12 Movies Linked to Disturbing Real-Life Crimes

As Oscar Wilde famously wrote in his 1889 essay The Decay of Lying, “Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life.” Movies can become part of that equation. In some documented cases, people have copied imagery, language, or methods they saw on screen. In others, an apparent movie connection was pushed by early news reports and repeated for years even when the evidence never supported it.

To compile this list, 24/7 Tempo reviewed reporting and historical accounts of crimes linked to movies, including material from Taste of Cinema, Creepy Catalog, and MovieWeb, along with court records and contemporary reporting on the individual cases. These 12 examples range from perpetrators who explicitly cited a movie to cases where the connection is more complicated. A person invoking a film does not, by itself, mean the movie caused the crime.

Released in 2013, “The Purge” imagines a dystopian United States where most crimes, including murder, are legal for a 12-hour period once each year. The premise proved successful enough to launch a franchise, but it also gave people a disturbing new shorthand for real-world threats and violence.

In 2014, social media posts warning of a supposed “Louisville Purge” caused enough concern in Louisville, Kentucky, that police increased patrols and a high school football scrimmage was moved. The threatened night of violence never materialized. A far more serious connection emerged in Indianapolis in 2016. Johnathan Cruz killed Billy Boyd, Jay Higginbotham, and Jose Alberto Ruiz during a four-day crime spree. Investigators said witnesses reported that Cruz described himself as “purging,” a reference to the movie. He pleaded guilty in 2017 and received three consecutive life sentences without parole.

Christopher Nolan's 2008 film “The Dark Knight” is remembered in large part for Heath Ledger's performance as the Joker, a criminal who uses violence and fear to push Gotham City toward chaos. Ledger's version of the character became one of the movie's defining images and, in at least some cases, was imitated outside the theater.

In 2009, Army Spc. Christopher Lanum was accused of stabbing a fellow soldier at Fort Eustis in Virginia while dressed and made up like the Joker. According to an FBI affidavit, Lanum's girlfriend said he idolized the character. Lanum later pointed a loaded shotgun at officers in Shenandoah National Park and was fatally shot by police. The much more famous supposed Joker connection to the 2012 Aurora theater shooting is considerably shakier. James Holmes attacked a screening of “The Dark Knight Rises,” but evidence presented during his trial did not establish that he was dressed as the Joker or that the Joker inspired the attack. Prosecutor George Brauchler later disputed the widely repeated claim that Holmes identified himself as the character. Nolan described the Aurora shooting as a “senseless tragedy.”

The “Saw” franchise centers on elaborate traps and tests devised by John Kramer, better known as Jigsaw, and those who continue his work. The series became known for increasingly elaborate scenes in which victims are forced into brutal situations with little time to escape.

One real case was directly compared with the franchise in court. Matthew Tinling murdered former soldier Richard Hamilton in 2012 at supported housing in London. When Tinling was sentenced in 2013, the judge said he had deliberately tried to sever Hamilton's spinal cord in imitation of something he had seen on a DVD. Police found a copy of “Saw VI” in Tinling's room, although the judge noted that whether the specific scene came from that installment or another “Saw” movie did not change the point: Tinling had attempted to reproduce what he had watched. He received a life sentence with a minimum term of 30 years.

David Fincher's 1999 “Fight Club,” adapted from Chuck Palahniuk's 1996 novel, follows an unnamed narrator and Tyler Durden as they establish an underground fighting group. The club eventually expands into Project Mayhem, an increasingly destructive campaign aimed at the consumer culture its members despise.

Real-life groups soon borrowed the concept. By 2006, the Associated Press and other outlets were reporting on underground fighting clubs whose participants openly cited the film as inspiration. In New York, police said 17-year-old Kyle Shaw was trying to emulate Project Mayhem when he detonated a homemade explosive outside an Upper East Side Starbucks in 2009. No one was injured, and Shaw was later sentenced to 3½ years in prison. A separate 2016 incident involving preschool children was widely described as a St. Louis daycare “fight club,” but reporting on that case did not establish that the workers were actually inspired by the movie. Palahniuk has also discussed the unusual cultural life his story took on after publication and the film adaptation in later interviews.

Wes Craven's 1996 film “Scream” helped revive the slasher genre by mixing genuine horror with self-aware commentary about horror-movie conventions. The story follows Sidney Prescott and her friends in the fictional California town of Woodsboro as they are stalked by a killer using the now-famous Ghostface costume.

The movie's influence is unusually well documented in the 2006 murder of 16-year-old Cassie Jo Stoddart in Idaho. Brian Draper and Torey Adamcik recorded themselves planning the crime and explicitly compared what they were doing to “Scream.” Both were convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy and sentenced to life without parole. Five years earlier, 24-year-old Thierry Jaradin killed 15-year-old Alisson Cambier in Belgium while wearing a Ghostface-style costume. Contemporary reporting said Jaradin told investigators that the crime had been planned and that the “Scream” films influenced him.

The Wachowskis' 1999 film “The Matrix” follows Neo, a computer programmer who discovers that the world he experiences is actually an artificial reality created by machines. Its ideas about simulated reality became enormously influential in popular culture and later appeared in several criminal cases involving defendants experiencing severe delusions.

The press eventually dubbed this phenomenon the “Matrix defense,” although it is not a distinct legal defense. In Ohio, Tonda Lynn Ansley was found not guilty by reason of insanity after killing her landlady in 2002; the prosecutor said the movie played a role within Ansley's delusional view of reality. In San Francisco, Vadim Mieseges killed and dismembered his landlady in 2000 and referred to being “sucked into The Matrix” when speaking with police. A judge accepted his insanity plea. D.C. sniper Lee Boyd Malvo also made repeated references to “The Matrix,” and his lawyers tried to use a clip from the film during his 2003 trial, but the jury rejected his insanity defense and convicted him.

Released in 1990, “RoboCop 2” returned to the dystopian Detroit of the original film. RoboCop battles drug lord Cain, whose brain is eventually placed into a heavily armed cyborg created by Omni Consumer Products as a successor to RoboCop.

New York serial killer Nathaniel White later told police that a scene in “RoboCop 2” gave him the idea for how to carry out his first murder. White, who murdered six women in 1991 and 1992, said he had tried to reproduce what he saw on screen. That makes this one of the clearer cases on the list because the claimed influence came from the killer himself rather than later speculation. The crimes continued to attract media attention decades later, including through a Discovery Channel program that became the subject of a separate defamation lawsuit.

Oliver Stone's 1994 film “Natural Born Killers” follows Mickey and Mallory Knox, a couple whose cross-country killing spree turns them into media celebrities. The movie was intended in part as a satire of the way American media can sensationalize violent crime, but it quickly became controversial for another reason: a string of real crimes were publicly linked to it.

One of the best-known cases involved teenagers Ben Darras and Sarah Edmondson. In March 1995, the couple reportedly spent a night using LSD and repeatedly watching “Natural Born Killers” before leaving Oklahoma. Darras later shot and killed businessman William Savage in Mississippi, and Edmondson shot convenience-store clerk Patsy Byers in Louisiana, leaving her paralyzed. The attacks led to years of litigation over whether the film's creators could be held responsible. The lawsuit was ultimately dismissed, and the controversy surrounding the case was examined at length by The Guardian.

Wes Craven's “A Nightmare on Elm Street” was released in 1984 and introduced Freddy Krueger, a supernatural killer who attacks teenagers in their dreams. Freddy's burned face, striped sweater, fedora, and glove fitted with blades eventually made him one of horror's most recognizable villains.

In September 2004, Daniel Gonzalez killed four people and attempted to kill two others during a three-day series of attacks in southern England. Gonzalez was obsessed with horror films and told police about fantasies involving Freddy Krueger; during one attack, he also wore a hockey mask associated with Jason Voorhees from the “Friday the 13th” series. A jury convicted Gonzalez in 2006, and he received six life sentences. He died by suicide the following year while being held at Broadmoor Hospital.

The original 1988 “Child's Play” introduced Chucky, a Good Guy doll possessed by the soul of serial killer Charles Lee Ray. What began with Chucky terrorizing young Andy Barclay grew into a long-running horror franchise spanning movies and television.

The films have been connected to several real crimes, although not every claimed connection holds up equally well. Australian media reports noted that Port Arthur gunman Martin Bryant reportedly had a fixation on Chucky, but that does not establish that “Child's Play” inspired the 1996 massacre. The connection was far more direct in the 1992 murder of Suzanne Capper in England. During her captivity, her attackers repeatedly played “Hi, I'm Chucky (Wanna Play?),” a song built around samples from the movie. Years later, Russian killer Elena Lobacheva told police that she had been inspired by the 1998 film “Bride of Chucky” and had the character tattooed on her arm.

“Friday the 13th” arrived in theaters in 1980 and helped cement the summer-camp slasher formula. The movie follows a group of counselors preparing to reopen Camp Crystal Lake as they are killed one by one. One important detail often lost in decades of sequels: Jason Voorhees is not the killer in the original movie. His mother, Pamela Voorhees, is. Jason became the franchise's central killer in later installments and did not adopt his famous hockey mask until “Friday the 13th Part III.”

In 1988, 18-year-old Sharon Gregory was stabbed to death at her home in Greenfield, Massachusetts. Police sought Mark Branch, a 19-year-old acquaintance who was intensely interested in the “Friday the 13th” series and Jason Voorhees. Investigators found Jason-related costume items at his home, and Greenfield Police Chief David McCarthy later said Branch's fascination with the character was one part of the motive. Branch disappeared after the killing and was found dead from suicide about a month later.

William Wyler's 1965 film “The Collector,” adapted from John Fowles' 1963 novel, follows Freddie Clegg, a socially isolated butterfly collector who kidnaps art student Miranda Grey and imprisons her in the cellar of a secluded house. Clegg treats Miranda less like another human being than something he can possess, extending his obsession with collecting into terrifying territory.

Both the novel and the film later became associated with real killers. Robert Berdella, who murdered six men in Kansas City during the 1980s, said the movie left a lasting impression on him as a teenager and helped shape violent fantasies he later acted upon. Leonard Lake's connection was primarily to Fowles' novel: he named his plan to abduct and imprison women “Operation Miranda” after the captive character in the book, a connection documented in his writings and later examined by Oxygen. Christopher Wilder was also found with a copy of the novel among his possessions, although possession of the book alone does not establish that it inspired his crimes.