10 "True Story" Horror Movies That Tricked You Into Believing Them

Do marketing divisions have no shame?

The Fourth Kind
Universal Pictures

What does "True Story" really mean when it comes to horror movies? Whilst you'd imagine that there's not really much room for interpretation when it comes to those two words, the film industry will happily prove you wrong.

"True Story" means about as much as "Diet Coke" in the grand scheme of things. And just like the drink, despite being brandished about with enticing, shiny packaging, it's a watered down, tasteless concept absolutely riddled with hot air. At the end of the day, both are still full of the full-fat and fakery that they pretend they're not associated with.

No-one needs the anxiety-inducing fear that comes with thinking Slenderman is lurking in the forest, or that The Conjuring's Bathsheba could be stalking the corridors of our own homes, but audiences eat it up all the same. We wilfully buy into real events for horror movies in particular to make them that much more scary - but just how liberal are these films being with the truth?

The answer, more often than you'd expect, is very. From tugging on reality like Stretch Armstrong to outright lying, there's plenty of films out there that pulled the wool over our eyes with their filmic trickery - so let's take a look at what really went down...

10. The Blair Witch Project

The Fourth Kind
Artisan Entertainment

There's no getting around a list like this without a hearty nod to the granddaddy of film fakery, really, so here it is. The Blair Witch Project is the OG movie that toyed with audience's heads, a proponent of the found footage genre that shot the filming style to fame by packing it full of more shaky cam than you could... well, shake a cam at.

And the film's success was largely born from the fact that nobody knew it wasn't real. Filmmakers Eduardo Sanchez and Daniel Myrick framed their movie in the widely re-used style of a true story, with the documentary-gone-wrong format and 'found footage' style reinforcing the idea that this wasn't as much a film as it was a plea to find three people missing in extraordinary circumstances.

Myrick and Sanchez used internet marketing to their advantage to push this even further, releasing the film alongside staged interviews, a website populated with fake police reports, and their own version of a documentary on the Blair Witch that supported the fictional horror story. Couple this clever manipulated with how little people knew about internet technology in 1999, and they soon had audiences flocking to cinemas to watch a 'real-life' paranormal encounter play out on screen.

It's one of the most infamous tricks in the horror genre, and rightly so considering its cultural importance.

Contributor
Contributor

Horror film junkie, burrito connoisseur, and serial cat stroker. WhatCulture's least favourite ginger.