Hollywood is no stranger to bringing some of the world’s most spooky and spine-tingling urban legends to the big screen, instilling fear in viewers. Fans of these chilling tales and folklore favorites have flocked to see the stories brought to life in the cinema, with some of the most renowned pictures delving into the fright generating narratives and elements. From vengeful spirits wreaking havoc on the living like in the great Black horror movie Candyman and the scary J-horror classic Ringu to violent reptiles dwelling in sewers in the ‘80s cult classic Alligator, there have been countless unforgettable films that depict some seriously scary urban legends.
1999’s supernatural horror staple The Blair Witch Project famously featured a fictional local legend that inspired three aspiring filmmakers to go into the woods and investigate, never to be seen again. The unsettling 1979 psychological horror picture When a Stranger Calls put babysitters across the country on edge with its all-too-real depictions of an intruder hiding in the house, bringing the popular modern folklore “the babysitter and the man upstairs” frighteningly to life. These are some of the best urban legend movies.
9 The Curse of La Llorona
Inspired by the spine-chilling Mexican folklore La Llorona, the 2019 supernatural horror film The Curse of La Llorona brings the Latin American tale to the big screen and tells the story of a mother in 1970s Los Angeles who fights to protect her young children against the titular vengeful ghost that wants to lure and steal them away.
La Llorona is also known as “The Weeping Woman” and the legend claims that the malevolent spirit was once a mother who now spends eternity wandering waterfront areas in search of her own children whom she drowned. The creepy picture is the sixth installment in The Conjuring Universe and delves deeper into the history surrounding the Mexican lore while featuring a determined mother’s efforts to save her children from the terrifying specter.
8 The Hitcher
The 1986 road thriller The Hitcher follows the young motorist Jim Halsey as he is terrorized by a menacing hitchhiker who ruthlessly stalks him on the Texas highways, with the murderous stranger determined to see the man dead. Starring C. Thomas Howell and Rutger Hauer, the adrenaline-pumping film draws upon the fear and potential threat of picking up a hitchhiker on the side of the road, with the dark figure harboring nefarious true intentions.
Writer Eric Red drew inspiration for the plot from The Doors song “Riders on the Storm”, with its lyrics describing a killer on the road during a storm. Though initially met with a lukewarm response by both critics and audiences, in recent years The Hitcher has gone on to become a cult classic that had led to a direct sequel in 2003 and a remake in 2007.
7 When a Stranger Calls
Derived from the classic urban legend “the babysitter and the man upstairs,” the 1979 psychological horror flick When a Stranger Calls depicts the deranged acts of a demented killer as he savagely targets a babysitter; after the murderer is apprehended and sent to a psychiatric facility, he escapes seven years later and sets out to finish what he started.
The opening of the freaky film is widely regarded as one of the scariest movie openings of all time, as its first 20 minutes features the young woman horrendously discovering via the police that an intruder is inside the home. When a Stranger Calls had a profound impact on the face of horror movies, with Wes Craven’s 1996 slasher Scream paying homage to the picture with its spine-tingling introduction. A made-for-TV sequel was released in 1993 and a direct remake premiered in 2006.
6 Urban Legend
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Touting an impressive cast of then up-and-coming Hollywood stars like Jared Leto, Tara Reid and Joshua Jackson, the 1998 slasher Urban Legend follows a grisly series of murders on a prestigious New England university campus that all seem to be influenced by notorious urban legends. Many chilling tales are depicted in the gory film, most notably Bloody Mary, The Hookman, and The Killer in the Backseat, with the targeted characters dying in the disturbing manners reflected in the spooky tales.
Despite being a success at the box office, Urban Legend didn’t win critics over but nonetheless garnered appreciation by both folklore scholars and the cinema for revitalizing the urban legend genre on the silver screen. A modern day adaptation is currently in the works, with Colin Minihan set to write and direct the digital-age remake.
5 The Mothman Prophecies
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The great Richard Gere and Laura Linney headline the 2002 supernatural-mystery film The Mothman Prophecies, which chronicles reporter John Klein’s attempts to investigate and research the legend of the eponymous humanoid creature that was spotted in the 1960s in Point Pleasant, West Virginia. Klein’s obsession to locate the folklore being is fueled by the death of his wife two years prior, after he discovers her notebook with drawings of the moth-like creature within its pages. Based on the experiences and recollections of John Keel, the author of the titular novel, The Mothman Prophecies director Mark Pellington set out to provide a less-literal interpretation of the book and instead wanted to explore psychological drama in UFO witnesses. A recent documentary called The Mothman Legacy chronicles the actual events in a spooky way.
4 The Blair Witch Project
One of the most successful independent films of all time is the 1999 supernatural horror staple The Blair Witch Project, which focuses on a group of fictional filmmaker students who set out to create a documentary on the eerie local legend known as the Blair Witch. When the three disappear in the ominous woods of the Black Hills near Burkittsville, Maryland, the trio’s equipment and “recovered footage” are found one year later and presented for audiences to witness.
Directors Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez wanted to create a horror picture that blended paranormal phenomena with documentaries, coming up with the urban legend in 1993 and writing a 35-page screenplay that featured improvised dialogue. The Blair Witch Project inspired the found-footage concept that would go on to become popular in cinema, with movies like Paranormal Activity, Cloverfield, and V/H/S adopting the style.
3 Alligator
The 1980 independent horror flick Alligator focuses on the courageous efforts of Chicago Detective David Madison and reptile expert Marisa Kendall as they set out to locate a massive deadly sewer alligator that is attacking the local residents after having been previously flushed down the toilet years earlier. The movie draws inspiration from the unsettling urban legend in which the reptiles dwell within the sewers of cities, wreaking havoc when they ultimately escape and putting citizens on edge. Alligator was lauded by critics for its satirizing of genre clichés, with Alternate Ending writing in their retrospective review, “Funny and self-aware about the ridiculous contrivances of its genre, and it’s also straight-faced in treating the threat of that impossible crocodilian as a real problem.”
2 Ringu
Based on the Koji Suzuki novel of the same name, the 1998 Japanese psychological supernatural horror film Ringu (also known as The Ring) follows journalist Reiko Asakawa as she battles against time to investigate the chilling mystery surrounding an allegedly cursed videotape that viciously kills anyone who watches it seven days later. The film’s main antagonist Sadako Yamamura draws upon the Yūrei archetype, a spirit in Japanese folklore that is believed to be barred from a peaceful afterlife; it also utilizes a chain letter curse in which anyone who views the spooky videotape will meet untimely ends. Ringu had a major influence on Western cinema, sparking a global interest in Japanese horror and inspiring the successful 2002 remake, The Ring.
1 Candyman
In the 1992 gothic supernatural classic Candyman, Chicago graduate student Helen Lyle begins writing her thesis on urban legends and folklore, prompting the young woman to investigate the legend of the “Candyman,” a malevolent spirit that kills anyone who says his name five times in front of a mirror. The titular antagonist was heinously murdered due to a forbidden 19th-century interracial love affair, and he vengefully returns to murder anyone who dares utter his name or questions his existence, driven by a need to preserve his legacy.
The horror flick is based on the Clive Barker short story “The Forbidden”, using the Bloody Mary legend as a basis for calling upon the angry, revenge-seeking spirit. Candyman is widely considered to be a contemporary classic of horror cinema, and was both a critical and commercial success; a direct sequel to the picture was released in 2021.