10 True Stories Explained By Horror Movies

Terrifying in prospect alone, Open Water follows the very real situation that Tom and Eileen Lonergan found themselves in during a scuba diving trip in 1998.

The Lonergans were an American couple visiting the Great Barrier Reef for a sight seeing adventure, and were accidentally stranded in the open ocean when their tour boat left without them. It took two days for the crew to notice their inaccurate headcount, panic, and return to the last dive point to search for them, by which point any trace of the couple was long gone. Their clothes and scuba gear washed up on beaches, but nothing was ever found of their bodies.

Open Water focusses on the horrors that the Lonergans must have gone through upon discovering their only means of transportation gone when they resurfaced from a dive - surrounded by sharks and desperately attempting to stay alive under the belief they'd eventually be rescued. The film suggests the pair died out in the ocean, but doesn't spare audiences from the grisly possibilities of what a human body can suffer through whilst abandoned in the endless blue sea.

Whatever happened to the Lonergans in real life, it's probably not too far from this terribly sad scenario.