The Quiet Ones is inspired by a true story of a university experiment done on a young girl that goes horribly, horribly wrong, so we focused on movies based on claims of supernatural true events.
There is a huge list of honorable mentions in this category. We could even break it down into sub-categories, like movies based on the antics of Ed Gein: The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The Silence of the Lambs, Psycho and Deranged. True crime reenactments: In Cold Blood, Helter Skelter and Zodiac just to name a few of the best. Even real life animal attack movies like Jaws, Eaten Alive and Open Water. Other notable mentions are The Girl Next Door and The Hills Have Eyes.
But in honor of the release of The Quiet Ones on April 25th, we bring you…
The Conjuring (2013)
Five years before they investigated the Amityville house at 112 Ocean Avenue, Ed and Lorraine Warren visited the Perron family home in Harrisville, Rhode Island. According to notes on this particular haunting, the offending entity was a witch named Bathsheba Sherman, who lived on the property in the 19th Century. This witch cursed the land the Perron family home was built on with a hex that would make anyone who moved onto the property die. This was the inspiration for James Wan’s 2013 hit film The Conjuring, and if the real life events were anything like what happened in that movie, particularly the exorcism scene at the finale, then those Perrons certainly had a real mess on their hands.
The Exorcism of Emily Rose (2005)
A brilliant marketing campaign that focused on the fantastic physical work of Jennifer Carpenter (shortly before she became Officer/Detective Debra Morgan on “Dexter”) made The Exorcism of Emily Rose an eagerly anticipated movie and monster at the box office. In a weird pairing of horror/courtroom drama, The Exorcism of Emily Rose is loosely based on the story of Anneliese Michel, a German woman who underwent an exorcism in 1976 and subsequently died the same year when refusing medical and psychiatric treatment. The story of Michel is a sad one as she weighed just 68 pounds at the time of her death due to malnutrition and dehydration, with the strain of the exorcism being blamed for contributing to her death. She was also suffering from pneumonia and had two broken knees due to continuous genuflections and could not move without assistance. The film does a great job of reenacting the court proceedings the priest who performed the exorcism had to face when being held responsible for Michel’s death.
A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)
Yes, you read that right, A Nightmare on Elm Street was based on true events. You may be shaking your head thinking, “You’ve finally gone off the deep end, Gash. There’s no way that could be true.” But indeed it is. Apparently, Craven was following a series of article in the LA Times in the ’70s that told of a group of Khmer refugees who were fleeing Cambodia for America. After experiencing some horrific nightmares, they refused to sleep, but when they finally nodded off, they died. Here’s the story as Wes Craven details it. “It was a series of articles in the LA Times, three small articles about men from Southeast Asia who were from immigrant families and had died in the middle of nightmares—and the paper never correlated them, never said, ‘Hey, we’ve had another story like this.'”
Fire in the Sky (1993)
Certainly more of an extraterrestrial encounter than a ghostly experience, but supernatural is supernatural, right? Fire in the Sky is the cinematic depiction of Travis Walton’s book, The Walton Experience, wherein he details his terrors in what has become one of the most infamous cases of alien abduction in American history. As with any allegedly true mysterious encounter with otherworldly beings, Walton certainly had his detractors, most notably Mike Rogers, whom he fought with on “Larry King Live” during promotion for Fire in the Sky, but held firm to his story. Although the movie does take huge liberties with Walton’s story, as movies are apt to do (with even the screenplay writer apologizing at one point for making changes the studio requested), it is a chilling tale of what might be out there beyond the stars.
The Entity (1982)
As if a paranormal haunting isn’t enough, the haunting spirit in The Entity was sexually attacking its host. Sheesh! Barbara Hershey plays Carla Moran, a character based on real life victim Doris Bither, although neither director Sidney J. Furie, nor Hershey met with Bither at any time before or during the shoot. The movie is based on the book by Frank DeFelitta, which detailed Bither’s experiences. Investigators tried to prove the spectral rape part of Bither’s story but could not get photographic evidence (although they did get some cool light arc pics of Doris). There was also some severe actual abuse that went on in Bither’s life growing up. All this leads to many questions against her story. But why someone would come up with a story of a ghostly rape is a tough one to figure out. The Entity contains some intense imagery, especially for the time it was released, and tells a great tale of haunting.
The Haunting in Connecticut (2009)
The Haunting in Connecticut is a very intriguing tale. It has the element of doubt built right in. Much like the validity of Doris Bither’s claims tended to be doubted in The Entity because of the possibility of mental illness and questionable living conditions, The Haunting in Connecticut purposely puts doubt into the viewer’s mind to help drive home the point of how scary a real haunting is during the later parts of the movie. This film is somewhat based on the story of Carmen Reed Snedeker and her family. Snedeker moved closer to the University of Connecticut (Go Huskies!) Health Center, where her son was being treated for cancer. Apparently some of the medications used in the treatment could have had hallucinatory side effects. So was it real? Let’s ask the experts as the Snedeker home was also investigated by Ed and Lorraine Warren, who indeed verified some serious paranormal activity. Lorraine claims the house was cleared after an exorcism was performed in 1988.
The Mothman Prophecies (2002)
In 1975, parapsychologist John Keel wrote The Mothman Prophecies about his investigations into apparent sightings of large, winged creatures around Point Pleasant, West Virginia, from 1966-67. This book was the inspiration for the 2002 film starring Richard Gere about these same mysterious creatures. The movie illustrates the legend of the mothman and John Klein’s (Gere) obsession with finding him. The movie and book both center their stories around the collapse of the Silver Bridge, and the movie and book both claim that there was never any scientific explanation as to why this bridge collapsed (trying to shuffle off the blame on the mothman, I’m sure!), but in actuality, failure of an eye bar in a suspension chain was the cause. Although that’s not nearly as scary (or as marketable) as saying the mothman did it. And who knows? Maybe he weakened the faulty eye bar!
Shadow of the Vampire (2000)
We touched on a lot of hauntings, an alien abduction, mothmen and even a dream master…why not a real life vampire. Shadow of the Vampire is a fun, supernatural look at the filming of one of the original horror movies, Nosferatu. With John Malkovich playing Nosferatu director F.W. Murnau and Willem Dafoe playing the incredibly quirky actor Max Schreck, Shadow of the Vampire asks the question, ‘What if the man who played the original cinematic vampire was actually a vampire himself?’ Of course this is a satirical ‘based-on-true events’ rendering, but it is a fun question to ask. Schreck was an incredibly odd individual and it’s amusing to picture him as an actual vampire. That would explain a lot about this unique method actor.
The Quiet Ones Synopsis
From the producer who brought you The Woman In Black and Let Me In comes the unnerving tale of The Quiet Ones. Tucked away in an estate outside of London, Professor Coupland along with a team of university students conduct an “experiment” on Jane Harper, a young girl who harbors unspeakable secrets. What dark forces they uncover are more terrifying than any of them expected. Inspired by true events, the film stars Jared Harris (“Mad Men” and Sherlock Homes: A Game of Shadows), Sam Claflin (The Hunger Games: Catching Fire), Olivia Cooke (“Bates Motel”), and is directed by John Pogue from a screenplay by Craig Rosenberg and Oren Moverman and John Pogue, and based on a screenplay by Tom de Ville.