9 Horror Movies That Got Too Real As You Watched
These horror movie screenings got too real for their own good.
For many, the entire appeal of the horror genre is that it offers a pulse-spiking thrill ride that can be experienced in total safety and comfort without the fear of any actual, real-world horror.
But sometimes the horror we witness on the screen manages to find a way to pervade into reality, ensuring that it's no longer a mere escapist illusion, but something totally tangible.
Periodically reports will emerge of terrifying scenes unfolding at public screenings of horror movies, for example, such as adverse audience reactions to events which all too eerily mimic the movie's subject matter.
Elsewhere there are immersive gimmicks intended to scare the audience, and those films which released at just the right time and tapped into a terrifying cultural zeitgeist.
For many the moviegoing experience is a sacrosanct one where we can lose ourselves in whatever is happening on-screen, but in these cases, it all ended up getting way too real for those involved, with outcomes that were by turns mystifying and genuinely horrifying.
While these stories certainly aren't cautionary tales or something you need to be especially wary of, they do serve as a sobering reminder that even the cinema isn't an entirely safe haven...
9. The Exorcist Sparks An Epidemic Of Fainting, Vomiting & Panic Attacks
Though some younger horror fans might see William Friedkin's masterful The Exorcist as a bit tame by contemporary standards, there's no denying the thunderous impact the movie had with audiences of its era.
During the week of the film's release in 1973, there were widespread reports of audiences reacting viscerally to it, whether fainting or vomiting, to the extent that some outlets even dubbed the phenomenon an "epidemic."
If there's any doubt at all, news footage literally shows people fainting and being left visibly hysterical by the movie, enough that some cinemas hired paramedics around the clock, plumbers were kept on site to unclog puke-filled bathrooms, and Exorcist-branded barf bags were handed out at some locations.
Psychiatric journal entries were even written about the "neurosis" induced by the film.
Curiously though, the reactions weren't purely due to the intense exorcism sequences - many appeared to respond to the film's extremely realistic depiction of a cerebral angiography being performed upon Regan (Linda Blair).