Every now and then, some parts of the Internet become obsessed with a fictional movie that it believes to be real. Back in the early days of the World Wide Web, the Blair Witch Project’s marketing campaign convinced everyone and their parents that three film students had indeed gone missing in rural Maryland during the pandemic.
Poughkeepsie Tapes Real or Fake ?
TikTok users found themselves obsessed with the 2011 found footage. Horror Meghan is missing. To many, the images shown in the movie looked just way too real to be fake.
Another example of this is the interest around 2000 and seven’s the Poughkeepsie Tapes, a movie that is presented as a documentary about a serial killer that was active for decades in the town of Poughkeepsie in upstate New York, and the disturbing snuff films discovered that related to the murders.
The imagery in this film is truly haunting and understandably leaves most viewers feeling uneasy. The realism of it all is striking, to say the least, helped even further by the fact that there actually was an active serial killer in the area around the timeframe.
The movie says the events took place, something that a lot of people have drawn comparisons to, but the Poughkeepsie tapes are decidedly a work of fiction. John Eric Dowdell, the director of the film, has stated that he never even heard of the real killer that operated around Poughkeepsie, and any comparisons are purely coincidental.
Even so, the comparison still pops up online whenever someone brings up the Poughkeepsie tapes, which helps to spread the illusion that this is a real story, at least in some small way.
But all it is is a finely crafted piece of cinema, excellently emulating real life crime documentaries through the use of grainy, low resolution footage and convincing expert interviews, all meant to tell a story.
It grips you, frightening you to your very core. It’s very much worth a watch, but once you’re done, feel safe in the knowledge that it is all just a movie.