Horror fans are possibly one of the most passionate when it comes to anything related to the genre. This love for the films even goes as far to have theories about the stories of the films we love, of course, every film genre has its fan theory base, but when it comes to horror, you got to admit there are some interesting ones out there. Even some bordering absurdity!
These fan theories are all over the internet and appear in many videos and web articles but I want to take it a step further by giving the theories a look and then offering my opinion, hell I would love to even hear YOUR opinion in the comments (keep it civil, we’re here for fun!). Warning, some of the topics below may include spoilers for certain films, read at your own risk.
Childs is the thing at the end of The Thing (WhatCulture)
At the end of John Carpenter’s 1982 film The Thing, only two people survived the events at the Antarctic outpost, the film’s hero MacReady (Kurt Russell) and Childs (Keith David). MacReady and Childs ask each other if they are who they say they are, where MacReady hands Childs a bottle of scotch for a swig. After Childs takes a swig from the bottle MacReady smiles.
The theory goes that there’s no scotch in the bottle, it’s gasoline and this tells MacReady that if Childs was human he would have to spit it out.
My verdict on this theory: It’s possible, Childs did disappear towards the end of the film and there was plenty of time for him to have been assimilated by the Thing. But in reality, John Carpenter has stated that the video game’s story is canon to his film which in that case, Childs was human as his corpse was found frozen in the game.
MacReady was the Thing since the beginning (Reddit)
Another fan theory about The Thing goes that at the beginning of the film when the dog (thing) came to the US station while being chased by the survivors of the Norwegian station, that the character Bennings (Peter Maloney) was infected when the dog licked his face. Shortly afterward MacReady gives Bennings his scotch that he takes a swig from, now infecting MacReady who drinks from it later and that he drinks from Blair’s (Wilford Brimley) vodka bottle thus infecting Blair.
The theory goes on that Bennings was infected a second time by the corpse of the Thing from the Norwegian camp and that the Thing can do that.
My verdict on the theory: Bennings was infected ONCE and that was by the corpse Thing. At the beginning of the film, while true the dog was licking at Benning’s face, it never actually licked his skin. A big part of the film that’s been overlooked in this theory was the night when the Dog arrived at the camp, it was wandering around and into a room where you saw the shadow of someone looking back at the door, this was most likely either Palmer (David Clennon) or Norris (Charles Hallahan) who both ended up being the Thing.
Plus you can’t ignore the famous “Hot needle test” scene where MacReady’s blood was drawn and tested showing he was not infected. And if you’re wondering how Blair got infected, he did spend a lot of time alone in the lab with the Thing dog corpse.
Dr. Sam Loomis from Halloween is the same Sam Loomis from Psycho (Film School Rejects)
As the theory says above, the character Sam Loomis (John Gavin) from the 1960 classic Psycho appears again in the 1978 film Halloween but is now a doctor specializing in child psychology. The theory goes that after his encounter with Norman Bates, Loomis became interested in the field of psychology especially the field surrounding childhood trauma with the hopes of preventing another Norman Bates. Now Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasence) has a patient that makes Bates look tamed, Michael Myers.
My verdict on the theory: It’s entirely possible and it’s also possible that there were nods to the film Psycho, Loomis assistant’s name is Marion which can be taken as a nod to the character Marian Crane who was killed in the shower by Bates and played by Janet Leigh who is Jamie Lee Curtis’s (Laurie in Halloween) Mother in real life.
There was no Blair Witch (Film Theory)
This theory from Youtube goes really in-depth and is worth a watch honestly but I’ll try to compact as much of it in as I can! The theory goes that Heather (Heather Donahue) is a victim of a murder carried out by Josh (Joshua Leonard) and Mike (Michael C. Williams) who joined her in filming a documentary that later became known as The Blair Witch Project. With the intense PR campaign building up hype for the film’s release in 1999 thanks to the next big thing in marketing, the internet.
In the early stages of the story (that never made it to film) Josh and Heather formally dated which explains why Josh seems distant from Heather even though they’re “friends”. In the online campaign that built up hype for the film, there’s a section of the site that has Heather’s diary where she explains she can’t sleep at night but Josh and Mike can, especially after Josh’s disappearance. Leading to the idea that Mike and Josh are weakening Heather mentally before killing her.
My verdict on this theory: It’s entirely plausible! Since there’s nothing paranormal seen in the film, the idea that two dudes are playing mind games on their victim is not that far off from possibility in my opinion.
Event Horizon and Hellraiser take place in the same movie universe (Reddit)
This theory is saying that the black hole that powered the ship in Event Horizon is possibly some form of the puzzle box from Hellraiser because both the black hole and box opens a gate into a sadomasochistic hell. Dr. Weir (Sam Neill) who invented the device in Event Horizon goes in and accepts the “pleasures” of that world and comes back almost like a Cenobite from Hellraiser.
My verdict on the theory: Though there are some similarities between the two films and even the novel by Clive Barker himself, there are different elements that the two stories don’t share the big one being that in Event Horizon the black hole/hell causes hallucinations that drive people crazy or causes them to die. Even though it’s a cool theory, it needs more to back it up.
Orin Peli sold his soul to the devil (Reddit)
This theory claims that it’s impossible for someone to go from being a software engineer to write, produce, direct, and edit his first film and be very successful with it. That film is Paranormal Activity and the theory claims that director Orin Peli must have made a deal with the devil/demon for success. The theory also speculates that everything done in the film was done at the demon’s request allowing it to feed off the fear of audiences so it may become stronger.
My verdict on the theory: The only funny part of all this was Peli’s responding to the post by simply saying “Shhhh!” other than that, if Peli really made a deal with the devil/demon, then he needs a refund because out of fifteen projects he was involved in only three were liked by critics!
Stanley Kubrick’s confession in The Shining (The dark web)
This theory crawled out of the darkest corners of the internet and has been on many forums, websites, videos, blogs you name it. The theory being that Stanley Kubrick helped fake the Apollo 11 landing on the moon and confessed to it in his iconic film, The Shining. There are many claims made, if you want to hear them all then go forth at your own risk to find them, I’ll just mention three of them here.
The first is the infamous room 237. The room number was changed from the book because staff of the Timberline Lodge (used for the exterior of the Overlook Hotel) was concerned people would not want to stay in room 217 (the room from the book) fearing it would be haunted. Conspiracy Theorists claim the room number is in reverence to the distance of the earth to the moon 237,000 miles (it’s actually 238,855 miles). The creepy twins are in reverence to Project Gemini the second phase in NASA’s training for space exploration. And third the “proof” that Kubrick was confessing to faking the moon landing… on the frozen face of Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) is the number 11 written in ice, 11 about Apollo 11.
My verdict on this theory: