The Possession, a film produced by horror master Sam Raimi and claiming to have basis in fact, comes out this Friday. It touts an interesting premise, and an actually unnerving trailer. There are, for some strange reason, a myriad of exorcism or possession type films that come out every single year. It's difficult to think of any that were actually good, save for maybe the original The Exorcist. That was a little bit different, however, as no one had ever seen anything like it before. Now, we get it all the time. Of course, the concept of demonic possession is a wonderfully creepy idea and the fact that it could be real does a number on a lot of people. The problem is, even though nearly all of these films pretend to be based on a true story, they never get you to actually believe in what you're watching.There's the trailer for The Possession, and it works. Well, I'd say. It both creeped me out when I saw it on the big screen and made me curious to see the whole story. That's an accomplishment of its own for a PG-13 horror film these days. But there was one thing about the trailer that didn't sit well with me. There was something that clearly wasn't supposed to be there: the phrase "Based on a True Story." As interesting as the film looks, I really doubted any of that happened. So, I decided to look it up for myself.
"At the time when I bought the cabinet, I owned a small furniture refinishing business. I took the cabinet to my store and put it in my basement workshop where I intended to refinish it and give it as a gift to my mother. I didn't think anything more about it. I opened my shop for the day and went to run some errands leaving the young woman who did sales for me in charge.
"After about a half-hour, I got a call on my cell phone. The call was from my salesperson. She was absolutely hysterical and screaming that someone was in my workshop breaking glass and swearing. Furthermore, the intruder had locked the iron security gates and the emergency exit and she couldn't get out. As I told her to call the police, my cell phone battery went dead.
"I hit speeds of 100 mph to get back to the shop. When I arrived, I found the gates locked. I went inside and found my employee on the floor in a corner of my office sobbing hysterically. I ran to the basement and went downstairs. At the bottom of the stairs, I was hit by an overpowering unmistakable odor of cat urine (there had never been any animals kept or found in my shop). The lights didn't work. As I investigated, I found that the reason the lights didn't work also explained the sounds of glass breaking. All of the light bulbs in the basement were broken. All nine incandescent bulbs had been broken in their sockets, and 10 four-foot fluorescent tubes were lying shattered on the floor. I did not find an intruder, however. I should also add that there was only one entrance to the basement. It would have been impossible for anyone to leave without meeting me head-on.
"I went back up to speak with my salesperson, but she had left. She never returned to work (after having been with me for two years). She refuses to discuss the incident to this day. I never thought of relating the events of that day to anything having to do with the cabinet.
"Then, things got worse."There are more passages describing recurring nightmares and various other strange events including shadows traveling around the man's house. It's all quite unnerving if it's real, which is exactly what it is supposed to accomplish. If I were to read the allegedly true account of this man in his book, I'd no doubt be scared or laugh it off. One or the other. The movie, however? There's no similarities at all. So, why even bother saying it's based on a true story?
I ask you, the audience, are you ever more frightened of an insane horror movie because it claims to have some basis in fact? The most famous example of this is, of course, The Exorcist. It's an unnerving film for a lot of reasons, and people were positively terrified that any amount of it could be real. The story of that film, based on a novel, follows a young girl who begins to act strange as she has been allegedly possessed by the devil. Subsequently, an agnostic mother calls upon two priests to come try to cure her daughter. Things get seriously insane over the course of the film, however, and it's hard to believe it was real.
So let's look at the "true story" that inspired The Exorcist. First off, it was a boy in real life, not a girl. A lot of the novel was inspired by the diary of a Reverend involved in the exorcism. The accounts say things began when a picture of Jesus began to shake in the house where the boy lived, then strange scratching noises continued to perplex the family, as well as sounds of squeaking shoes at night. Vaguely around this time, the boy's Aunt Tillie had introduced him to a Ouija Board, and soon after she died. During the exorcism, there was some evidence to suggest her death was connected. The boy's bed began to shake and things in the room would move on their own.
The family called upon two Lutheran ministers to come see the boy. Psychologists and parapsychologists were continually running tests on the boy but could find nothing wrong with him. Scratches and bruises began to appear on the boy, and the scratches even manifested in the form of letters, spelling words. He was moved to a hospital where a priest was brought in to bless the boy. During this, the boy kicked, yelled at, and even cut the priest with a loose spring from his bed. The priest went on to have a nervous breakdown.
Eventually, a legitimate exorcism happened, during which the boy became so violent that they had to hold him down. He spoke in different languages and vomited on the priests. After many exorcisms, he claimed that the demon inside him had been expunged by Michael the Archangel and slowly things returned to normal.
If you ask me, the true story here is much scarier than the movie. There are quite a number of other films where I think the reality is much scarier than what ended up on the screen. Another famous example is Psycho, a film that terrified audiences like no other. In truth, it's a wonderfully crafted film that keeps you on your toes throughout its entire runtime. What was the real story?
Ironically, the real story behind Psycho is more along the lines of The Silence of the Lambs, a horror film that didn't claim to be based on a true story. It was similar to the film, a man was killing people in his hotel, as well as digging up corpses that reminded him of his dead mother. He would skin the bodies and make lamp shades as well as a woman-suit out of them, so he could be a woman himself. He ended up in a mental institution for life. Honestly, I like Psycho just fine as it is, and this was very much what Jame Gumb of The Silence of the Lambs was doing.
This brings us back to my original point, however. With the way horror movies love to throw around the phrase "Based on a True Story," I feel like The Silence of the Lambs has just as much of a right to say this as The Exorcist. Both originally come from stories that share some basic similarities in real life, but are heavily adapted for the big screen. This has been used for films like The Serpent and the Rainbow, The Hills Have Eyes, The Mothman Prophecies, and An American Haunting to name a few, but did it really scare audiences any more than if they'd just focused on telling a compelling scary story?
On the other end of the spectrum, the true accounts of these horror stories is often much creepier. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if the Dibbuk Box book turns out to be a much scarier experience than seeing The Possession. Truth can be stranger than fiction, but I like there to be a legitimate distinction. I'll be very surprised the one day an exorcism movie comes out that's actually related to any form of reality, however.
Pleasantly surprised, that is.
It's quite impressive.
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