10 Horror Films You Won't Believe Were Based On True Stories

5. The Exorcism Of Emily Rose

The film: Half courtroom drama, half horror film, the first big hit for Scott Derrickson (who has since brought us Sinister, and is pencilled in to make a Doctor Strange film for Marvel) saw Laura Linney as attorney Erin Bruner, defending Tom Wilkinson's priest Father Richard Moore from a charge of negligent homicide. Moore was called in to look after the troubled young Emily Rose whom, to her family's eyes, was suffering from all the classic symptoms of demonic possession; they hoped that the priest could exorcise her. In actuality it seems more likely that she was suffering from both epilepsy and psychosis, and she missed out on critical medical attention in favour of the religious mumbo jumbo. Like The Mothman Prophecies the film is ultimately left ambiguous as to whether something supernatural really as going on, or if the story was far more grounded - and arguably, more disturbing. The true story: Sadly, The Exorcism Of Emily Rose is very much a true story. Stories of exorcism have abandoned for years, with he most famous film on the subject allegedly inspired by a newspaper story novelist William Peter Blatty saw at some point in the fifties about a kid allegedly possessed by the devil. How much stock you put in those stories probably relies on your degree of religious faith, but the case of Emily Rose is indisputable; the real girl was named Anneliese Michel, lived in Bavaria, and died aged 16. She suffered a severe convulsion and was diagnosed with temporal lobe epilepsy, but admission to a psychiatric hospital didn't help much with her seizures or hallucinations. It was her who requested an exorcism and she got a bunch, all done by priests Ernst Alt and Arnold Renz, over the course of ten months. She eventually died of malnutrition and dehydration.