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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. This overwhelming
00:11sense of helplessness and isolation then is of course at the centre of dozens of outdoor horror
00:17films, and many you may be surprised to hear are actually based on real events, even if the
00:23filmmakers themselves may have taken some, let's call it artistic liberty, with the events that
00:29inspired them. With that in mind, I'm Josh from WhatCulture.com and these are 10 horrific
00:33wilderness horror movies based on true events. Number 10, Blackwater. From Lake Placid, Crawl and
00:40that harrowing scene from X, crocodiles are no stranger to the horror genre. Although the reptiles
00:45and events in those films are completely fictional however, those in indie Aussie flick Blackwater
00:50were not entirely. This flick sees Grace embark on a holiday alongside her husband and sister,
00:57and while the trip gets off to a good start, it takes a disastrous turn when they go on a fishing
01:02trip deep into a mangrove swamp. Their boat is attacked by a crocodile killing their guide
01:07and leaving the holidaymakers stranded on a nearby tree. With the boat just out of reach and the croc
01:14unrelenting in its hunt, Blackwater is an effective and fun horror. Alongside using real crocodiles in the
01:21production itself though, the filmmakers also added an extra sense of realism to the premise by basing it on
01:27real accounts of crocodile attacks in Australia. Hell, the main premise for the film drew upon the
01:32nightmarish ordeal that two teenagers faced on the 21st of December 2003, who, after a crocodile
01:38killed their friend, found themselves trapped in a tree overnight while the animals circled below.
01:44Thankfully, in real life, the teenagers were eventually rescued.
01:48Number 9, Backcountry. If you thought the bear scene from The Revenant was intense,
01:52then you haven't experienced the savagery of Adam McDonald's backcountry. The film sees couple
01:58Jen and Alex travel to Ontario for what they hope will be a romantic camping trip to patch up their
02:03relationship. Unfortunately for them though, there's an uninvited third guest in the form of a black
02:08bear who's about to turn their weekend away into a living nightmare. The visceral nature of the
02:14grizzly climax, that's not a pun by the way because it's a black bear, not a grizzly, coupled with the
02:18various other stressors the couple face in the wilderness before the bear arrives, is enough to
02:23put anyone off camping for life. However, the true events it's based on are just as unnerving.
02:30Though getting the idea for the film while camping with his wife, McDonald has spoken about drawing
02:35upon details of one true story in which a husband and wife were attacked by a bear in Ontario's
02:40Missonibie Lake Provincial Park in 2005. While the husband was able to fight the bear off with a knife
02:46before it dragged his wife away, the woman unfortunately succumbed to her wounds before
02:51she could reach a hospital. 8. 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 makes it
03:03abundantly clear, that mystery is the Dyatlov Pass Incident itself, a strange tragedy that saw a group of
03:10Soviet hikers die in mysterious circumstances in the Ural Mountains. While nobody has conclusively
03:17pieced together the exact cause, the details of the case allowed the public's imagination to run wild,
03:23with mutilated bodies seemingly pointing towards something more sinister than a natural disaster.
03:29In Devil's Pass though, the whole thing is explained away by monsters, secret experiments,
03:34and even a wormhole. While this movie of course doesn't even attempt to try and provide a serious
03:40answer to, or serious recreation of, the original mystery like some of the other movies on this list,
03:46it still makes for an interesting watch. Even if that interest is simply regarding the ethics of
03:51spinning a larger than life folktale out of a real life natural disaster that killed 9 people.
03:587. Open Water
03:59Ever since Jaws hit our screens in 1975, Hollywood has continued to give us reasons to be afraid of the
04:06ocean, and the toothy terrors that lurk beneath its surface. None of these films however have been as
04:12bleak as open water, which is made more unnerving thanks to the true events that it's based on. That story
04:18is of American couple Tom and Eileen Lonegan, who were accidentally left behind on a scuba diving trip in
04:23January 1998. It took two days for anyone to realize they were missing, but after a three-day
04:29search, only some of their equipment was found washed ashore. Nobody knows exactly what happened
04:34to them, though the theory is they succumbed to exhaustion and drowned, or were attacked by sharks.
04:40In this film, when 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
04:51ocean surrounding them, and sharks menacingly circling their increasingly wary bodies,
04:56the film emphasizes that there's nothing the couple can do to actually save themselves,
05:01all it 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, one of them is
05:31abducted by a drug cartel to be used as a human sacrifice. While the victim's friends join forces
05:37with the local police officer to rescue him, the student is left to endure grisly torture from
05:42his kidnappers. Now, as outlandish as the premise sounds, the events in Borderlands are actually
05:48inspired by the real kidnapping of American college student Mark Kilroy in 1989 by notorious serial
05:55killer and cult leader Adolfo de Giswis Constanzo. Constanzo would torture and kill his victims at a
06:01remote ranch in the Mexican desert, believing his black magic would make the drug smugglers invisible.
06:07Ironically though, it was a cultist who believed he was invisible that led the authorities straight to
06:12the ranch. Number 5, The Widow. In 1999, the Blair Witch Project succeeded in making an entire
06:19generation scared of going into the woods. The three students' ordeal in Black Hills Forest is one of the
06:25most effective examples of the found footage genre to date, but despite everything about the marketing
06:31telling us otherwise, the film itself was a complete work of fiction. Russian horror, The Widow, likewise
06:37takes audiences deep within the heart of a spooky forest, in this case near St. Petersburg, as we
06:42follow a group of volunteer rescuers searching for a missing boy. Unfortunately for them though,
06:47this forest is also said to be the home of a malevolent witch, and when their search leads
06:53them to finding a woman lying naked in the wilderness, all hell breaks loose in this atmospheric
06:58horror. Now, the film itself claims to be based on the eerie tale of volunteer rescuers who disappeared
07:03in 2017, and while it's doubtful they really did fall prey to a witch, people have been reported to have
07:10gone missing in this area over the last 30 years. Most of these people are said to have vanished
07:15without a trace, and the few that were found have all been found naked. Number four, The Hills of
07:21Ice. Wes Craven's 1977 exploitation horror classic, The Hills of Ice, sees the Carter family come face
07:28to face with a family of mutated cannibals when their car crashes in the middle of the desert. It's a
07:33grungy and violent slice of 70s horror action, but you might not be aware that it is based on true
07:38historical events, though there is some debate about the accuracy of these tales. Craven openly
07:44spoke about his inspirations behind the film being the stories of 18th century Scottish cannibal
07:49Sonny Bean and his family. Living in caves across the coast, Bean alongside his wife ambushed and
07:55devoured travellers who passed by on nearby roads. It was only when one of their potential victims
08:00escaped and informed King James VI of what happened that a search party was dispatched to capture the
08:06family who were consequently brutally executed for their crimes. According to Craven, his film was
08:12to act as a modernized version of this gruesome tale, in which his goal was to demonstrate that
08:17the civilized family was just as barbarous as the cannibals themselves. Moreover, the 2006 remake
08:24likewise drew upon real-life horror stories of nuclear testing, creating the cannibals using photos of
08:29injuries from Chernobyl and Hiroshima. Number three, The Sacrament. From the likes of Kill List,
08:35Midsommar and The Endless, there's no shortage of horror movies about nefarious cults. However,
08:40one such film that draws straight from the real world is Ty West's 2013 chiller, The Sacrament.
08:46This incredibly underrated, found-footage flick follows a small group of journalists who travel
08:52to the isolated rural compound of Eden Parish, after learning that one of the team member's sisters
08:57has joined the cult. They intend to make a documentary about the organization and its charismatic
09:02religious leader known only as Father. Despite the cultists being warm and welcoming to the
09:08journalists initially, though, events take a sinister turn when a group of dissidents begin
09:12to rebel against the cult and the journalists are stopped from leaving. With tensions running high,
09:18the film culminates in a shocking sequence in which the cult leader encourages his devout members to
09:22commit suicide by ingesting poison. Now, while the film doesn't explicitly claim to be based on a true
09:28story, the cinematic events bear a striking resemblance to the infamous 1978 Jonestown massacre
09:34in which over 900 people were killed after drinking poison. West himself has been open in interviews
09:40about Jonestown acting as the inspiration behind his own creepy cult horror as well, so this one still
09:45counts. Number 2, Alive. On the 13th of October 1972, a Uruguayan rugby team were flying to Chile with
09:53their friends and family for a match. However, disaster tragically struck while their plane was
09:58over the 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, they had to resort to
10:15the unthinkable and eat the frozen bodies of their loved ones while they waited 10 long weeks for rescue
10:21to arrive. This gripping true story was brought to the big screen in Alive. While not the first film
10:27based on this tale of survival and desperation, this retelling stands out thanks to outstanding
10:32performances from its ensemble cast and jaw-dropping special effects. Although Alive is presented as more
10:38of a taut thriller than all-out horror, the film nevertheless has its fair share of terrifying moments.
10:44Number 1, Wolf Creek. The Australian Outback is one of the worst places to become lost. Surrounded by
10:50nothing but hundreds of miles of untamed wilderness, any help is far out of reach. And this is precisely
10:56why it makes the perfect setting for a horror film, with one of the most effective of those being
11:01Wolf Creek. When a group of backpackers becomes stranded in the wilderness, they're rescued by
11:06a stranger called Mick. He offers to help fix their car and send them on their way, however he instead
11:11drugs the group before mercilessly torturing them. Despite this intensely violent affair beginning with a
11:17title card claiming to be based on a true story, the events depicted here are fictional. Rather,
11:22Wolf Creek finds its connection to real-world horrors through the grisly inspirations behind its
11:27cold-blooded antagonist. According to filmmaker Greg McLean, the inspiration for Mick came from
11:33real-life serial killer Ivan Millet. Also known as the Backpack Killer, Millet killed seven hitchhikers
11:39around Belangloaf State Forest north of Sydney between 1989 and 1992. Though knowing Mick Taylor
11:46himself never existed will be a sigh of relief after seeing his diabolical actions, discovering he
11:51does have a real-life counterpart makes the character that bit more sinister.
11:56So that's our list, I want to know what you guys think down in the comments below, what do you
11:59think of these movies and did you know the true stories they were based on? Let me know and while
12:04you're down there could you please give us a like, share, subscribe and head over to WhatCultureHorror
12:07for more lists like this on the regular. Even if you don't, I've been Josh, thanks so much for
12:11watching and I'll see you soon.
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