Killer LegendsMovies like Killer Legends
- Key Features:
- Urban legends, Documentary, True crime, Horror, Investigation, Mythology, Folklore, Cultural observation, Fear, Mystery
- Tone:
- serious, suspense-driven, gritty
- Target Audience:
- Horror fans, True crime enthusiasts, Documentary viewers, Mythology buffs
- Emotional Arc:
- Intrigue → Unease → Fear
Killer Legends

Delving into our collective nightmares, this horror-documentary investigates the origins of our most terrifying urban legends and the true stories that may have inspired them.
Killer Legends
Realizing the urban legend of their youth has actually come true, two filmmakers delve into the mystery surrounding five missing children and the real-life boogeyman linked to their disappearances.

A college campus is plagued by a vicious serial killer murdering students in ways that correspond to various urban legends.

A feature-length anthology film. They are known as myths, lore, and folktales. Created to give logic to mankind’s darkest fears, these stories laid the foundation for what we now know as the horror genre.

A journalist goes in search of the truth after a series of brutal deaths and disappearances lead back to an urban legend about a serial killing clown that has stalked the woods of Century Park for over a hundred years.

A Chicago artist's sanity starts to unravel, unleashing a terrifying wave of violence when he begins to explore the macabre history of the Candyman.

Folklore professor Albert Wilmarth investigates legends of strange creatures in the most remote hills of Vermont. His enquiry reveals a terrifying glimpse of the truth that lurks behind the legends.

The making of a horror movie takes on a terrifying reality for students at the most prestigious film school in the country. At Alpine University, someone is determined to win the best film award at any cost - even if it means eliminating the competition. No one is safe and everyone is a suspect.

After learning of an urban legend in which a demented serial killer named SMILEY can be summoned through the internet, mentally fragile Ashley must decide whether she is losing her mind or becoming Smiley's next victim.

A reporter unearths an urban legend about a home being constructed from rooms where horrific tragedies have occurred.

An old monastery in a small, remote village in Suffolk, England has been haunted by a local legend for centuries. Left in ruin and shrouded by the mystery of a dark spirit that wills young couples to suicide, the place has been avoided for years, marked only by a twisted, ancient tree with an ominous hollow said to be the home of great evil. When four friends on holiday explore the local folklore, they realize that belief in a myth can quickly materialize into reality, bringing horror to life for the town.

Four friends head into the Australian Outback to investigate an urban legend about Charlie's Farm, where legend has it that an angry mob killed a sadistic family, and encounter a demented giant with a big thirst for revenge.

Julia becomes worried about her boyfriend Holt when he explores the dark urban legend of a mysterious videotape said to kill the watcher seven days after viewing. She sacrifices herself to save her boyfriend and in doing so makes a horrifying discovery: there is a "movie within the movie" that no one has ever seen before.

For generations, it was an urban legend that lived in the nightmares of children. Now, the season to rejuvenate the tale will revive a town's darkest fears. With the Scarecrow Festival on the horizon, school teacher Aaron Harris is doling out punishment for six students serving detention. Their task: help Aaron's girlfriend Amanda fix her family farm before it's sold. But the cornfields circling the farm come with a legend and Tyler takes macabre delight in recounting the tale: It never sleeps, it never dies, it can't be stopped, hear their cries.

A fear-obsessed freelance cameraman investigates an urban legend involving mysterious spirits that haunt the subways of Tokyo.

Professor Philip Goodman devotes his life to exposing phony psychics and fraudulent supernatural shenanigans. His skepticism soon gets put to the test when he receives news of three chilling and inexplicable cases -- disturbing visions in an abandoned asylum, a car accident deep in the woods and the spirit of an unborn child. Even scarier -- each of the macabre stories seems to have a sinister connection to the professor's own life.

Rachel Keller is a journalist investigating a videotape that may have killed four teenagers. There is an urban legend about this tape: the viewer will die seven days after watching it. Rachel tracks down the video... and watches it. Now she has just seven days to unravel the mystery of the Ring so she can save herself and her son.

Over 20 years after his death, local legend and benefactor Jimmy Bones returns as a ghost to get revenge on those who killed him and restore his neighborhood.

The Candyman, a murderous soul with a hook for a hand, is accidentally summoned to reality by a skeptic grad student researching the monster's myth.

A recent college graduate and her estranged high school friends return to Lantern's Lane, the location of an evil urban legend and must fight to survive the night.

A mysterious video has been linked to a number of deaths, and when an inquisitive journalist finds the tape and views it herself, she sets in motion a chain of events that puts her own life in danger.

When Lonnie Franklin Jr. was arrested in South Central Los Angeles in 2010 as the suspected murderer of a string of young black women, police hailed it as the culmination of 20 years of investigations. Four years later documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield took his camera to the alleged killer’s neighborhood for another view.

Koji Shiraishi interviews the survivors of an indiscriminate attack at a sightseeing resort and starts investigating the strange events that have been happening to them.

A group of three youtubers who call themselves experts in supernatural beings decide to win public recognition once and for all. For this they plot a plan to capture a being known to all. It is the spirit of a light-haired woman who died in an unknown way and who haunts the bathrooms of schools across the country: the blonde in the bathroom.

Two young couples backpacking through Ireland discover that one of Ireland's most famous legends is a terrifying reality.

In this horrifyingly modern fairytale lurks an online Boogeyman and two 12-year-old girls who would kill for him. The entrance to the internet quickly leads to its darkest basement. How responsible are our children for what they find there?

On the surface it's believed to be another urban legend - a supernatural being from the afterlife is violently killing anyone who cheats on their significant other in the small college town of Silvercreek, Pennsylvania. But the town's unusually high suicide rate is finally convincing both locals and college students that everything is not as it seems. When Maeve - a female college student - sleeps with Charlie, the married man of the host family she is staying with, both sense the deadly curse is closing in on them. Unable to get anyone to believe them, Maeve and Charlie seek out a local history student to help find answers and figure out a way to defend themselves. It all comes undone, however, as several people are horrifically killed by the savage being - one-by-one at a rapid pace. Eventually, Maeve, Charlie and the few survivors band together in an attempt to defeat the monster once and for all.

When four bodies are discovered among the industrial decay and urban grime of New York City, brash young detective Mike Reilly teams with ambitious Department of Health researcher Terry Huston to uncover the cause behind their violent and inexplicable deaths. The only common factor shared by the victims? Each died exactly 48 hours after logging onto a website called feardotcom.

Local teens have long commemorated the death of 'Mary Hatchet' - a girl who took an ax and killed her family in the 1970s - with the aptly named Blood Night. But things never got truly bloody until Mary's ghost decided to make an appearance. Dead bodies are piling up, and Mary seems to be calling the shots. But there are secrets about her past that have yet to be uncovered.

A private investigator is forced into a dangerous alliance with a killer in order to uncover a quiet town’s grisly criminal underbelly and clear the name of her mentor, who is implicated in the crimes.

In a small town in Massachusetts, four high school girls perform a ritual in an attempt to debunk the lore of Slender Man. When one of the girls goes mysteriously missing, they begin to suspect that she is, in fact, his latest victim.

Unveiled through a made-for-TV documentary, five chilling tales of found footage horror emerge to take viewers on a gore-filled journey through the grim underbelly of the forgotten 1980s.

As the Day of the Dead celebration approaches the barrio of East Los Angeles, Caroline is challenged to control the horrifying legend of her ancestor, the "Candyman".

A college class project on creation and destruction of modern myth, turns terrifying when a trio of young people come to realize the urban legends surrounding the famed Buckout Road may, in fact, be REAL.

On a prom-night dare, a trio of high school friends chant an incantation, unleashing an evil spirit from the past with deadly consequences.

A group of social outcasts, stuck in weekend detention, find themselves stalked by their school’s urban legend who is set on killing bad students.

When one of their own loses his wife and daughter at the hands of a serial killer, a team of ghost hunters is determined to capture the spirits of the loved ones so their spirits can finally rest in peace. But as the team goes deeper into the house, the ghosts become more hostile, and the group discovers the true secrets of the house and its murderer.

After inadvertently unleashing an ancient curse, a documentary crew of American exchange students is haunted by angry spirits in Japan's infamous Suicide Forest.

A web-comic artist finds that a series of murders are occurring that have a disturbing resemblance to the images in her work.

Legend holds that 30 years ago, a suburban town was terrorized by the spirit of a woman whose horrid face had been grotesquely disfigured. Roaming the streets wearing a long coat and carrying large scissors, the spirit would approach her young victims and, while removing the mask, ask if she was pretty. The victim’s response would almost always lead to their violent death.

A rash of bizarre murders in New York City seems to point to a group of grotesquely deformed vagrants living in the sewers. A courageous policeman, a photojournalist and his girlfriend, and a nutty bum, who seems to know a lot about the creatures, band together to try and determine what the creatures are and how to stop them.

After the discovery of a mysterious VHS tape, a brutish police SWAT team launches a high-intensity raid on a remote warehouse, only to discover a sinister cult compound whose collection of pre-recorded material uncovers a nightmarish conspiracy.

Four friends on their way to Coachella stop off in Los Angeles to tour true-crime occult sites, only to encounter a mysterious young runaway who puts them on a terrifying path to ultimate horror.

When Derek moves to a new town and discovers a shortcut through the woods to his high school, he learns about a crazy old man who lives near its path: Legend has it that he abducted a group of teenagers years ago. Ignoring the warning, Derek and his friends set out to uncover the dark secret that's buried deep in the woods. But will they survive to tell it?

A New York City cop and an expert criminologist trying to solve a series of grisly deaths in which the victims have seemingly been maimed by feral animals discover a sinister connection between the crimes and an old legend.

A team consisting of a physicist, his wife, a young female psychic, and the only survivor of the previous visit are sent to the notorious Hell House to prove or disprove survival after death. Previous visitors have either been killed or gone mad, and it is up to the team to survive a full week in isolation, and solve the mystery of the Hell House.

Torture chambers, acid vats, greased chutes and gassing rooms were just some of the devices of death designed by the Torture Doctor, H.H. Holmes in his castle of horrors. Follows Holmes' entire life as a criminal mastermind.

Teaming up for the first time for a special episode of a supernatural reality TV show, two rival crews get more then they bargained for when they make physical contact with a ferocious spirit of terrifying power. They must band together before it destroys them all. After 49 killer episodes…this is the true story of what happened on episode 50.

In different parts of Tokyo, four young and seemingly healthy people suddenly die of heart failure at exactly the same moment. Reporter Kazuyuki Asakawa decides to investigate the deaths, and discovers that the four had stayed at a rural inn together just a week earlier. At the inn, he comes across a strange video that ends with a message saying that anyone who watches it will die exactly seven days later. Now the clock is ticking for Asakawa. Can he break the curse in time?

A psychotic executive triggers a journalist's dark side, and they begin to form a strange bond through the internet.

Twenty-five years after a streak of brutal murders shocked the quiet town of Woodsboro, a new killer has donned the Ghostface mask and begins targeting a group of teenagers to resurrect secrets from the town’s deadly past.

In October of 1994 three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland, while shooting a documentary. A year later their footage was found.

A young nurse is kidnapped by a group of violent teens who escape from a mental hospital and take her on the road trip from hell. Pursued by an equally deranged lawman out for revenge, one of the teens is destined for tragedy and horrors that will destroy his mind, moulding him into a monster named Leatherface.

This historical and critical look at slasher films, which includes dozens of clips, begins with Halloween, Friday the 13th, and Prom Night. The films' directors, writers, producers, and special effects creators comment on the films' making and success. During the Reagan years, the films get gorier, budgets get smaller, and their appeal wanes. Then, Nightmare on Elm Street revives the genre. Jump to the late 90s, when Scream brings humor and TV stars into the mix.

On Halloween, a group of friends encounter an extreme haunted house that promises to feed on their darkest fears. The night turns deadly as they come to the horrifying realisation that some nightmares are real.

The early years of young Michael Myers and the events leading up to his fateful Halloween night murder rampage in the quiet town of Haddonfield, Illinois.

A curious group of friends sneak into an abandoned spinach canning factory to film a documentary on the legend of the "Sailor Man," who is said to haunt the factory and local docks.

With a torrid past that haunts him, a movie theatre owner is hired to search for the only existing print of a film so notorious that its single screening caused the viewers to become homicidally insane.

Based on a famous Mexican legend, a group of kids must stop the ghost of a woman whose guilt over the drowning of her own children leads her to abduct youngsters who wander the woods at night.

GHOUL is a supernatural horror film involving the real life story of the Soviet Union's most violent serial killer, Andrei Chikatilo. Three Americans travel to the Ukraine to film a documentary about the cannibalism epidemic that swept through the country during the famine of 1932. After being lured deep into the Ukraine forest for an interview with one of the last known survivors, they quickly find themselves trapped in a supernatural hunting ground.

Three American tourists follow a mysterious map deep into the jungles of Japan searching for an ancient temple. When spirits entrap them, their adventure quickly becomes a horrific nightmare.

A filmmaker discovers a box of video tapes depicting two students' disturbing film project featuring a local horror legend, The Peeping Tom. As he sets out to prove this story is real and release it as a work of his own, he loses himself and the film crew following him into his project.

Madman Marz, an old folklore legend who murdered his family before escaping into the woods, is inadvertently summoned to a campsite to finish the spree he started decades ago.

Thomas Finley has been arrested for the murder of his nineteen-year old sister, Samantha and fifty-two year old, Edgar Lauren, a Professor and paranormal investigator. Police were called to the scene by Thomas himself in the early hours of the morning, finding him inside with his sister's body cradled in his arms. In his statement given in police custody, Thomas claimed that the victims were attacked by a demonic entity of unknown origin. Days later, he committed suicide. It is the opinion of those closely related to the family that a video found at the scene be shown to the public as a final testament to what actually happened inside the Finley home in those final days.

Three ghost-hunting high-schoolers visit the Moore House in Villisca, Iowa—the site of one of America’s most grisly unsolved mass murders. After their private tour is interrupted, the group sneaks back in at night, unaware of the otherworldly terror that awaits them.

The residents of a small town discover that something more sinister than killer wolves is lurking in the backwoods: first the wolves start turning up dead...then people.

While digging into their town's infamous past, a group of high school students unwittingly unlock an even darker secret. Now, an evil spirit has been awakened and will stop at nothing to find his true heir.

A documentary filmmaker turns his lens on an enigmatic conspiracy theorist who claims he's found the entrance to a vast underground city populated entirely by monsters.

A crew from a paranormal reality television show lock themselves in a haunted psychiatric hospital. They search for evidence of paranormal activity as they shoot what ends up becoming their final episode.

Forced to travel to a horror festival with her boyfriend, a young woman begins experiencing premonitions associated with the urban myth of The Creeper. She believes that something supernatural has been summoned — and that she is at the center of it all.

A group of paranormal investigators enter the abandoned home of paedophile and serial killer John Gacy, hoping to find evidence of paranormal activity. Upon entering the house they set-up cameras throughout the abandoned house while going room to room with hand-held cameras, performing séance's and asking for John Gacy to come forward. As the evening progresses it seems the investigators are not prepared for the horror still within the house.

Explores the Spanish origins of the character's story, where he is a tuberculosis patient from Almeria who will do anything to get well, even consuming the blood of the kids he kidnaps in a sack.

Emily and Nate Weaver leave the city for the rural comfort of Nate’s ancestral home in the country. Once there, Emily is plagued by horrifying visions and haunted by the ghosts inhabiting their isolated new home. When Nate’s behavior undergoes a strange and fearful metamorphosis, Emily fears she might be the latest target in a murderous tradition.

A reality TV director copes with a spoiled celebutante and a show gone haywire when a masked killer starts bumping off the crew in this slasher-movie satire.

A documentary about conspiracy theories takes a horrific turn after the filmmakers uncover an ancient and dangerous secret society.

A group of young journalists investigate a cult said to practice human sacrifice, but their ambitious ways may lead them to becoming the cult's next victims.

Forensic experts scan Pompeii’s victims to investigate why they didn’t escape the eruption.

A Group of teenagers test the legend of an immortal witch and get more than they bargained for. It's almost Halloween and six young people, spooked but not undaunted by the folklore surrounding an old haunted house, make their way to the abode of the legendary Wicked, perhaps hoping to provoke the malevolent witch, but clearly not prepared for what they've certainly unleashed.

On Halloween night at a horror theme park, a costumed killer begins slaying innocent patrons who believe that it's all part of the festivities.

According to legend, an ominous entity known as the Queen of Spades can be summoned by performing an ancient ritual. Four teenagers summon the Queen of Spades, but they could never imagine the horrors that await them.

After witnessing a brutal murder in a cabin, a man hides in a crawlspace while the killers scour the property for a hidden fortune. As they draw nearer, he must decide if the crawlspace will be his tomb or the battleground in his fight for survival.

The untold origin story behind Ridley Scott's Alien - rooted in Greek and Egyptian mythologies, underground comics, the art of Francis Bacon, and the dark visions of Dan O'Bannon and H.R. Giger. A contemplation on the symbiotic collaborative process of movie-making, the power of myth, and our collective unconscious.

The Robertson County Sheriff's Department has released footage found on the bodies of the Sawyer family's cell phones and video cameras. What was first thought to be a murder-suicide is now believed to be the return of a centuries-old demon responsible for America's most famous paranormal event.

A team of paranormal investigators go on one last job to a haunted mental institution where children have reportedly gone missing. While searching for evidence of what is haunting the abandoned building, they stumble upon clues that reveal what made the former head doctor snap and go on a killing spree through the halls decades earlier. Unfortunately, the more they uncover, the more they struggle to make it out of the asylum alive because something inside wants that mystery to stay dead and buried.

A suburban teen girl and her little brother must stop a terrifying internet meme brought to life by the hysteria of their parents.

Creatures, bound by the blood of the wolf, that can kill with curses and move at lightening speed, watching the night sky for the rise of the blood-red crescent moon. They are SKINWALKERS. They feed on our flesh and thirst for the taste of human blood. The red moon signals each pack, divided by principles, hell bent to survive an ancient prophecy.

Some time after the events of The Ring, a subculture of people voluntarily watch Samara Morgan's video and wait to see how close to the seven-day deadline they can get before showing it to the next person. They record everything they see and share their experiences on a secret website dedicated to the videotape. No one has ever recorded a day seven.

A psychology student who experienced night terrors as a child must face the chilling realization that her nightmares were not all in her head.

A startling expose of rape crimes on US campuses, their institutional cover-ups, and the devastating toll they take on students and their families. The film follows the lives of several undergraduate assault survivors as they attempt to pursue—despite incredible push back, harassment and traumatic aftermath—both their education and justice.

A collection of Halloween-themed videotapes unleashes a series of twisted, blood-soaked tales, turning trick-or-treat into a struggle for survival.

An American artist's obsession with a disturbing urban legend leads her to an investigation of the story's origins at the crumbling estate of a reclusive painter in Ireland.

After being accused of crimes he did not commit, a lonely circus performer exacts his revenge on those who unjustly condemned him. The act sparks something inside of him which he cannot stop and now, years later, his inner-demons have truly surfaced. Part urban legend, part tabloid sensationalism... he is now an unstoppable murderous juggernaut, fueled only by hate.

The true story of Edward Gein, the farmer whose horrific crimes inspired Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Silence of the Lambs. This is the first film to Gein's tormented upbringing, his adored but domineering mother, and the 1957 arrest uncovered the most bizarre series of murders America has ever seen

This documentary explores the mystery surrounding the death of movie icon Marilyn Monroe through previously unheard interviews with her inner circle.

Two teenage couples traveling across the backwoods of Texas searching for urban legends of serial killers end up as prisoners of a bizarre and sadistic backwater family of serial killers.

Five years after an unexplained malfunction causes the death of 15 tour-goers and staff on the opening night of a Halloween haunted house tour, a documentary crew travels back to the scene of the tragedy to find out what really happened.

A group of young horror fans go searching for a film that mysteriously vanished years ago but instead find that the demented killer from the movie is real, and he's thrilled to meet fans who will die gruesomely for his art.

A group of kids agree to explore an abandon house in order to win a reality show contest, which requires them to prove that the stories of the evil Kuntilanak are real. They soon discover that the ghost is very much real when it appears from an old mirror and starts haunting them.

This documentary explores the hidden history of the American Exploitation Film. The movie digs deep into this often overlooked category of U.S. cinema and unearths the shameless and occasionally shocking origins of this popular entertainment.

