All of these wilderness horror films are based on shocking true stories.
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00:00The wilderness is a dangerous place. Without adding cannibal serial killers into the equation,
00:05nature is already full of terrifying carnivorous predators and hazardous obstacles.
00:10This overwhelming sense of helplessness and isolation then is of course at the centre of
00:15dozens of outdoor horror films, and many, you may be surprised to hear, are actually based on real
00:21events, even if the filmmakers themselves may have taken some, let's call it artistic liberty,
00:28with the events that inspired them. With that in mind, I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com,
00:32and these are 10 Horrific Wilderness Horror Movies Based on True Events.
00:3610. Blackwater From Lake Placid,
00:39Crawl and that harrowing scene from X, crocodiles are no stranger to the horror genre. Although the
00:44reptiles and events in those films are completely fictional, however, those in indie Aussie flick
00:50Blackwater were not entirely. This flick sees Grace embark on a holiday alongside her husband
00:56and sister, and while the trip gets off to a good start, it takes a disastrous turn when they
01:01go on a fishing trip deep into a mangrove swamp. Their boat is attacked by a crocodile, killing
01:07their guide, and leaving the holiday makers stranded on a nearby tree. With the boat just
01:12out of reach and the croc unrelenting in its hunt, Blackwater is an effective and fun horror.
01:18Alongside using real crocodiles in the production itself, the filmmakers also added an extra sense
01:24of realism to the premise by basing it on real accounts of crocodile attacks in Australia. Hell,
01:30the main premise for the film drew upon the nightmarish ordeal that two teenagers faced
01:34on the 21st of December 2003, who, after a crocodile killed their friend,
01:40found themselves trapped in a tree overnight while the animals circled below. Thankfully,
01:44in real life, the teenagers were eventually rescued.
01:489. Backcountry If you thought the bear scene from The Revenant
01:52was intense, then you haven't experienced the savagery of Adam MacDonald's backcountry. The
01:57film sees couple Jen and Alex travel to Ontario for what they hope will be a romantic camping
02:02trip to patch up their relationship. Unfortunately for them, there's an uninvited third guest in the
02:07form of a black bear, who's about to turn their weekend away into a living nightmare.
02:12The visceral nature of the grizzly climax, that's not a pun by the way because it's a black bear,
02:17not a grizzly, coupled with the various other stresses the couple face in the wilderness
02:21before the bear arrives is enough to put anyone off camping for life. However,
02:26the true events it's based on are just as unnerving. Though getting the idea for the
02:31film while camping with his wife, MacDonald has spoken about drawing upon details of one
02:36true story in which a husband and wife were attacked by a bear in Ontario's Missinibi
02:41Lake Provincial Park in 2005. While the husband was able to fight the bear off with a knife before
02:46it dragged his wife away, the woman unfortunately succumbed to her wounds before she could reach a
02:51hospital.
02:528. Devil's Pass
02:54Devil's Pass, otherwise known as the Dyatlov Pass Incident, is all about a group of fictional
02:59characters trying to get to the bottom of a real-life mystery. As the alternate title
03:03makes it abundantly clear, that mystery is the Dyatlov Pass Incident itself, a strange tragedy
03:09that saw a group of Soviet hikers die in mysterious circumstances in the Ural Mountains.
03:15While nobody has conclusively pieced together the exact cause, the details of the case allow
03:21the public's imagination to run wild, with mutilated bodies seemingly pointing towards
03:26something more sinister than a natural disaster. In Devil's Pass though, the whole thing is
03:31explained away by monsters, secret experiments and even a wormhole. While this movie of course
03:37doesn't even attempt to try and provide a serious answer to, or serious recreation of,
03:42the original mystery like some of the other movies on this list, it still makes for an
03:47interesting watch, even if that interest is simply regarding the ethics of spinning a
03:52larger-than-life folktale out of a real-life natural disaster that killed nine people.
03:587. Open Water
04:00Ever since Jaws hit our screens in 1975, Hollywood has continued to give us reasons
04:05to be afraid of the ocean and the toothy terrors that lurk beneath its surface. None of these
04:10films however have been as bleak as Open Water, which is made more unnerving thanks to the true
04:16events that it's based on. That story is of American couple Tom and Eileen Lonergan,
04:20who were accidentally left behind on a scuba diving trip in January 1998. It took two days
04:26for anyone to realise they were missing, but after a three-day search, only some of their
04:31equipment was found washed ashore. Nobody knows exactly what happened to them, though the theory
04:35is they succumbed to exhaustion and drowned, or were attacked by sharks. In this film,
04:41when protagonists Daniel and Susan find themselves in the same terrible situation,
04:46Open Water throws viewers into the same hopeless scenario alongside them. With nothing but empty
04:51oceans surrounding them and sharks menacingly circling their increasingly wary bodies,
04:56the film emphasises that there's nothing the couple can do to actually save themselves,
05:01all they can do is wait for help to arrive, if it ever does.
05:056. Borderland
05:06Thanks to gory horror like Hostel and The Ruins, holidaymakers have reasons to think twice about
05:11booking their dream getaway. And one film you can add to this pile is Zev Berman's Borderland.
05:17Like most films of its kind, Borderland sees a group of college students set out on a trip
05:22for what should be the time of their lives. This time, the friends want to travel to the
05:25Mexican border for a week of sex and drugs, but when walking back from a carnival,
05:30one of them is abducted by a drug cartel to be used as a human sacrifice.
05:35While the victim's friends join forces with the local police officer to rescue him,
05:39the student is left to endure grisly torture from his kidnappers.
05:44Now, as outlandish as the premise sounds, the events in Borderlands are actually inspired by
05:48the real kidnapping of American college student Mark Kilroy in 1989 by notorious serial killer
05:55and cult leader Adolfo de Jesuis Constanzo. Constanzo would torture and kill his victims
06:01at a remote ranch in the Mexican desert, believing his black magic would make the drug smugglers
06:06invisible. Ironically, it was a cultist who believed he was invisible that led the
06:11authorities straight to the ranch. 5. The Widow
06:15In 1999, the Blair Witch Project succeeded in making an entire generation scared of going
06:20into the woods. The three students' ordeal in Black Hills Forest is one of the most effective
06:26examples of the found footage genre to date, but despite everything about the marketing telling us
06:31otherwise, the film itself was a complete work of fiction. Russian horror The Widow
06:36likewise takes audiences deep within the heart of a spooky forest, in this case near St. Petersburg,
06:42as we follow a group of volunteer rescuers searching for a missing boy. Unfortunately
06:47though, this forest is also said to be the home of a malevolent witch, and when their search leads
06:52them to finding a woman lying naked in the wilderness, all hell breaks loose in this
06:57atmospheric horror. Now, the film itself claims to be based on the eerie tale of volunteer rescuers
07:03who disappeared in 2017, and while it's doubtful they really did fall prey to a witch, people have
07:09been reported to have gone missing in this area over the last 30 years. Most of these people are
07:14said to have vanished without a trace, and the few that were found have all been found naked.
07:194. The Hills of Ice
07:21Wes Craven's 1977 exploitation horror classic The Hills of Ice sees the Carter family come
07:27face-to-face with a family of mutated cannibals when their car crashes in the middle of the desert.
07:33It's a grungy and violent slice-of-70s horror action, though you might not be aware that it
07:37is based on true historical events, though there is some debate about the accuracy of these tales.
07:43Craven openly spoke about his inspirations behind the film being the stories of 18th-century
07:48Scottish cannibal Sonny Bean and his family. Living in caves across the coast, Bean, alongside
07:54his wife, ambushed and devoured travellers who passed by on nearby roads. It was only when one
07:59of their potential victims escaped and informed King James VI of what happened that a search party
08:05was dispatched to capture the family, who were consequently brutally executed for their crimes.
08:10According to Craven, his film was to act as a modernised version of this gruesome tale,
08:15in which his goal was to demonstrate that the civilised family was just as
08:19barbarous as the cannibals themselves. Moreover, the 2006 remake likewise drew upon real-life
08:25horror stories of nuclear testing, creating the cannibals using photos of injuries from Chernobyl
08:31and Hiroshima. 3. The Sacrament
08:33From the likes of Kill List, Midsommar and The Endless, there's no shortage of horror movies
08:38about nefarious cults. However, one such film that draws straight from the real world
08:43is Ty West's 2013 chiller, The Sacrament. This incredibly underrated found-footage flick follows
08:49a small group of journalists who travel to the isolated rural compound of Eden Parish,
08:55after learning that one of the team member's sisters has joined the cult. They intend to
08:59make a documentary about the organisation and its charismatic religious leader known only
09:04as Father. Despite the cultists being warm and welcoming to the journalists initially though,
09:09events take a sinister turn when a group of dissidents begin to rebel against the cult,
09:14and the journalists are stopped from leaving. With tensions running high, the film culminates
09:18in a shocking sequence in which the cult leader encourages his devout members to commit suicide
09:23by ingesting poison. Now, while the film doesn't explicitly claim to be based on a true story,
09:29the cinematic events bear a striking resemblance to the infamous 1978 Jonestown Massacre in which
09:35over 900 people were killed after drinking poison. West himself has been often in interviews about
09:41Jonestown acting as the inspiration behind his own creepy cult horror as well, so this one still
09:45counts. On the 13th of October 1972, a Uruguayan rugby team were flying to Chile with their friends
09:53and family for a match. However, disaster tragically struck while their plane was over
09:58the Andes. The aircraft collided with the side of a mountain and crashed into the snowy wasteland
10:02below, stranding the surviving passengers in sub-zero conditions with scarcely any resources.
10:09Out of the 45 passengers who boarded the flight, only 16 survived. But to do so,
10:14they had to resort to the unthinkable and eat the frozen bodies of their loved ones
10:18while they waited 10 long weeks for rescue to arrive. This gripping true story was brought to
10:24the big screen in Alive. While not the first film based on this tale of survival and desperation,
10:30this retelling stands out thanks to outstanding performances from its ensemble cast and
10:34jaw-dropping special effects. Although Alive is presented as more of a taut thriller than
10:39all-out horror, the film nevertheless has its fair share of terrifying moments.
10:44The Australian outback is one of the worst places to become
10:49lost. Surrounded by nothing but hundreds of miles of untamed wilderness,
10:53any help is far out of reach. And this is precisely why it makes the perfect setting
10:58for a horror film, with one of the most effective of those being Wolf Creek.
11:02When a group of backpackers become stranded in the wilderness, they're rescued by a stranger
11:07called Mick. He offers to help fix their car and send them on their way, however he instead drugs
11:12the group before mercilessly torturing them. Despite this intensely violent affair beginning
11:16with a title card claiming to be based on a true story, the events depicted here are fictional.
11:21Rather, Wolf Creek finds its connection to real-world horrors through the grisly inspirations
11:27behind its cold-blooded antagonist. According to filmmaker Greg McLean,
11:31the inspiration for Mick came from real-life serial killer Ivan Millet. Also known as the
11:36Backpack Killer, Millet killed seven hitchhikers around Belanglof State Forest,
11:41north of Sydney, between 1989 and 1992. Though knowing Mick Taylor himself never existed will
11:48be a sigh of relief after seeing his diabolical actions, discovering he does have a real-life
11:52counterpart makes the character that bit more sinister.
11:56So that's our list, and why don't you guys think down in the comments below,
11:59what do you think of these movies and did you know the true stories they were based on?
12:03Let me know and while you're down there could you please give us a like,
12:05share, subscribe and head over to WhatCultureHorror for more lists like this on the regular.