10 Truly Chilling Documentary Films

10. The Bridge

Thebridge Director Eric Steel sat with his camera crew for an entire year during 2004, simply watching the Golden Gate Bridge. During that time, he captured over a thousand hours of footage of the magnificent structure, but Steel had a hidden motive for filming the great San Francisco landmark other than to record its grandeur. True, Steel's finished project which he eventually entitled The Bridge does portray the mysterious beauty of Golden Gate, but this is a secondary theme to the film's real topic of suicide. Among the thousand hours of film shot were 24 suicides caught live on camera, as a variety of men and women crossed onto the gigantic structure and jumped to their deaths from two-hundred-and-twenty feet. Much of the footage in The Bridge is taken from afar, with the extreme close-up shots unable to hear the pleas of passers-by for potential jumpers to climb back over the ledge. Some are persuaded. Others are not. Some bodies fall so fast that not even the camera can catch them as they hit the water. The Bridge naturally caused vicious stirs upon its release. Steel was criticised for misleading bridge officials about his reasons for shooting, and the film itself was slated for its open willingness to show human beings tumbling to their deaths. But whatever your opinion on The Bridge, it is an undeniably eerie watch. The images of one man named Gene Sprague - pacing up and down the bridge as if considering something, before swiftly hopping onto the railing and falling backwards into the water below will never, ever leave you.
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