The 41 Spookiest Horror Movies Based on True Stories

• Director: Greg McClean
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 54%

Wolf Creek is based on the true stories of three individuals on a road trip to remote Australia with the goal of being able to hike the Wolf Creek National Park in the Australian Outback. However, things take a dangerous turn when run into car problems and a meet a shady bushman named Mick Taylor.

• Director: Dennis Donnelly
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 13%

Released in 1978, The Tool Box Murders is based on the true story of serial killers Lawrence Sigmund Bittaker and Roy Lewis Norris who committed who committed a series of killings in Southern California while disguising themselves in ski-masks.

• Director: Gerald Kargl
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100%

Angst is based on the true story of a psychopath that escapes from prison, and starts taking out his sadistic fantasies on an unsuspecting woman, her daughter, and handicapped son who are living in an secluded house.

• Director: Wes Craven
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 64%

An anthropologist travels to Haiti to study a voodoo drug used in religious practices to help turn patients into zombies, and winds up being chased by Haitian authorities who view his research as a threat to uncover something much deeper going on.

• Director: Andrew Traucki
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 80%

2007's Black Water is based on the real events of a pregnant woman, her sister, and boyfriend who decide to take a boat tour of a mangrove swamp. Upon touring the swamp, they get met and terrorized by a killer crocodile.

• Director: Greg McClean
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 50%

At this point, it's probably a good idea to stay out of Wolf Creek as it seems to be place that attracts danger. Wolf Creek appear to be similar to Lake Lanier in Georgia where bad things are on record happening there, and yet people still choose to go. This time around, a young backpacker decides to tour Wolf Creek, and meets a killer who has essentially made the place full of sadistic booby traps. If you are reading this, stay out of Wolf Creek! And stay away from Lake Lanier too while we're at it. Please.

• Director: Brian Yuzna
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: N/A

If you have a dentist phobia, protect your peace and keep scrolling. The Dentist is about a man who absolutely loses it when he finds out his wife his cheating on him. You see, this dentist is obsessed with perfection, and his wife stepping out on him shows that his rich and successful Beverly Hills life isn't quite so perfect. He can't handle this, which is why flies off the deep end to become a killer.

• Director: Enda Loughman, Mike Ahern
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 98%

A driving instructor that possesses supernatural abilities is requested by a father to help save his daughter who is apparently possessed. Now, we looked this up to see if this movie is indeed a true story, and we couldn't find the exact reference behind it, however the opening credits do state that it's a true story, so we'll trust that the directors are being honest on this.

• Director: Hans Horn
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 45%

Oh yeah, this is definitely a horror story. Six friends decide to jump off a yacht, and not one of them thinks to lower the ladder. As a result they end up plunged into a literal nightmare. The real story, however, is slightly different as it was actually two scuba divers who ended up stranded in shark-infested waters after their tour boat left them. So not a direct copy, but a slight inspiration rather.

• Director: Hans Horn
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 45%

Starring Elizabeth Olsen, Silent House is based on a true story, and about a girl (Olsen) working with her father and uncle to renovate an old family home in preparation for a sale. Since the home is old, there are no lights built in, meaning that trio has to rely on lanterns to see properly. Some how, the girl ends up trapped inside with no way of escaping, and no contact with the outside world. Literal nightmare.

• Director: Kristoffer Nyholm
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 80%

You can describe The Enfield Haunting as a mini-series, or a very long movie. Either way, it's based on the real events that took place in a North London Home in 1977. Apparently a family that moved into the home was experiencing paranormal activities, which prompts a paranormal researcher who just experienced the loss of his daughter. Freaky enough, the paranormal events haunting the family just so happen to be at the hands of a young girl, and the whole thing kind of unravels from there.

• Director: Owen Egerton
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 45%

Released in 2019, Mercy Black centers around a woman who was sent to a psych ward after stabbing her classmate. Fifteen years later she's released, and sent to live with her sister and nephew. The only problem is, her reason for stabbing her classmate was due to the desire to conjure up an evil spirit known as Mercy Black, and that fascination runs in the family as her nephew has now become obsessed with the same phenomenon, making him dangerous.

• Director: Zev Berman
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 100%

Three American college students decide to go to Mexico to party. After a night of clubbing one of the friends ends up missing, and the other two join forces with an ex-cop to help search for him. In the midst of that search, they encounter cultist group who practice human sacrifice.

• Director: Andrew Jones
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 17%

The Utah Cabin Murders is based on the 1990 home invasion by Von Taylor and Edward Deli of a family cabin in Oakley, Utah. Two sisters are staying at the cabin when Taylor and Deli break in, and they forced to fight for their survival.

• Director: Courtney Solomon
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 13%

Inspired by events that took place in 1800s Tennessee, An American Haunting is about a verified case in which spirt caused a persons death. This spirit was haunting a family for over two years before the death was caused, which is just... disturbing.

• Director: Yann Gonzales
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 81%

Set in Paris 1979, a Parisian filmmaker named Annie (whose work primarily consists of producing gay porn), tries to win her ex-lover back by making her most ambitious film yet. Things take a horrible turn, however, when one of her actors winds up murdered, leaving her in the middle of an investigation that wrecks her life.

• Director: Matthew Bright
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 41%

A retelling of the Ted Bundy store, a law student who seemingly becomes a serial killer out of nowhere.

• Director: Gus Van Sant
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 40%

Vince Vaughn stars as Norman Bates in 1998's Psycho in which a discovery of Bates Motel is made by a female embezzler (Anne Heche) after a murder. While investigating the thief (who is also accompanied by a detective), realize that there's a lot more to Bates Motel than meets the eye.

Director: Mark Pellington
Rotten Tomatoes Score: 52%

The Mothman Prophecies is a 2002 thriller about a journalist grieving the loss of his wife. Shortly before her passing in a tragic car accident she experienced visions of a strange moth. A couple of years after her passing, the journalist finds himself in a remote town while on assignment, and discovers that this town has been haunted by something called the "mothman."

• Director: Adam MacDonald
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 92%

2014's Backcountry is about a married couple named Alex and Jenn who go camping in the woods. As they're camping they realize not only that they have forgotten their phones, but they have also become lost. As if things couldn't get any worse, as they are searching for a way to get out they end up stalked by a man-eating bear. The literal definition of a series of unfortunate events.

• Director: Stuart Rosenberg
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 31%

Honestly you can either choose to watch this version or the 2005 one as they are both practically telling the same story. Regardless, The Amityville Horror is about a couple haunted by supernatural upon moving into a new house in an uptown New York. Obviously the couple doesn't know that this home was the scene of a recent mass killing and owned by an 18th-century Satanist, so they end up experiencing terrible events such as the blood and slime coming out of the pipes and walls, and flies appearing out of nowhere.

Personally we would have had to break the lease and move, but instead they decide to call upon a priest to help exorcise the evil out of the house.

• Director: Johannes Robert
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 39%

A husband, wife, son, and daughter, decide to take a spur-of-the-moment road trip that quickly turns horrible when they arrive to a secluded mobile home park that it's deserted. The fact that it was deserted was a probably a clue that something wasn't quite right. Nonetheless they stay, and realize as they aren't alone as three masked psychopath's begin to haunt them.

• Director:  Bob Clark
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 72%

Released in 1974, Black Christmas is about a group of sorority sisters who begin receiving harassing phone calls that ultimately leads to one of the girls going missing from the house. That combined with a local adolescent girl being murdered makes it clear that there's a serial killer on the loose, but nobody realizes just how close that serial killer is to them.

• Director: Michael Katleman
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 19%

Primeval is about veteran reporter and his team sent on the mother of all horrible news assignments when his station sends him to the African country of Burundi to locate and capture a crocodile. Why the news team felt he, a news reporters, possessed the skillset to capture a crocodile in the first place? We don't know, but it ends up going worse than expected when the reporter and his crew have to deal with both the crocodile and an African warlord who is even more vicious than the crocodile. That news station gets our nomination for worst ever.

• Director: Daniel Farrands
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 20%

Aileen Wuornos: American Boogeywoman is about the real-life story of American's most notorious female serial killer Aileen Wuornos. Wuornos marries into a wealthy family in the mid-1970s, only to turn around and inflict mayhem on her new family and Florida's High Society.

• Director: John Pogue
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 37%

A college professor with a rather unorthodox method of teaching, leads his top students to perform a dangerous experiment in the hopes of creating a poltergeist. They decide to use a series of tests on a young woman to prove that paranormal activity gets triggered through negative human energy. As a result, frightening consequences occur that are more damning than imagined.

• Director: Daniel Farrands
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 19%

Starring Hilary Duff as Sharon Tate, The Haunting of Sharon Tate is based on a true story of the actress experiencing haunting premonitions of her fate, which ultimately ends up coming true when she encounter members of the Mansion Family Cult.

• Director: Tom Elkins
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 19%

Released in 2013, The Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghost of Georgia is about a family that moves into a historic home in Georgia. It doesn't take long for them to discover that they aren't the only ones maintaining a residence in the house as they find themselves face to face with a malevolent presence from underground threatening to bring any and everyone with them.

• Director: Andrew Jones
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 10%

Cabin 28 is based on the true story of the Keddie murders, which involved four people being killed at what's now known as the Keddie Resort in Cabin 28 in April 1981. Labeled as the most horrific crime in Plumas County, California, the murders remain one of the most infamous unsolved cases in American history.

• Director: James Rabbits
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 26%

The Clinic is every mother's worst nightmare. A young couple decides to stay in a motel on the Australian Outback after they are thrown off the road by a reckless driver. Upon stopping at the motel, pregnant Beth is abducted and wakes up in a clinic to find that her baby has been cut from stomach and taken. In a race for time, the mother goes to every length possible in order to save her baby.

• Director: Bong Joon-Ho
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 93%

Wow at this actually being a true story. Here's the deal—a few members of the American military carelessly dump some chemicals into South Korea's Han River. Some years later (probably due to the chemicals), a creature emerges from the river and begins literally sinking its jaw into people. And as if that isn't enough, this creature is powerful enough to take people by force, and does so when it kidnaps a local residents daughter. The fact that is a true story is insane.

• Director: James Wan
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 86%

Alright we're going to start with the first installment of The Conjuring. Set in 1970, the film is about two paranormal investigators and demonologists Lorraine (Vera Farminga) and Ed (Patrick Wilson) who are called to the home of Carolyn and Roger Perron to deal with a rapidly growing supernatural presence.

• Director: James Wan
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 80%

Seven years later, Ed and Lorraine come out of their self-imposed sabbatical to travel to a North London borough called Enfield to help a single mother of four dealing with a an evil presence in her home. What's more, the youngest child is showing signs of possession, which leaves Ed and Lorraine with another difficult task.

• Director: Michael Chaves
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 55%

Well we've done the other two, so let's just go ahead and put this one on the list too. In this third installment, Ed and Lorraine take on the most sensational case of their careers after a cop discovers a bloodied man walking down the road. As it turns out, he's just committed a murder, but he puts the blame on being possessed by a supernatural entity as his defense, leading and Ed and Lorraine to investigate.

• Director: Tommy O'Haver
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 43%

Released in 2007, An American Crime is about a divorced mother of several children agreeing to watch the daughters of a couple as they travel with a carnival. Despite her eldest child being the one with a behavioral problem, the mother decides to take out all of her frustrations on one of the daughters she's watching, eventually imprisoning and torturing her in a basement. Another horror story for parents. Be careful who you leave your kids with.

• Director: Scott Dickerson
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 55%

NYPD Sgt. Ralph Sarchie (Eric Bana) has seen so many horrifying events that he believes his soul has been poisoned. This leads to him and his partner investigating a bizarre event, which in turn leads to him forming an alliance with a renegade priest who does his best to convince him that evil presences do exist.

• Director: Albert Hughes, Allan Hughes
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 57%

From Hell stars Johnny Depp as inspector Fred Abberline, and is based on his intent to catch Jack the Ripper, a serial killer who has been committing a series of brutal murders in the area. He also falls in love too, but that's kind of beside the point.

• Director: William Friedkin
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 84%

One of the prolific horror films ever made, The Exorcist is a loosely based but still true story about a 12-year-old girl who starts speaking in tongues, levitating, and acting odd. Her mother seeks medical help to no avail, and the only option is for the girl to be sent in for an exorcism.

• Director: John R. Leonetti
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 28%

Annabelle is reportedly based on a doll that was given to a student nurse in the early 1970s. According to the nurse the doll exhibited strange behavior, and was confirmed to be possessed by a psychic medium. Obviously the movie version of Annabelle has gone on to have a life and storyline of its own, but from as far as what we know, this film was indeed based on a true story.

• Director: Gregory Wilson
• Rotten Tomatoes Score: 67%

The Girl Next Door is a terribly sad story about a teenage girl suffering abuse at the hands of her caretaker and a bunch of neighborhood boys. The film is based on Jack Ketchum's 1989 novel of the same name, which itself was based on the real-life killing of Sylvia Likens, whom the movie is dedicated to.