Realism Induced Horror / Live-Action Films

Examples of Realism-Induced Horror in live-action films.

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• 10 Cloverfield Lane has plenty of this, a Kaiju-sized Alien Invasion is obviously scary but the real horror of the film is just being trapped in a house with a unstable person with ultimately depraved motives — something that happens all too often in real life.
• Alien:
  • Despite the unearthly Sci-Fi backdrop the reason why so many people find the Facehugger and Chestbuster (particularly in the first movie) so horrifying are the intentional parallels to real-world sexual assault and unwanted pregnancy they conjure up. Lambert’s death by the Alien in particular is framed like a rape scene with Parker futilely unable to protect her. The film’s writers Dan O'Bannon and Ronald Shusett claimed they wanted the Alien to disturb both genders on a visceral level.
  • Prometheus also indulges in the sexual themes as Holloway unthinkingly has sex with his girlfriend Shaw while carrying an alien bacteria David infected him with, getting her pregnant with an alien abomination — which taken out of the science fiction context is distressingly similar to many real world STIs that affect childbirth like syphilis and HIV.
  • Greater-Scope Villain Weyland-Yutani “The Company”, are scary for exactly how closely they mirror many unethical real world companies and businesses that deal in horrific trafficking, utter abuse of their workers and ability to weasel out of any culpability for their crimes. The scene in the beginning of Aliens where Ripley has to fruitlessly prove her case to a board that would never admit fault and would rather shift blame unto her — could be taken straight from the real world.
  • Aliens' plot of the heavily armed macho marines confidently going into battle, only to get rinsed and suffer many casualties to a stealthy enemy that use unconventional and terrifying tactics — all deliberately echoes The Vietnam War. Even a defence like acidic blood is comparable to coating traps with excrement which is a tactic the Viet Cong did to kill many American soldiers.
• The Batman (2022):
  • The Riddler is reimagined as a Zodiac-style Serial Killer with obvious mental illness and/or stunted emotional growth that gives a chilling undercurrent of realism amid the Saw-style torture devices he uses. This itself was the result of a horrific childhood caused by systemic corruption you could see in any city where the rich and powerful decide to help themselves at the expense of easily ignorable have-nots. But easily the most unnerving part of the movie is near the end, where the Riddler's final plan is essentially a mass shooting organized alongside like-minded citizens he's radicalized through social media. Seeing the Riddler's "fans" candidly chat online about what sort of guns to use, and then seeing them slowly gather with weapons and ammo above an unsuspecting crowd is terrifying in its mundanity, as it could easily happen in real life with very little difference.
  • The film’s hauntingly bleak and upsetting depiction of Bruce has gotten appreciation for portraying someone suffering a severe post traumatic disorder that would come with having their parents murdered realistically. Especially compared to other versions of the character. Rather than being a charismatic Triple Shifter who can easily pretend to be a Millionaire Playboy, this Bruce Wayne cannot have a normal conversation with anyone beyond Alfred and he’s so emotionally repressed and awkward due to lack of real human contact he’s even somewhat creepy in his interactions with Selina — something that is common with young people suffering from extreme emotional trauma. It’s also shown this Batman has to record everything not only because of his detective work but because his sleep deprivation and insomnia is so bad he simply can’t keep track of every detail he sees, again something true to people who suffer from said disorders.
• Barbarian: While the film's main antagonist is a superhumanly strong mutant woman, much of the story revolves around Tess's mundane fear and discomfort as a woman in an unfamiliar environment in the company of a man she doesn't trust. In addition, the theme of sexual assault prominently features both in AJ's subplot and the film's backstory, as the Mother herself is revealed to be the offspring of a Serial Rapist who kept women as sex slaves in his basement. Horrible people like AJ and Frank really do exist.
• Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice opens up with Bruce Wayne's recollection of both his parent's murders and the destruction he witnessed when the Kryptonians invaded Metropolis. The former caused him to develop a trigger at the mention of his mother's name and the latter leans unapologetically into September 11 imagery from the perspective of New York civilians.
• Chinatown: Everything about Noah Cross is horrific, but it becomes even more horrific that people like him actually exist. The parallels with the Jeffrey Epstein case (American financier convicted of sexual crimes who had connections with very powerful individuals) are there.
• Contagion (2011): No zombies, nothing supernatural, just a contagious disease with a high mortality rate. It's no wonder the movie got a publicity bump during the COVID-19 Pandemic, as the threat of a novel contagious disease made the movie hit extremely close to home at the time. Note how the film's Acceptable Breaks from Reality are mostly to make the disease easier to solve, not to make it spread faster or be more deadly.
• Come and See: What makes the film such a haunting experience is that it depicts the horrors of war in a RIDICULOUSLY authentic fashion, showing not just the horrendous atrocities that happen there in extremely realistic and graphic detail, but also how war can thoroughly affect a person's psyche, progressively turning them from a normal human being to a traumatized, broken, empty shell of their former self.
• Damsel is unmistakably outlandish fairytale style, with the premise of a girl trapped in a dragon’s lair. Yet putting aside the dragon and the fantasy setting altogether, the scariest aspect of the film is Elodie being sold over to the kingdom of Aurea who ritualistically offer her up as a Human Sacrifice like numerous young girls before her. Not only is such practice Truth in Television and Old As Dirt but Elodie being gaslit into thinking she will have a better life before being thrown into horrific entrapment strongly echoes the luring and trafficking of women.
• While the plight of the Prawns in District 9 is clearly rooted in the Apartheid, several other aspects are disturbing in their own right due to how plausible they are in real life.
  • One of the most disturbing parts about the news media claiming Wikus got infected with an alien STD is that it shows a doctored image of him having sex with a Prawn prostitute as proof of such. This resonates even more in The New '10s and The New '20s, as deepfake technology has become even more sophisticated to the point of being indistinguishable, and bad actors have used highly-sophisticated deepfake images such as deepfaked revenge porn to defame and harass their targets and unsuspecting people readily fall for it, not unlike how the public treats Wikus after seeing that article.
  • The Interspecies Prostitution rings is reminiscent of colonials forcing native populations into sexual slavery, such as the Comfort Women.
• Donnie Darko is best known for supernatural horrors involving a strange man in a bunny suit and the threat of a universe-breaking time paradox. It also features Jim Cunningham, a motivational speaker who visits Donnie's high school and is found to be a child porn hoarder after his house is burned down. Jim certainly wasn't just at the school to give motivational speeches...
• Eden Lake has a couple on a camping holiday being terrorised by teenage delinquents, led by a particularly sadistic boy.
• While all of The Exorcist is pretty horrifying, the whole "cross scene" just might be the worst, as it basically depicts a 12 year old girl being raped and begging for help, even if the rapist is a demon instead of a human. As such, even if one doesn't believe in demons or the supernatural, the whole scene is pretty gut wrenching.
• Fatal Attraction:
  • The film is considered one of the all time scariest thrillers, precisely for how realistically it portrays a harassing Stalker with a Crush, especially a female one. Glenn Close’s Alex seems like a perfectly normal and reasonable lady at the beginning of the movie who’s not even remotely frightening. Yet the longer Dan has an affair with her, the more we see how obsessive, possessive and volatile Alex is with her violent mood-swings being highly unsettling. One of the most frightening scenes being when Dan first tries to leave and Alex has cut her wrists to make him stay, self-harm being a common tactic among abusers in a possessive relationship (and a situation the writer James Dearden took from his own life). Although partly his own damn fault for cheating, it’s still hard to deny that seeing Dan’s helplessness as he is unable to do anything about Alex’s behaviour isn’t deeply upsetting and frightening. Many people who have suffered stalking and harassment can easily sympathise with him.
  • The scene where Alex kidnapped Dan's daughter by simply going into the preschool and pretending to be her mother. You can really feel Beth (Dan's wife) complete panic as she runs around searching for her daughter. It's the epitome of every parent's worst nightmare—that your kid could so easily go off with a stranger despite your multiple warnings otherwise, that the stranger could be some perfectly normal-looking person rather than the psycho that they truly are, and though she returns the little girl unharmed, she could have harmed her if she wanted to. It doesn't help that there are real-world cases that have started out like this.
• The First Omen: Barring the supernatural aspects, the most horrifying part about the film is the mass rape of nuns being done by the Catholic Church, bringing to mind the Catholic Church child molestation scandals of the late 20th-early 21st century. There's also the motive behind the mass rapes in an attempt to produce the Antichrist: it's an attempt to stop secularism by bringing out a force so terrifying that people will turn to the Church. This harkens to religious fundamentalists who try to force conversion on nonbelievers just simply because they can't stand someone not being a practitioner of their beliefs. It also brings the use of false flag attacks to manipulate the masses into supporting the perpetrators' side, not realizing that their saviors are the perpetrators, such as the Reichstag fire perpetrated by the Nazis that Hitler used to justify consolidating power onto himself.
• Flightplan (2005) is known for being ridiculous with its glaring plot holes and bad writing, but the scenario itself is very terrifying. Not only is your child kidnapped, but the person who turns out to be the kidnapper is the law enforcement officer trying to "help you", who is actually a greedy criminal extortionist who's really after you and planned to make you look like a crazy nutjob and murder your entire family so he can blame you for his crimes and get away with it. And not being taken seriously and therefore almost coming very close to letting an innocent woman and her 6-year old child die, it's no wonder people comment on the end about flipping everyone off in Kyle's shoes.
• Freddy vs. Jason:
  • Gib’s relationship with Trey, her disgustingly abusive asshole boyfriend (who’s thankfully killed by Jason not too long into the film) despite being minor to to the plot is one of the darkest elements of the film simply for how realistically it’s portrayed. Trey constantly demeans her, pushes her into obeying him without complaint and even after they have sex he just disregards her to sleep. Worse still, poor Gib blames herself for his death even though none of it was her fault and she still misses him for the rest of her screen time, guilt and self-loathing being a too common symptom in victims of abusive relationships.
  • During the final nightmare scene, after slashing her chest, Freddy warns Lori that the first time "tends to get a little... messy" before chuckling and pulling her skirt up as she whimpers. It's heavily implied he was about to rape her before she woke up, which is far more disturbing and terrifying to think of than his usual over the top methods of murder.
• Friday the 13th:
  • The reason fans often feel such sympathy for Jason, despite him being a monstrous zombie Serial Killer, is all because of how hauntingly realistic his backstory is. That being he was a mentally disabled child with a physical deformity who was bullied and assaulted by the other children, resulting in him seemingly drowning. All while the camp councillors, who were supposed to be looking after him, were too busy boning each other. People being abused over their physical and mental conditions occurs all the time in real life and many real-world parents would understand and even sympathise with Pamela Voorhees’s grief and rage at the utter failure to properly look after a child with special needs, again something that happens way too often in reality.
  • In Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan, Rennie's Attempted Rape at the hands of some gangsters once the group gets to New York is far more disturbing than anything Jason does. Indeed, his appearance almost seems like a relief, as he does an unintentional Villainous Rescue (he kills the rapists and Rennie runs away while he's preoccupied).
• The Fly (1986):
  • While the cause of it is unconventional (a Teleporter Accident), Seth’s deeply traumatising Slow Transformation affects so many viewers because of this. His degenerative Body Horror transformation greatly echoes real world terminal diseases that slowly rot away at a person such as cancer and leprosy. Seeing both Seth and Veronica’s grief and fear at his worsening condition is upsettingly real. Additionally the fear of his condition affecting Veronica’s unborn baby, has disturbing parallels to HIV and other diseases that affect childbirth.
  • On a greater level, Seth and Veronica’s relationship deteriorating after the accident with Seth becoming increasingly unpleasant, sexually aggressive and emotionally abusive to Veronica — is something many viewers find even more disturbing than Seth grotesquely mutating into a fly. As YouTuber Ryan Hollinger pointed out in his video about the movie, a lot of the horror of the film is the relationship that started off passionate and genuine becoming ugly and sour once Seth gains more confidence and less introverted thanks to Veronica. Something that has similarly occurred with numerous real world couples.
• Ghost (1990): Although obviously supernatural in its concept, the fear that you or your loved one could just get stabbed to death by a mugger one day on the street completely out nowhere, is well founded in reality. Molly’s reaction to Sam dying by going into complete shock rather than just crying, is effective Truth in Television, as is her listlessness common in many people suffering severe post traumatic depression.
• Ghostbusters II is largely remembered for being a lighthearted follow-up to the gritty and darkly humorous original. However the scene most frequently cited as the scariest (especially for parents) is Oscar’s abduction. Whilst the threat (a possessed Janosz) is supernatural, an infant crawling out of their crib and onto a ledge is an all too real danger that’s claimed too many babies’ lives in reality. His mother Dana’s complete panic alongside Louis and Jeanne at seeing the baby on the edge of a building is distressingly real. Not to mention child abduction is in of itself an all too common occurrence, and far more frightening than the other cartoonish and otherworldly threats seen in the series.
• Godzilla:
  • There's a reason the first Godzilla movie is usually considered the scariest, namely the actual consequences of a giant fire breathing monster wrecking a city are depicted a lot more realistically than later films (with thousands dead and hospitals full of burned and otherwise injured people.) Most of the later films were a lot Lighter and Softer, and rarely showed humans actually dying due to monster attacks (with the implication being most of the buildings are unoccupied). The fact Godzilla in the first movie is also entirely an allegory for the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing (complete with leaving radiation fallout) makes the horror truly hit home. The most cited haunting scene in particular being a mother huddling with her children promising they'll see their father again, which echoes many tragic accounts from the bombing.
  • Godzilla Minus One, like the 1954 film that it is a reimagining of, has this all over the place, due to placing itself firmly in the literal and figurative fallout of post-war Japan. There’s still larger than life elements like Godzilla, but the true drama and horror of the film comes from grimly realistic Survivor's Guilt and intense self-loathing Kōichi the failed Kamikaze bomber suffers throughout the film coupled with the ridicule and shame he gets for not having given up his life for his government and country; something that many Japanese veterans went through as well — despite there being no big lizard involved for them. The most viscerally horrifying and upsetting scene in the whole film is when Godzilla attacks Ginza and the Love Interest Noriko pushes Kōichi out of the way of the Atomic Breath’s impact wave, leaving Kōichi screaming in despair on the ruined street while black rain falls from the sky. A scene that intentionally mirrors the Fat Man and Little Boy bombings.
• A Good Woman is Hard to Find: The film's horrific aspects (coercion from criminals, harassment by a creep, life-threatening danger at the hands of gangsters) are all quite real.
• Halloween (1978) did not have any of the supernatural elements eventually introduced in its sequels. The villain was just a stalker and serial killer who was even wounded when a victim fought back. His targets weren't chosen for any particular reason and even the Sex Signals Death was a coincidental consequence of being distracted rather than a cautionary message. Even the Dramatic Unmasking is considered anticlimactic because it just reveals a normal man, not any sort of notable character or monster. As the Slasher Movie Trope Codifier, Halloween shows that most of the supernatural elements of the genre were only Flanderized later on, usually in sequels that needed to justify a character's continual return.
  • Halloween (2018) won back the crowd in part by ignoring all of the other sequels and going back to basics with Michael Myers merely being a dangerous serial killer with no supernatural powers or personal ties, while also exploring the tragic consequences of the trauma left on survivors.
• The Invisible Man (2020) may be a science fiction horror film about a man who turns himself invisible, but the premise of someone being stalked, threatened and gaslit by their abusive ex after they try to leave them is horrifyingly realistic, as is the depiction of a narcissist's attempts to control and manipulate those around them, to the point that many people found this to be the most disturbing part (especially for viewers who have experienced domestic abuse).
• One of the reasons why Joker (2019) is as scary as it is? It's the story of a man who goes crazy and becomes a Spree Killer, a pretty harsh reality that has only become harsher with the sharp rise in these kind of criminals (so much that a lot of the film's naysayers believed that this movie would give them another reason to go on a rampage — that is, to emulate Arthur Fleck), and it's the most realistic interpretation of the Joker's Origins Episode to date.
• This is what makes Lakeview Terrace so terrifying, and it's not even a horror film. What would you do if you had a neighbor who was that willing and able to cause you harm, whose actions were escalating by the day, anything you did to retaliate would just bring trouble onto you, and there was no one you could go to for help and No Help Is Coming? It's a disturbingly realistic and possible scenario for anyone, made worse by the comparably unlikely circumstances with Abel that Chris is able to exploit to put an end to it.
• Most classic James Bond villains indulge in outlandish schemes and boast over-the-top personalities. Franz Sanchez from Licence to Kill is an exception to the rule, affirming this entry's Darker and Edgier tone. As a drug lord in charge of a country, Sanchez doesn't have any advanced technology or grandiose ambitions. What makes him so terrifying is his casual habit of brutally sadistic retaliation against perceived slights. As many people living in the third world can affirm, dictators like him exist in real life.
• Marvel Cinematic Universe:
  • In Iron Man the Ten-Rings attack on the Afghanistan village Gulmira remains to this day one of the darkest scenes in the entire MCU, simply because of how horrifically true-to-life it is. Countless innocent third world civilians in the Middle East and Southwest Asia suffer armed massacres like the one depicted in the film all the time, there’s just no superhero who comes down to save them all in Real Life.
  • Iron Man 2: Whiplash's attack on the Stark Expo using his Hammer drones is disturbingly reminiscent of mass shootings at public events, not helped by the fact that civilians are quite clearly shown in the line of fire and fleeing for their lives, with the capstone being one drone nearly firing upon a prepubescent Peter Parker while he's wandering off on his own (and to make matters worse, the sharp-eared viewer can hear who are presumably Uncle Ben and Aunt May scream out for him whilst evacuating).
  • Captain America: The Winter Soldier is often cited as one of the most potent examples of this in the film franchise. While many of the elements in the movie are larger than life Marvel Comics-style, the premise of systemic corruption, cover ups and mass surveillance with Hydra masquerading as SHIELD keeping tabs on everyone they deem a threat, is frighteningly close to reality. Also the idea of SHIELD taking in Hydra/Nazi scientists such as Zola to work for them is lifted directly from real life, in Operation Paperclip the US government took in 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians, some being outright leaders within the former Nazi Party.
  • Thor: Ragnarok is one of the wackiest and goofiest films of the MCU, being very much Flash Gordon (1980) meets He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, yet The Reveal that Asgard was built on the bloodshed of millions of lives when Odin conquered all Nine Realms through mass murder is disturbingly close to western colonialism as well as the countless other real-world civilisations born out of the slaughter of other cultures. Odin actively covering up Asgard’s bloody history, out of shame and refusal to accept his crimes, is also horribly similar to the many governments and leaders whom have downplayed or ignored past colonial atrocities.
  • Black Panther (2018): Erik Killmonger is able to seize control of Wakanda, the most technologically advanced nation in the world, by exploiting their ancient and revered traditions to challenge T'Challa for the throne as a relative of his, following which he plans to ignite a massive planet-spanning race war by exploiting the feelings of oppressed minorities and arming them with Wakanda's powerful weapons to throw the world into chaos. Almost nobody in Wakanda supports him at heart, but they obey him because the laws and traditions they revere so much means they have no other choice. It is scary because many modern governments can be changed in such a manner and increasing racial tensions make a conflict all the more likely.
  • Black Widow (2021): The Red Room, at its heart, is a program that abducts young girls, subjects them to horrific abuses, and employs them as disposable objects against their will. The film's opening credits show a montage of Natasha and many other girls being transported in shipping containers and being forcefully dragged out by armed men, which has a particularly disturbing resemblance to real-life human trafficking. Dreykov's final confrontation with Natasha also has unsettling overtones of sexual abuse, where he strokes her face and takes sadistic pleasure in rendering her powerless and beating her, while boasting that his power and position makes him untouchable. The fact that Dreykov himself (most likely coincidentally) has a passing resemblance to the infamous sex offender Harvey Weinstein only heightens this effect.
  • Spider-Man: No Way Home very disturbingly shows the end result of someone becoming the focus point of negative media coverage by a single determined figure and the center of conspiracy theories. Peter might be cleared of the charges of Mysterio's frame-up pretty early in the movie, but he, his family, and his friends are harassed, attacked, and stalked while also seeing their futures thrown into question for something they are only rumored of being responsible for or involved with. It's one of the most disturbing parts of a film with plenty of such terrifying moments.
  • Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: Rocket's backstory. You take away the sci-fi elements, and you have a pretty grim look at how some corporations and scientists unethically experiment on animals.
• The film Mommie Dearest may have been a controversial biopic detailing Joan Crawford's abuse of her children, as well as a source of many laughs with how much of a Large Ham Faye Dunaway was. To those with Abusive Parents who may have had undiagnosed (or untreated) mental disorders however, the film isn't a comedy but an eerily accurate horror movie that was toned down.
• In Night of the Living Dead (1968), the use of grainy black-and-white footage made the film to some viewers look less like a movie and more like a newsreel or documentary.
• While Nope is primarily a story about two siblings trying to film proof of a UFO, there is another story within the film that serves as a parallel to the main plot: when Ricky "Jupe" Park was a child actor, he starred in a sitcom with Gordy, a trained chimpanzee. During a taping in front of a live audience, an already agitated Gordy flew into a rage when some balloons popped onstage, causing the chimp to brutally attack his human costars. By the time animal control stopped Gordy by shooting him in the head, two adult actors were dead, and Ricky's onscreen sister had her face torn apart. Ricky himself survived the incident unscathed, but was left severely traumatized. Both stories have the same general moral (wild animals, even supposedly trained ones, can easily turn on you if you don't respect their boundaries), but what makes the second story especially horrifying is that not only can it feasibly happen in real life, it actually has.
• Osmosis Jones: The main villain Thrax is not only a serial killer but a contagious virus that has killed several people and wanted to set a record in the medical books. Needless to say, anytime a major outbreak happens fans take Thrax dead serious.
• Panic Room is probably the most mundane of David Fincher’s filmography, yet its realism makes the film all the more frightening for it. Home invasion occurs all the time in real life and the film’s depiction of its burglars as desperate amateurs who weren’t even expecting mother and daughter Meg and Sarah to be there steeps the movie in a genuine sense of realism. Then there’s Sarah going into a diabetic shock at the worst possible time, which many people suffering from diabetes or have loved ones who do can relate to. The film was even inspired by news coverage.
• Pan's Labyrinth is a dark fantasy film about a girl going on gothic magical adventures in the woods outside her home, at one point even encountering an eye-less ghoul who eats children. However, the most terrifying monster of the movie is by far the protagonist's foster father Captain Vidal, a cruel, psychopathic far-right military officer who is waging a brutal campaign against republican guerrillas against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War.
• Paranormal Activity: Some viewers found Micah and Katie's gradually detiorating and increasingly toxic relationship in the first film to be far more terrifying than any of the supernatural hauntings.
• Rebel Moon: Part of what makes Noble such a chilling villain is that his character, in comparison to The Empire from Star Wars, is arguably one of the most unapologetically realistic portrayals of an actual fascist: a sociopathic soldier who desires complete control in the government, using his power to strip people of human rights and murder anyone who defies him, believing violence to be the way to control the mass, all the while being a patriot to his government. As people who have seen the screening can affirm, take away the space opera element and his character is basically Hans Landa from Inglorious Basterds, but if more upfront about his sadism.
• Renfield (2023): When one strips away the supernatural and exaggerated elements and Dracula's Large Ham personality, you really see how Dracula has Renfield in an abusive relationship. Vampires aren't real, but there are those of a manipulative Control Freak nature out there who will take advantage of and prey upon a person's weaknesses and good intentions for their sole benefit. People who will make others feel they have less power than they actually do, and prevent them from ever fighting back with fear and threats against their loved ones; these are most certainly real. This is most evident in the scene where Dracula confronts Renfield in his studio apartment, he doesn't even need to lay a finger on him to get him to submit and leave the man a crying, broken wreck on the floor. It is Break Them by Talking on a very intimate and personal level as Dracula pokes and prods at every single one of Renfield's fears, weakness and insecurities to keep him under his thumb.
• RoboCop 2:
  • The film features Big Bad drug lord Cain who is already a chilling villain, even before becoming a Full-Conversion Cyborg. He shoots, in cold blood, an Ethnic Menial Labor worker who is begging to be taken along so the police don't arrest her, and is addicted to his own designer drug, Nuke which further lowers his inhibitions. One of Cain's most gruesome acts is to have Dirty Cop Duffy painfully vivisected for revealing Cain's hideout during his violent interrogation by RoboCop, much like real notorious drug lords may do to someone who gets on their bad side. Cain is a creepy example of the worst in international drug trafficking, and of someone so divorced from reality due to narcotics addiction that suffering is more likely to entertain him than bother him.
  • Hob, a child solider for Cain was a very controversial addition to the film with some viewers finding it in poor taste, but children growing up on the wrong side of the tracks or in an abusive household is Truth in Television. It can also be tear jerking because RoboCop holds strong to his Would Not Hurt A Child philosophy and seems to place the blame squarely on Cain for raising Hob into a ruthless gangster. At the end of Hob's story arc, Cain fatally wounds him as RoboCain due to Hob abandoning Cain (without hesitation) after Cain was presumed dead, but RoboCop comforts a dying hob with no resentment whatsoever.
• A franchise-wide example in Scream, where Ghostface has a legion of fans, imitators, and media portrayals who constantly trigger the survivors of the first rampage.
• Defenders of the Kubrick version of The Shining often feel that the ambiguity of the Overlook Hotel's haunted nature make the film scarier, in that it makes it seem like a similar scenario could happen in the real world.
• A Simple Plan: Sam Raimi is known for directing horror movies filled to the brim with demonic creatures, gore, and over-the-top violence. This film however, features nothing supernatural or anything particularly gory. It's a story of how 4 regular people spiral into depravity that's entirely grounded in reality. This makes for a movie that is far more disturbing than any zombie, deadite, or whatever monster Raimi has ever thrown at us.
• The Silence of the Lambs: What makes Buffalo Bill such a terrifying and memorable villain (although he is admittedly second-fiddle to Hannibal Lecter) is that he isn't an extremely intelligent or grandiose villain. He's a nutcase Serial Killer who kidnaps women, locks them in a hole, and tortures them unless they cooperate with his murder preparations. If one places themselves in the position of his captives, it is absolutely terrifying to be locked away in some dark pit with no hope of escape, while your captor tortures you and makes you do something that you're well aware will only lead to your inevitable death. Also keep in mind that Bill was based on real life serial killers, meaning that somewhere at sometime, a real person was put through this and in fact could be going through it right now. Sleep tight.
• Smile (2022):
  • While the film's main threat is a supernatural one; the kills are brutal; jumpscares frightening, and there is a lot of truly unsettling imagery. For some, the scariest thing of all is Rose's plight - nobody is there for her during her crisis until it's too late, and everyone in her life, including her own family and fiance, dismisses her troubles and fears as her mind starts to deteriorate. Many struggling with isolation and mental illness found these scenes to be even more terrifying than any of the scenes with the Entity.
  • The scene where Carl describes the feeling of despair to Rose. There is no indication that what he’s referring to is the Entity. Rather, he’s simply describing something everyone has felt at least once in their life, complete and utter hopelessness.
• Spider-Man Trilogy :
  • This is one of the reasons why Willem Dafoe’s Norman Osborn, aka Green Goblin, is considered so terrifying and cited as one of Marvel’s greatest cinematic villains (even compared to the likes of Thanos or Magneto). He’s not a cosmic conqueror or otherworldly threat; just an incredibly unstable man driven by his darker impulses who takes delight in hurting others, while also managing to be incredibly manipulative. He’s far closer to a real-world serial killer or psychopath than the majority of most Marvel movie villains. This is only reinforced in his return in the aforementioned Spider-Man: No Way Home, where he preys upon the vulnerabilities of MCU Spidey and even forces him to watch as he kills a loved one: Aunt May.
  • The alley rescue scene with MJ from the first movie, though not devoid of camp, is still extremely disturbing in context. It’s a group of men attempting to rape Mary Jane before Spidey swings in to save her. Plenty of innocent real world women in New York (and elsewhere) have suffered such attacks, often without anyone to save them.
• Split, much like Unbreakable which it is a Stealth Sequel to highlights real-world horrors more than the extraordinary elements of its narrative. While the film is ultimately a Supervillain Origin Story, the premise one of a madman kidnapping several young women and keeping them trapped underground before cannibalising most of them, could be taken out of any real-life news headline. The fact Kevin has an extreme Split Personality and is Immune to Bullets only heightens the horror of the situation rather than detract from it. There’s also Kevin and Casey’s realistic backstories of Parental Abuse which prove to be the most disturbing elements of an already horrifying film.
• Star Wars:
  • Darth Sidious aka Emperor Sheev Palpatine is famous for being a typical Evil Sorcerer Big Bad who can shoot lightning out of his fingers, but his most unnerving scenes involve none of those theatrics; those would be the times when he poses as an affable politician. He sees a potential apprentice in young Anakin Skywalker, grooming him for years and gaslighting him into mistrusting his closest friends with nothing more than carefully placed words and temptations. By the time Anakin realizes Palpatine's game, he's driven away all of his loved ones and become the exact villain he swore to destroy. Additionally, Palpatine attains the position of Emperor by using the backdrop of the Clone Wars to convince the corrupt Senate to hand over their power and autonomy willingly, invoking parallels to Adolf Hitler's rise to power.
  • Grand Moff Tarkin in A New Hope may not have any special powers related to the Force, but his actions leave a far greater impact. His defining act is to use the Death Star's superlaser to disintegrate an entire planet, killing billions of people with the flip of a switch. The morality (or lack thereof) of his actions means nothing; Tarkin is willing to do whatever it takes to quash any semblance of rebellion against the Empire's regime. The Galactic Empire's military all wear uniforms that evoke the Nazis, but Tarkin goes above and beyond to embody both the scope of their evil and their justifications for it. It is for those reasons that a single normal man can stand alongside Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine as one of the most iconic villains in sci-fi movie history.
  • The prequel trilogy has more of this than you would expect on closer inspection. Namely the Senate was intentionally meant according by anti-war advocate Lucas to reflect real world US politics and the horror which can come from it. Anakin’s line to Obi-Wan in Revenge of the Sith, “You’re either with me or against me” is lifted almost directly from George W. Bush’s similar phrase during the War on Terror. Even the fear mongering of the aforementioned Palpatine with the volatile Anakin soon supporting his tyrannical rhetoric wholeheartedly, is hauntingly similar to the many cases of corrupt leaders and politicians taking advantage of susceptible masses for their own benefit, especially in the US.
  • One of the reasons why a percentage of fans find Anakin and Padame and Kylo and Rey’s relationships rather disturbing is how closely they mirror real world couples where the boyfriend or husband is unhealthily possessive of their female partner. Anakin and Kylo of course have sympathetic traits but their entitlement towards Padame and Rey along with Crazy Jealous Guy behaviour with Anakin outright choking Padame when he believes she’s betrayed him; is disturbingly Truth in Television.
  • It’s for this reason Rogue One is often considered one of, if not the bleakest Star Wars film. While The Empire Strikes Back and Revenge of the Sith have their darker material at least balanced out by the larger than life Space Opera elements, Rogue One by contrast is much closer to a War Film. It features no dashing rogues, snarky princesses or cool space wizards on the good guys’s side, the cast are a guerrilla force whom are surviving by the skin of their teeth throughout the film. Until the climax where all of them are killed, simply in order to get a single piece of intel to their allies. The film does a very good job showing how undignified and unpleasant war actually is, with the deaths of the heroes being just a minor factor in a larger conflict. Something that is very true to reality. The most haunting scene is probably Jyn and Cassian on the beach hugging each other just as they are about to be atomised by the Death Star — which is disturbingly close to people getting caught in a nuclear blast wave.
• While the payoff of the "Boys Do Get Bruised" story in Tales from the Hood is totally fantastical, the horror comes from the brutality of the abusive father (and to some extent the shock of David Alan Grier really Playing Against Type).
• This trope is what separated The Terminator from other Slasher Movies of its time. Unlike the incredibly unlikely idea of a masked, supernatural knife-wielding stalker chasing a bunch of idiot kids around a small suburban neighborhood or isolated forest, the titular killer is deceptively "normal"-looking, is chasing his prey through one of the most populous cities in the world, will use any weapon or means available to do so, is capable of outsmarting or outwitting anyone trying to stop it, and last... but not least... is built upon a highly plausible fear about artificial intelligence.
  • The "nuclear nightmare" scene in the second movie is one of the scariest scenes in the entire franchise, as it's something that could happen any day without any Killer Robot or evil AIs being required. It's become even worse in the post 9/11 world, as some experts have suggested it's not only possible, but likely that a nuclear terrorist attack will occur in our lifetime.
  • Something else that's become downright prescient of the film is that it centers around a dark future where the military recklessly automated national defense. Although at the time the idea that the military and government would "hand over the keys" to an AI was considered a fantastic possibility, the use (and abuse) of AI and robotics technology—such as the widespread proliferation of militarized drones and algorithmic facial recognition technology—is becoming a very real concern for human rights organizations and world governments, the later of which are at times all too willing to jump to adopting them despite serious flaws.
  • In Terminator 2, the T-1000 takes the default guise of a police officer, and this actually allows him to do things and go places that the T-800 couldn't go from the first film. In the first film, the T-800 violently stormed the police station where Sarah and Kyle were after the guards turned him away; in T2, the T-1000 simply walks into the prison where Sarah is held and is eventually allowed access, even though it's after-hours. This paranoia resonates even more today thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement raising greater awareness of Police Brutality during The New '10s and The New '20s. As director/writer James Cameron put it:
    Cameron: "The Terminator films are not really about the human race getting killed off by future machines. They're about us losing touch with our own humanity and becoming machines, which allows us to kill and brutalize each other. Cops think of all non-cops as less than they are, stupid, weak, and evil. They dehumanize the people they are sworn to protect and desensitize themselves in order to do that job."
• Part of what makes The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) so well-known is that the events of the film are very much depicted as something that can very well happen in real life as much like the main characters in the film, there are many cases of people finding themselves in the crosshairs of some of the deepest and darkest parts of humanity just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
• Threads is a 1984 docudrama about the then-very-real possibility of nuclear war breaking out and causing The End of the World as We Know It. It depicts all the ways the United Kingdom would be vulnerable to the collapse of civilization, with the country almost literally being blown back to medieval times due to a number of factors.
• While most of the scares from Trick 'r Treat come from supernatural sources, the events surrounding the School Bus Massacre stand out as particularly chilling because of this trope. A group of mentally disabled kids — being raised in a time before whatever they were afflicted with would be more widely recognized, if not accepted — were treated with scorn by their parents, who eventually paid a man to kill them all. It's made even more painful because one of the kids realizes something's up and tries to save everyone, but accidentally just does the man's job for him.
• The basic idea of The Truman Show is that the titular character is being continually stalked and monitored by a group of people who hide behind screens. It's even more unnerving in a world filled with amateur surveillance and social media.
• Unbreakable:
  • The film has loads of this, as it manages to make the idea of having superpowers and going out to fight crime, the most terrifying prospect ever. In particular the station scene where David by touch sees people’s misdeeds highlights the fact there’s crime and perpetrators literally everywhere and even with great strength and toughness David cannot hope to protect and save everyone — especially since some of the worst offenders are so seemingly innocuous that bringing them up on their crimes would only backfire on David. Elijah’s words of warning before David goes out to save people sums this up perfectly.
  Go to where people are. You won't have to look very long. It's all right to be afraid, David... because this part won't be like a comic book. Real life doesn't fit into little boxes that were drawn for it.
  • David’s Survivor Guilt is portrayed extremely realistically despite the reasons for his survival being atypical and superhuman. He’s wracked with self-hatred and emotional fragility for most of the movie, something entirely common for survivors of tragic accidents.
• While The Wizard of Oz is no stranger to traumatizing horrors from The Wicked Witch of the West to the flying monkeys, the most realistic terror comes at the very beginning of the film. Dorothy falls into the pigpen and is absolutely scared for her life. If given the chance? A pig, never mind a whole pen full of pigs, will eat a human being by actively trying to knock them out, or even down to their level. It’s no wonder everyone was in a hurry to get her out of there!
  • There's also the fact that, before the fantastical stuff with the tornado happens? Compared to most other film media even half a century afterwards? It behaves much more accurately to a real tornado, adding to the already terrifyingly good special effects. This is made even worse if you don't live in an area where tornadoes are common; it might seem positively alien to you.

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