a copy of, and though the resulting footage is undeniably unsettling, the true
08:42genius here is in so believably framing this mockumentary as an objective account of a
08:47supposedly real piece of lost media.
08:49This resulted in many social media users believing that 1979's Antrim is completely real, and
08:54ultimately speculating on whether or not the movie's subliminal messaging, which largely
08:58consists of signs and sigils, genuinely actually led to anyone's death.
09:02Though it's ultimately a well-executed gimmick above all else, it's impressively effective
09:06for such a modern movie, especially with regard to the period detail and grotty visuals of
09:11the Antrim faux film itself.
09:13And with that, we've reached the end of this list of 10 Horror Movies That Were Scarier
09:16For Making You Think They Were Real.
09:18Did you fall for any of these?
09:19Don't worry, we won't judge.
09:20Let us know in the comments down below.
09:22And remember to check out WhatCulture.com for more lists and articles like this every
09:25single day.
09:26As always, I've been Amy from WhatCulture, and I'll catch you next time.