Exploring Horror’s Fascination with Supernatural Evil
Horror films often struggle for credibility. But filmmakers have found a clever approach to sidestep this issue: they make monsters represent deeper ideas.
Take “The Babadook,” for instance. It’s not just a scary figure lurking in the dark; it symbolizes grief and depression. Similarly, “It Follows” has been interpreted in various ways — from being a metaphor for sexually transmitted diseases to exploring themes of sexual trauma and mortality. Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” transforms the horrors of body-snatching into a critique of race and liberal paternalism. Even “Hereditary,” which features real supernatural demons, intertwines itself with grief, mental health struggles, and inherited trauma.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with this practice. Horror can resonate more deeply when it gives tangible shape to our unspoken fears.
Yet, using metaphors for monsters can provide a convenient escape. We recognize that the true horror lies more within our minds than in any physical embodiment of evil. These fears often find resolution through modern methods, such as therapy.
However, accepting that some monsters exist solely as themselves — real-life embodiments of evil — nudges us toward a longstanding idea rooted in Christianity: that supernatural evil is indeed a reality. This makes it understandable why filmmakers seeking both commercial success and artistic credibility might hesitate to explore this theme.
Moreover, there’s another potential explanation. When filmmakers do tackle the representation of the devil, strange disruptions seem to plague the production: fires, equipment failures, injuries, and even deaths occur during the filmmaking process.
It’s almost as if these disruptions suggest a preference for being regarded as folklore rather than confronting a sinister reality.
Here are six films that took supernatural evil seriously and encountered strange occurrences during their creation.
1. ‘The Exorcist’
If any film could be considered cursed, “The Exorcist” is a prime candidate. The 1973 adaptation by William Friedkin of William Peter Blatty’s novel delves into themes of a fractured family, psychiatric treatment, and a doubting priest.
Yet, when Regan MacNeil starts to exhibit eerie vocal and physical contortions, “The Exorcist” unambiguously identifies the cause: demonic possession. Friedkin conveys this heavy topic with an almost documentary-like authenticity, far from mere goth fantasy. Viewers reportedly fainted, vomited, and fled theaters, turning the film into a cultural milestone.
If the tales from the film’s production are to be believed, it wasn’t just the audience that was unsettled by its portrayal of evil. Strange occurrences began even before filming commenced in Iraq. A statue of Pazuzu — the demon who possesses Regan — was created in Burbank and shipped to Mosul for one of the movie’s critical scenes. However, it never made it to its intended destination. Somehow, Pazuzu turned up in Denmark. “It was lost,” Friedkin recounted years later, leading to significant delays while someone figured out how to retrieve the demon.
Back in New York, bad luck persisted. A fire broke out in the early hours, destroying most of the MacNeil house set at 20th Century Fox’s studio on West 54th Street.
“The production manager called me at 4 a.m. and said, ‘Don’t bother coming to work today,’” Friedkin recalled.
“I asked, ‘Why? Am I fired?’”
No, it turned out the set had burned down, with the exception of Regan’s bedroom — the very place where Friedkin was shooting the exorcism. Investigators never determined the fire’s cause, while Friedkin attributed it to a pigeon that flew into a light box.
Production was paused for six weeks for rebuilding, and then Ellen Burstyn suffered a back injury. During a scene in which Regan strikes her mother, a stuntman was meant to yank Burstyn backward. After several attempts, she informed Friedkin that he was pulling too hard.
“It needs to look real,” he responded.
On the next take, she landed painfully on her coccyx, prompting real screams of agony. Friedkin kept the camera rolling and, later, Burstyn succinctly described her experience with the director: “He was always fabulous with me. Except when he permanently injured my spine.”
Burstyn eventually made multiple films, but not everyone was so fortunate. Jack MacGowran, who portrayed director Burke Dennings — killed by the possessed Regan — completed his scenes only to die from influenza at the age of 54. Likewise, Vasiliki Maliaros, who played Father Karras’ mother, also passed away during filming.
In a 1998 BBC documentary “The Fear of God: 25 Years of ‘The Exorcist,'” Burstyn recalled more casualties associated with the film: the newborn of an assistant cameraman, the refrigeration technician for the bedroom set, and a night watchman.
While none perished in accidents during shooting, the sheer number of deaths, injuries, delays, and mishaps fueled discussion about a curse.
The actor portraying the conflicted priest, who attempted to save Regan, received a more direct warning. In “The Fear of God,” Jason Miller relayed an experience involving an elderly priest who, noticing Miller’s intense focus on his lines, presented him with a medal of the Blessed Virgin. The priest warned him about the risks of exploring themes concerning the devil.
“If you do anything about the devil, he will seek vengeance against you, or even try to disrupt your attempts to expose him,” the priest cautioned, handing Miller the medal for protection.
Just days later, while strolling through the Jesuit residence, Miller caught sight of the old priest lying in a casket.
By 1974, Castle of Frankenstein magazine had published an article with the in-your-face title The Curse That Hangs Over “The Exorcist.”
Eventually, Friedkin sought out Rev. Thomas Bermingham, the Jesuit priest serving as a technical adviser.
“Could you come down and exorcise the set?” Friedkin asked him.
Bermingham declined, stating, “I don’t want to cause any more anxiety.” Yet, he wasn’t dismissive of the odd occurrences. “There was definitely a sense that something could happen,” he reflected in the documentary. “It felt like we were dabbling in something we shouldn’t.”
He chose to bless the production instead, just to be safe.
2. ‘The Passion of the Christ’
Mel Gibson’s 2004 film “The Passion of the Christ” isn’t a horror movie, though those who’ve witnessed the scourging scene might contest that.
It diverges from typical “faith-based” films that often restrict the conflict of sin and redemption to dialogue. Gibson showcases the embodiment of evil on screen.
Satan trails Jesus through Gethsemane, mingling among the crowds during Christ’s suffering. During the scourging, he carries a grotesque child, and after the crucifixion, he’s shown howling in defeat, while the film cuts to Satan.
Jim Caviezel, the actor playing Jesus, notably survived being struck by lightning, an event witnessed by producer Steve McEveety from about 100 feet away. The assistant director Jan Michelini also experienced a lightning strike.
This was just the beginning. Caviezel humorously described how the event lit him up “like a Christmas tree.” Fortunately, neither were seriously harmed.
Caviezel had previously turned down three opportunities to portray Jesus but accepted Gibson’s offer due to sensing the director’s unwavering commitment to telling the story of the Passion “without restraint.”
Well, he got what he asked for.
The lightning wasn’t the only hardship. Caviezel dislocated his shoulder while carrying the cross, experienced hypothermia when hanging nearly nude in frigid winds during the crucifixion scenes, and then battled pneumonia and a lung infection. His elaborate makeup left his skin raw, and during the scourging, one actor unintentionally struck him hard enough to tear his skin.
In a particularly harrowing moment, hanging on the cross amidst the cold, Caviezel recalled crying out to God:
“So, you don’t want this movie to happen?”
Despite the challenges, he kept pushing through. He took daily Communion, prayed the rosary during marathon makeup sessions, and sought confession during filming.
Caviezel ultimately recognized his suffering as critical to the authenticity of his performance, arguing that a comfortable soundstage would have diminished the “impact and realism” of the crucifixion. The cold, pain, and exhaustion — factors that might derail other films — became part of the cinematic tapestry that Gibson and Caviezel aimed to create.
3. ‘The Omen’
If “The Exorcist” set the template for cursed movies, “The Omen” took it to new heights.
This 1976 film was even less inclined to use metaphor. The young boy central to the narrative is undoubtedly the Antichrist, and the characters who uncover this truth have a grim tendency to meet deadly fates before they can act.
Bob Munger, an advertising executive who contributed to the film’s concept, later confessed he cautioned producer Harvey Bernhard against making it. “If the devil’s greatest weapon is invisibility,” Munger reasoned, “and you’re doing something that exposes him, he won’t take that lying down.”
Bernhard came to believe Munger’s warning. “The devil was indeed at work,” he would reflect in later years.
Strange events surfaced even before audiences had a chance to see the movie. In April 1976, New York magazine reported that Gregory Peck’s plane had encountered lightning while en route to London for “The Omen.” The magazine also linked screenwriter David Seltzer and director Richard Donner to similarly troubled flights. Executive producer Mace Neufeld recounted being on a flight that was struck by lightning too. Overall, the exact number of lightning strikes experienced by people involved with the film remains unclear—a rather unusual occurrence for a film production.
This series of close calls continued once Neufeld arrived in London. He recounted walking out of his hotel with his wife when a bomb detonation echoed nearby. The couple also had a reservation at Scott’s, the Mayfair restaurant that became the target of an IRA bombing in November 1975. Both bombing incidents were very real; Neufeld recounted these brushes in the documentary series “Cursed Films.”
In one of the film’s most iconic scenes, where Damien visits a safari park and the baboons erupt in chaos, the sequence filmed at Windsor Safari Park had its own tragic backdrop. During production, a young keeper named Sidney Bamford was killed by a tiger. Tales of the curse suggest this incident occurred immediately after the filming of that scene, though reports do not confirm that Bamford specifically worked with the production.
Adding to the eerie narrative was an aircraft designated for aerial shots that the filmmakers lost the chance to use at the last moment. Donner reminisced that the plane, intended for their filming, was reassigned to customers from China. It was later involved in a crash.
During production, another tragic incident unfolded. On November 20, 1975, a Hawker Siddeley executive jet carrying a Chinese delegation departed from Dunsfold Aerodrome. It encountered a flock of lapwings, lost power in both engines, and tragically ran off the runway, colliding with a vehicle.
Fortunately, all nine passengers aboard that plane survived, but all six individuals in the vehicle lost their lives.
The timing and the involvement of Chinese passengers led many to link this incident with Donner’s recollections of a crash that involved his crew. But the investigation did not verify that “The Omen” team had booked that specific airline.
Even stranger stories materialized post-production. Special-effects designer John Richardson contributed to one of the film’s most gruesome scenes, where a character named Keith Jennings meets a violent end when a piece of glass slides off a truck and decapitates him. Richardson’s team executed this effect with a practical dummy and a model of actor David Warner’s head.
In August 1976, while Richardson was in the Netherlands working on “A Bridge Too Far,” he was involved in a car accident. Richardson survived, but sculptor Liz Moore, who was with him, did not. Biographies indicate her death occurred on August 13.
Throughout the years, the tale grew more compelling with two eerie details. Reports suggested that Moore had been decapitated—echoing the cinematic death Richardson created. Additionally, it was said that Richardson emerged from the wreck near a sign reading:
Ommen — 66.6 km.
While the crash and Moore’s death are well-documented, those gothic details remain unverified. No records or news reports affirm that she was decapitated. Richardson has since reminisced about some road sign involving sixes and a road leading towards Ommen, but that infamous “Ommen — 66.6 km” sign has yet to be independently validated.
But by this point, the precise truth hardly mattered. “The Omen” had embraced a curse as elaborate as the film’s storyline.
Fox eventually capitalized on the legend. By 2000, the DVD included a featurette titled “Curse or Coincidence?”
4. ‘The Possession’
The 2012 film “The Possession” boasted something most demonic films lack: a supposedly real haunted object at its center.
The “dybbuk box” was an unassuming wine cabinet that gained notoriety on eBay. Kevin Mannis spun a hair-raising backstory revolving around a Holocaust survivor and a malevolent Jewish spirit. Owners reportedly faced nightmares, physical ailments, and unfortunate events.
This saga captured attention online, appeared in newspapers, and eventually inspired a Hollywood film.
As production unfolded, unusual events began to surface. Director Ole Bornedal noted lights exploding even when they weren’t turned on. About a week after filming wrapped, a warehouse holding props from the film caught fire; Bornedal claimed he never discovered the fire’s cause.
Years later, the story took a hit when Mannis confessed to fabricating the box’s extensive backstory.
This revelation did little to clarify the mysteries of the exploding lights or the warehouse fire.
Bornedal himself made a compelling counterpoint. “Would we have noticed if it was a ‘Love Story’? Perhaps not,” he mused.
5. ‘The Omen’ (2006)
Decades after the original “Omen,” Fox opted to remake it, especially aiming to capitalize on an eerily demonic release date: June 6, 2006, or 6/6/06.
Director John Moore, raised in the Catholic faith, found the peculiar incidents that befell him throughout production deeply unsettling.
For instance, two days of footage involving the reveal of Damien’s 666 birthmark were mysteriously destroyed, he received a flight ticket priced exactly at $666, and a promotional video was bizarrely overwritten with ESPN footage, despite Moore claiming the machine was incapable of recording.
Moore became anxious enough to wonder whether making the film might provoke divine discontent. Eventually, he concluded that a movie that acknowledged evil must also implicitly acknowledge good.
Then there’s the box office, which turned into quite the talking point. Its first-day earnings reported a striking figure:
$12,633,666.
The odds of that happening seemed rather high. According to Fox’s distribution executive Bruce Snyder, the studio had changed the reported estimate to deliberately highlight the ominous digits.
“We were just having a little fun,” he later explained.
6. ‘The Deliverance’
By the time Lee Daniels helmed “The Deliverance” in 2024, the tales of curses had evolved into Hollywood legend.
Daniels had come across stories surrounding the making of “The Exorcist” and “Poltergeist.” His Episcopalian mother warned him against filming a movie involving demonic evil.
“You are a portal,” she warned him, emphasizing the need to maintain groundedness and protect his soul.
Taking her cautions to heart, Daniels ensured the production included an ordained Christian who could perform deliverances on set, and he initiated daily prayer circles.
“We prayed every day,” he recounted, although Netflix HR reminded him that prayer couldn’t be compulsory. He told anyone hesitant that there was no obligation to stay.
“A few chose to leave, but most preferred the protection,” he noted. “They understood what was at stake.”
Yet, the precautions didn’t shield “The Deliverance” from acquiring its own stories of misfortune.
His sister, who had appeared in every film he directed as his “good luck charm,” participated in a scene involving chemotherapy alongside Glenn Close.
Just two days later, Daniels reported that his sister was diagnosed with lung cancer.
“On set, my dog died, too,” he added.
Mo’Nique experienced a more obvious brush with the alleged curse. While shooting an outdoor scene that involved a demon, she found it tough to breathe due to materials swirling around the set, which later required hospitalization for an enlarged thyroid.
“A lot of unusual things happened during ‘The Deliverance’,” she recalled.
None of this offers concrete evidence of supernatural activity. Mo’Nique herself pointed out a plausible physical explanation for her illness. Cancer diagnoses and dead pets don’t necessitate a demonic explanation.
But fifty years post-“The Exorcist,” Daniels entered another project involving demonic possession, taking precautions informed by tales of curses. Yet, shortly after filming began, his sister was struck with cancer, his dog passed away, and one of his stars faced hospitalization.
