Have documentaries ever scared you?

[Igor-Rowan]

One of the main appeals of the original Blair Witch is the creators admitted being inspired by documentaries on the TV that were way scarier than movies at the time. And I can kind of see where they're coming from, I used to be terrified by those, especially the paranormal ones. Nowadays, I just feel discomfort at best.

Of course I'm talking about those documentaries on real cases that usually feature a dramatization to reconstruct the circumstances and the actions. There's something about real events being portrayed by dopplegangers from the real people that witnessed, couple that with the voice-over usually chill about what's going on and a soundtrack that gets intense whenever something happens or gets foreshadowed.

The combination of these factors can usually send chills down your spine despite the fact you're watching an amateurish production. Also that's what most horror movies nowdays try to go for when they say "based on a real story".

 

[Prime_Hunter_H01]

I do not think any documentary has "scared" me, though I do know the unease that comes about with certain topics. It has always been more of a lingering thought, a bit of empathy and contemplation even if it seems so far away from me. I remember that in the game The Suffering there was a mini documentary on the Eastern State Penitentiary in Pennsylvania, which it plus Alcatraz served as an inspiration for the game's prison. I was uneasy when I watched it because it did have a gruesome history of inmate abuse and due to that is supposedly haunted.

It got to me because it was a vague implication that the weird events in the prison were because of inmates ghosts and when the paranormal is presented as more vague and unknowable it, to me, feels more believable.

Not to mention other documentaries of tragedies or turbulent times in a location, again a combination of empathy and contemplation. I like timelines of disasters because even in its short form you get the most clear idea of how an event unfolded.

Actually I take that back, disease documentaries always have me terrified and paranoid afterward. Yet I still watch them because I don't know.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

This one.


Though I didn't see it until about 1987.

 

[Catnip1024]

Some of the Netflix ones about the American food industry (I haven't gotten around to watching the drug ones yet, but I imagine they are also fairly bad). Even cutting out some of the blatantly misleading bullshit presented in some of them, the realities of the US mass farming is horrific, not just in terms of animal welfare but also in the nutritional aspects of the end product. And the contract arrangements.

Happily, I grew up next to a farm, so I know that the UK is nowhere near as bad. But it has put me off eating in the US at any point in the future...

 

[CaitSeith]

Documentaries about disasters (natural or accidental). Sometimes they are scary (like airplane crashes), and yet fascinating when they dissect and present the chain of events like a crime investigation.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Angered or disgusted sure, never scared. Never afraid

 

[FalloutJack]

Only about giant squids, in that if I were ever within the vicinity of one, I would be very screwed. And dead. Hopefully not in that order.

 

[Baffle]

No, I'm extremely brave. Actually not true, I just don't watch much TV.

I've been appalled by the behaviour on Come Dine With Me, if that counts.

 

[Wintermute_v1legacy]

Not really. I remember seeing The Blair Witch Project back in the day and being terrified, though. Also I fell for the "it really happened!" bullshit. I was 14 so there's that. Other than that I don't think I ever saw a documentary that was actually scary.

The closest thing I can think of is this TV show called Ghost Adventures where a bunch of "paranormal investigators" visit "haunted" houses, hospitals, asylums, factories, etc., and proceed to record all sorts of noises and shit then go "HOLY SHIT DUDE DID YOU HEAR THAT BRO?!" I haven't seen it in quite a while, but I like it because I find it hilarious, not because it's scary.

 

[Fiz_The_Toaster]

I do not think any documentary has "scared" me, though I do know the unease that comes about with certain topics. It has always been more of a lingering thought, a bit of empathy and contemplation even if it seems so far away from me. I remember that in the game The Suffering there was a mini documentary on the Eastern State Penitentiary in Pennsylvania, which it plus Alcatraz served as an inspiration for the game's prison. I was uneasy when I watched it because it did have a gruesome history of inmate abuse and due to that is supposedly haunted.

It got to me because it was a vague implication that the weird events in the prison were because of inmates ghosts and when the paranormal is presented as more vague and unknowable it, to me, feels more believable.

Not to mention other documentaries of tragedies or turbulent times in a location, again a combination of empathy and contemplation. I like timelines of disasters because even in its short form you get the most clear idea of how an event unfolded.

Actually I take that back, disease documentaries always have me terrified and paranoid afterward. Yet I still watch them because I don't know.

I watched a documentary on old prisons, I don't remember the name of it, but it featured the Eastern State Penitentiary and that place just creeps me out.

The actual thought and idea behind the prison was iffy enough, but the things that happened in the prison were downright cruel. Then there's all the stuff that happened once the placed was finally closed down. I've read about the hauntings that has occurred in the prison, and I remember MTV having a reality TV series where people are locked in a haunted place for 12 hours and that place was one of them. I don't believe in that sort of thing, but I can I can believe it with that place.

 

[TheVampwizimp_v1legacy]

I think scaring people is the point of just about all politically motivated documentaries. Which is why I don't watch them, it's not even the good kind of scary. The only documentaries I watch are the occasional historical kind, and sometimes documentaries about films, like that one about conspiracy theories around "The Shining." It's called "Room 237," and it's fascinating how many people see hidden messages in that particular film.

 

[pookie101]

the only one that actually scared me was "the titicut follies". which was an examination of Bridgewater State Hospital, a psychiatrist hospital in 1967. the treatment of patients show was that bad they would only show it to psychiatrists.

the general public were only allowed to see it in 1992

it shows patients kept in empt cells only occasionally allowed to bath, stripping patients naked publicly and washing them down, tying patients down and force feeding them. whats scary is that things didnt change until a court case in 1987 regarding the deaths of 7 patients, including one who suffocated being force fed.

 

[Zontar]

A relevant video on the subject.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Well, Citizenfour [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4044364/?ref_=nv_sr_1] only becomes more and more unnerving as time passes. Which is quite a feat for a film that mostly takes place in literally one room, with no music, barely even cinematography to speak of.

There's also The Act of Killing [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2375605/?ref_=nv_sr_1], which I haven't seen, because the mere concept and the few clips I've seen make it look like one of those "look in to the abyss", send-you-into-bottomless-existential-despair type deals.

Well, thankfully there's always the soul soothing David Attenborough narrated BBC nature documentaries. Planet Earth has become my escape from the horrors of the world recently.

 

[Cowabungaa]

Not scared, but often very disturbed. When you start finding out that the global financial market is becoming impenetrably arcane even for insiders, and keeps slipping out of the grasps of actual people in favour of automated algorithms you start feeling a little uneasy. Because those are the kind of documentaries I watch.

A relevant video on the subject.

Needs more hyperactive jump-cuts and dramatic musical stings for the American one.

 

[BarkBarker]

Documentaries about human folly throughout the years kinda gets to me a bit, watching droves of people at various periods of time get dragged up into the crowd and lose all sense of logic and reason. Innocent people die because there are groups who insist upon their way and don't wanna talk about shit. It's a bit unnerving watching your species act in a way that invites their damnation so often throughout our recorded history.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room ... given how much corporate high officers and directors are pushing for even greater immunity to shareholder contempt, I can say that the shenanigans these people get up to and think they ought to be able to do is a more accurate depiction of the modern corporate battlefield than people should want to know about.

It's hard to say it scared me ... because I've been in that situation where in AGMs there was a palpable idea of contempt fpr a board that didn't need to own a large percentage of their incomes in stock in the company they were meant to be caretakers of, didn't need to be refrained to working on only one corporate board despite a problem with obvious shell company debt hiding schemes and conflicts of interest, that palpable contempt to these untouchables that flaunt their immunity under various trading regs that the shareholders can't just go into these corporate boardrooms with a large pair of pruning shears...

To put it into perspective ... these peopel are not untouchables because they are good at their job, because they're profitable, because they grow their corporations ... they're untouchables because they say so, and they actively hurt their corporate interests ... and all we as shareholders can do is speculate on just how healthy these companies are.

These are the people that guarantee all those mom & pop investors who do not do daily trading, do not speculate on the market, that they will simply lose or flounder. In a market whereby you spend 8 hours each day, talking with consultants, listen to the right people with the right buy recommendations, may increase their holdings by 15-20% year on year on average while all those people with a day job will struggle charting 4-5% on any significant volume in terms of real value, or lose terribly, in terms of dividends and general market growth.

But if you want to see the human factors behind the marketplace and how it manipulates earnings data, plays smoke and mirrors behind abrupt and utter collapse of corporate interests, the problem with offshore accounts, excessive speculation, mark-to-market accounting ... it's a good documentary and a real eye opener. All the schemes that transform what should be easy understandings of the ideas of hypothetical venture, of debt and earnings data, of fair corporate taxation and shareholder power ... and turns it into a mystical pseudoreligion that serves only those with a near autistic degree of specialization into the arcane of number games without a basis in reality.

The last job that will ever be automated or accounted for through A.I. will be traders ... because there is no real logic behind it.

 

[Ender910_v1legacy]

One documentary that stands out for me was a Secrets of the Dead documentary on the original Jamestown colony, and how badly things deteriorated during one of its earliest winters.

The main focus of the episode being on a young teenage skeleton that had been discovered, and appeared to have been butchered, and after further analysis... seemed like she was butchered (post-mortem from disease) and cut up like meat by a professional butcher, during a long winter where starvation and cannibalism ran rampant.

Edit: Found a short snippet that covers some of what I was talking about. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txsa8v1tvXM

 

[KissingSunlight]

I was going to say "none". Until, I saw someone mention CitizenFour. I knew my personal information was compromised by the internet. To the extent that was explained in the movie, I genuinely wanted to destroy my computer and every computer in the world.

I think this observation at the end of Religulous at 4 minutes 10 seconds: "We learn how to precipitate mass death. Before we got past the neurological disorder of wishing for it." Along with the music and the images of violence and religious people anticipating world-wide destruction so they can be in their religious paradise. Makes the ending of this documentary scary.