Based on True Events…Maybe

Posted by Trevor

April 19, 2008

The Strangers

UPDATE: I’ve made a followup to this post. Click here to check it out.

I was going through some new trailers that I put off watching and I came across The Strangers. The Apple Trailers website description of the trailer is what got me interested in watching.

Lock the doors. Assume you’re safe. The horrifying events that took place in the Hoyt family’s vacation home at 1801 Clark Road on February 11, 2005, are still not entirely known. Writer/director Bryan Bertino explores our most universal fears in The Strangers, a terrifying suspense thriller about a couple whose remote getaway becomes a place of terror when masked strangers invade. The confrontation forces Kristen and James to go far beyond what they thought themselves capable of if they hope to survive.

In the trailer it say’s that the film was “inspired by true events” so I decided to Google the Hoyt family at 1801 Clark Road and came up with nothing. Just about all the links there where Yahoo Answers posts of people asking if the events actually took place. I did find one decent post on VideoGum where the blogger used Google Maps to search the address to try determine a probably location for the events. They determined the most probable location was 1801 Clark Road, Lapeer, Michigan. Now googleing murders in Lapeer Michigan we still find nothing, so what’s with this movie?

I enjoy reading the stories that movie’s are based on when I see the trailer or right before I go see the movie so it’s a little off putting to find that there is no information about these “true events”. Some suggest that the family name and the location were changed for legal reasons or to protect the survivors/victims. Since it’s so hard to find any information about the murders then how did the writers of the film hear about it? Are they just using the “true events” tactic to help the film feel more intense and scary and drag in viewers?

What do you think about the “true events”? Fact or Fiction?

Do films that are based on true events make you want to see them more?

Tags: google, google maps, the strangers, true events, videogum

Movies, Rants

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mike 8 months ago 1 point
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Lapeer is right by me and I've not ever heard of a murder or killing of this type, so I'm going to guess the address has been changed.

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Rich 8 months ago 1 point
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When movies are based on true events, i know it makes me want to see it more - i think it adds more suspense and horror to the movie knowing that this could and has actually happened before.

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mike 8 months ago 1 point
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I think the scariest part of that trailer is when you realized it's based off true events and not something supernatural. It adds a really creepy vibe to the film. I'm actually eagerly anticipating this as a good scary horror film.

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jasonenglish 8 months ago 1 point
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I agree Mike, it definitely looks good.

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Donna Ewing 30 8 months ago 1 point
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Ok after seeing the trailer once or twice I am ready and waiting, however, I too like to know the complete background before getting started, just so I can really truely know how horrifing it could have truely ended up before hollywood got their hands all over it. ( I promise that doesn't make me sick, my grandfather was police detective growing up). Anyway, I've done alot of searching and found a couple of addresses that matched bo no murders, but does that mean we're giving away the ending? Could totally be over analyzing it, but even old newspapers didn't have records. anyway, just a thought. Pease out!
Donna

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lauren 8 months ago 1 point
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Ok first of all the hoyt family was not mrudered. PAY ATTENTION there was a couple in the hoyt family vacation home. All the information given to you states that the events (not murder) are not entirely known. Your jumping the gun here. You dont really know if they die or not and if the events are still unknown that means the case could still be under investigation limiting the facts they were able to put in the script. Besides its Hollywood have you all forgotten the many terrible Amittyville movies that were no where near what actually happened?

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Misanthrope 8 months ago 1 point
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Are you all retarded? I suppose you believe The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Blair Witch Project were true stories, as well? Kindly get fixed, so you don't pass the stupidity on to another generation.

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CP 2 months ago 1 point
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Actually the Texas Chainsaw Massacre was influenced by the serial killer Ed Gein as well as other movies.

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Jeanine 8 months ago 1 point
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PROOF IT IS NOT BASED ON A TRUE STORY:
FROM la times 2006
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/movie...

From rags to writer on the back of fear

Two years ago, 28-year-old Bryan Bertino was just a gaffer on commercials and low-budget independent films, hoping to accumulate enough hours to get into the electrician's union.

Smash cut to today, and the Texas-born handyman has been reborn as a newly minted writer-director, with a go picture, "The Strangers," at Universal, which begins shooting in three weeks in a desolate stretch of South Carolina on a $10-million budget. Liv Tyler scored the female lead after actresses as diverse as Thandie Newton and Oscar winner Charlize Theron circled the project looking for a dark suspense picture to give their careers a shot of adrenaline.

Bertino's offering ingeniously mixes highbrow and low, realistic romantic turmoil and in extremis primal terror. On their way back from a wedding (in February!), a couple in their mid-20s decides to forgo the hotel for a night in the house in which the man's family grew up. In the midst of all the relationship turmoil that milestone events such as this stir up, three extremely antagonistic strangers intrude (one of whom will look like 19-year-old Aussie supermodel Gemma Ward, in her unfashionably hostile acting debut). Who gets to keep the "Zoolander" DVD quickly becomes the least of the couple's worries.

The screenplay is deft, economical and dread-filled; it couples a detective's ominous voiceover catalog of items found at the scene with the disturbing imagery of the horrible events' aftermath. The script then quickly shifts back in time to the couple's middle of the night entrance in mid-fight, which provides a realistic, original twist on the standard introduction of the victims. With plot and thematic elements that evoke the claustrophobic thrillers "Open Water," "Straw Dogs" and "Panic Room," the intense experience that follows begs each moviegoer to wonder, "How would I behave if it were me?"

"What I wanted to do was focus in on their relationship and then take this outside force that is more of a traditional horror idea of bad people and play off of it," Bertino says. "I just tried to think about what I was most frightened of, and the moments that I'm most frightened are my girlfriend waking me up in the middle of the night and saying, 'I think there's someone in the living room.' So the whole idea came about as, 'What if you went into the living room and there was somebody there?' "

Bertino had submitted the script for a Nicholl Fellowship, a $30,000 prize awarded to unproduced writers by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. "The Strangers" got knocked out in the quarterfinals, but Bertino landed a manager and a meeting with Vertigo Entertainment, whose film "The Grudge" had just opened to $39 million. The sit-down was encouraging enough for him to take the risk and quit his job, and within a few days he sold the script to Universal for low six figures against mid-six figures if the film was made. "It was enough that I didn't have to work as a grip anymore," Bertino says.

His good fortune grew when music video auteur Mark Romanek, writer-director of the dark drama "One Hour Photo," refused to make the film for less than $40 million. (He insisted on building the neighborhood on a soundstage that he could control so he wouldn't have to resort to computer-generated cold-weather breath.) So the studio offered the novice screenwriter the gig instead. Bertino will have to fit his directorial debut into a packed schedule that includes writing the sharp, genre-blending horror scripts he owes Hollywood mega-producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Scott Rudin.

To celebrate, Bertino purchased his first suit and a TV.

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Jacob 7 months ago 1 point
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Strangers

This is all the info that I could find about it.

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Tim 7 months ago 1 point
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Well the Texas Chainshaw massacre is family that is based from one person Ed Gein who toby hooper was told about when he was a child look him up and you will see that the events are pretty close in the Chainshaw massacre they just used all his personalities as different people.

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Jacob 7 months ago 1 point
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Ed Gein was a sick dude... a sad story really... but still sick.

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Jen P. 7 months ago 1 point
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I saw the trailer last night online and seen it was based on 'real events'. i have to admit i was totally siked to see it. but now i find out that there isnt any hardcore proof that these murders did happen its like, blah. I mean they are right when they say that "based on" movies are more creepy and better for business, but thats kinda using the viewer to me. i ean im sure its going to be another great horror movie, and i still plan on seeing it. buut i dont think tis fair for the movie maker to play with our emotions and bascially give us false advertising just to sell a movie. In my opinion, now that its getting out, that there isnt really a true story, more people are going to be less inclined to see it because they know it was false. great tomake movies, bad to lie.
But like i said, i still wanna see it just because the movie looks great, besides what the makers tried to pull.

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jesse 7 months ago 1 point
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i dont think they could release a movie with all the exact same information as in reality. ie: the names and address. if anything this movie would be based on the manson family murders or something. just like texas chainsaw was loosely based on ed gein wearing skin and whatnot.

still pumped to see this tho!

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Rosanne 7 months ago 1 point
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This story appears to be based on the Keddie Murders which are still unsolved. This is the closest it comes. The Manson murders were solved and are on the net.

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Barney 7 months ago 1 point
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"Based on a true story" generally means, loosely based on something similar, but not really related, but could be, maybe somewhere. It's an old Hollywood trick, and it works, look how much effort people are putting into finding out more about the events. I think the real draw is the fact that this could actually happen to any of us. There's no scary ghost or evil bigfoot coming to get you. It's actual people, albeit crazy people, but you never know, they might just be in your town.

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ilovetang 7 months ago 1 point
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Concur with Barney.
Most movies that have the "based on a true story" caption always end up being very loosely based on a similar event.
This movie most resembles the Keddie murders.

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Joann 7 months ago 1 point
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Am I missing something or what? I don't recall seeing or hearing anywhere that this movie was about a murder. I know that it says they force themselves to go beyond what they thought possible to live. I don't remember seeing that it says they were murdered.

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derrick 7 months ago 1 point
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This is shit man!!!!!!!
This Movie is gonna make me crap my self.

THE STRANGERS!!!!!!!OMG OMG FREAKING IM GONNA DO SUICIDE MAN.

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derrick 7 months ago 1 point
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This is scary shit man!!!!!!!
This Movie is gonna make me crap my self.

THE STRANGERS!!!!!!!

Im sleeping with my parents Through on out.

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Casey 7 months ago 1 point
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Based and Inspired are two different words. Inspired means he read a story about some strangers breaking in and created the story. Based means it actually happened that way and they changed the names, address, small facts, etc. I was told it was 'inpsired' by the Hollywood Mansion Murders.

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Moe Smarty 7 months ago 1 point
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This event really did take place. One of the real assailant's name is "Jason Panders". The event took place in a rural Pennsylvania Town called as Dawntown, PA. Three masked assailants stormed into a cabin and smeared feta cheese all over the couple while a goat wearing a tuxedo attacked the victims. They then attacked the acordian player at shady maple (John Collins) and stole all of the Amish food.
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