When a state has newspaper headlines that read, “Avoid reptiles as a holiday gift,” then you know there’s a problem. Florida has a reputation as the number-one state in the US for invasive species. Over the past decade or so, more than 260 exotic animals (that we know of) have escaped their cages and fled into the Florida wilderness. We’re not only talking about lions and tigers and bears (oh my) but also rhinos, jaguars, wolves, orangutans, and just about any exotic creature you can imagine. Many of these escaped convicts remain at large.^[1] However, this list is concerned with the species that, as exotic pets set free in the wild, were able to stick around and multiply. As the wise Jeff Goldblum predicted in Jurassic Park, life will always find a way . . .

Many of us dream of having an exotic pet, like Frida Kahlo with her monkeys or Tippi Hedren’s pet lion. Well, in Florida, you don’t need any special license or certificate to own many types of exotic pets. At the University of Florida, researchers confirm that the pet trade is the main reason for the introduction of invasive species. Exotic animals often begin as innocent pets but are released or escape into the Florida wilderness, for one reason or another, where they can wreak some serious havoc. Kenneth Krysko, manager of the Florida Museum of Natural History, says, “It’s like some mad scientist has thrown these species together from all around the world and said, ‘hey, let’s put them all together and see what happens.’ ” He warns that if the trends continue, Florida may have more invasive species than native. A wildlife ecology professor at the University of Florida likened the situation to “a slow-burning fuse lit to an ecological bomb.” Meanwhile, the exotic pet industry in the US makes $15 billion annually, and people continue to buy that flashy, unique pet that sounds alluring but is severely dangerous to both them and society at large.

10 Burmese Python

The largest Burmese python discovered in the Florida wild was 5.4 meters (18 ft) long and weighed 58 kilograms (128 lb). The man who found it in the brush, being a run-of-the-mill Floridian, grabbed it by the neck and held it up to his friends to see how big it was. The python quickly wrapped its muscled body twice around the man’s legs and then reached his waist. The man’s quick-thinking friend handed him a 23-centimeter (9 in) blade, which the soon-to-be victim used to decapitate the python.^[2]

Now, it is illegal to buy a Burmese python in Florida and for good reason. People used to buy these tiny snakes, which would grow to be about 1.8 meters (6 ft) long in a year’s time. That’s either too much work or slightly horrifying, so the owners would release their beloved pets into the Everglades. This happened enough that the pythons started to breed and thrive in the wet, subtropical climate. In no time, the snakes, who can produce up to 100 hatchlings at once, became the apex predator in the region.

There was a glimmer of hope that native alligators would be able to control the rapid rise of Burmese pythons, but instead, the gators are actually being eaten themselves. In one famous case in 2005, a python tried to consume a 1.8-meter (6 ft) alligator whole, but the snake exploded in the attempt. These battles are becoming a common occurrence. Since the pythons have mostly killed all of the marsh rabbits, bobcats, and other small mammals, the Everglades now call upon hunters to eliminate as many pythons as they possibly can. The hunters are paid minimum wage by the state, plus $50 for every 1.2-meter (4 ft) snake and $25 for each additional foot. In about a year’s time, hunters have bagged 1,000 pythons.

9 Rhesus Macaque

Most people don’t know that you can ride an inner tube down the Silver River in Ocala, Florida, and likely see wild monkeys swinging from the trees as you float by. In the 1930s, the owner of a privately owned park had the harebrained idea to release an entire colony of rhesus macaques as a tourist attraction. The park staff, being the clever humans that they were, put the monkeys on an island in the Silver River for safekeeping. Surprise! They can swim. Now there are hundreds that are spreading like wildfire through Central Florida.

These feral troublemakers travel in large gangs, and they can be aggressive when they feel threatened. They have been terrorizing people in their own backyards, but that’s not even the worst part.^[3] Recently, it was discovered that these macaques carry a herpes virus that spreads to humans through excrement and other bodily fluids. Having feces flung at you from a primate is horrifying enough without the fear of contracting herpes, thank you very much.

On that note, above is a hilarious video of the rhesus macaques chasing down a terrified family. Enjoy.

8 Green Iguana

Iguanas are Florida’s most invasive species. This green menace creates mayhem in suburbia, from leaving gifts in swimming pools and gobbling up gardens to disrupting electrical grids and causing power outages. People discard iguanas as pets because they are more work than expected, as they grow up to 1.8 meters (6 ft) long and require a ton of food. During mating season, they become increasingly hostile and lash out at their owners by biting them. On top of that, they may just try to escape through the doggie door.

Sadly, Floridians have resorted to combating this pest problem they created by using blunt-force trauma. In other words, people are paid to sneak up on them in the dead of night while they sleep and bash in their skulls. Jenny Ketterlin, a wildlife biologist who works for this $63,000 project commissioned by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, ensures the public that swiftly smashing their brains open is actually the most humane way to kill them.^[4] Well, it’s good practice for the zombie apocalypse, I suppose.

7 Nile Monitor: Largest Lizard In Africa

The Nile monitor is yet another escapee from the pet trade that is now calling Florida home, sweet home. Instead of soaking in the sun along the Nile Delta, where they belong, they have wormed their way through Cape Coral’s extensive canal system since the 1990s. These skilled swimmers can reach a gruesome 2.1 meters (7 ft) long. They consume whatever they can get, whether that’s a wasp nest, poisonous cane toad, or venomous rattlesnake. Like wolves, they hunt in packs. Occasionally, they pop up from the canals to make a surprise appearance in someone’s backyard. Hopefully they aren’t hungry because they’ve been known to snack on cats and dogs.

It is incredibly difficult to eradicate them, as nobody has ever found a single monitor lizard nest. There are estimated to be at least 1,000 of these giant beasts currently roaming the Florida canals, tidal creeks, and mangroves. These giant lizards may also be seen if you happen to look up, as they are expert tree-climbers, so beware.^[5]

6 Capybara

Do you know what doesn’t sound like an ideal pet? The largest rodent in the world. A capybara is basically like a 45-kilogram (100 lb) guinea pig that’s semiaquatic. It turns out, that’s not as cute as some pet owners thought it would be. Go figure! As of 2016, there were about 50 capybaras running amok in Florida. In its South American home, it has predators like the puma and jaguar, but in Florida, there are no coyotes or dogs big enough to take down a capybara.

It doesn’t help matters that they are social animals, traveling in groups through thick forest.^[6] As if Florida hunters didn’t have enough game to contend with, let’s throw a giant guinea pig in the mix.

5 ‘Testicle-Eating’ Pacu Fish

The South American pacu fish has an unusual bite because of its eerie, humanlike set of teeth. They are a cousin to the flesh-eating piranha, but instead of the razor-sharp teeth of their cousins, they have teeth that are blunt like our molars. The pacu also grows to be much, much larger. They typically reach about 22.7 kilograms (50 lb) throughout South-Central Florida.

Even though the pacu is normally not an imminent threat to men’s genitalia, it did receive the moniker of “testicle-eating” fish for a good reason. According to Henrik Carl, a fish expert at the National History Museum of Denmark, “There have been incidents in other countries, such as Papua New Guinea, where some men have had their testicles bitten off. They bite because they’re hungry, and testicles sit nicely in their mouth.”^[7] It’s no wonder why owners released these exotic fish! Suddenly, the bizarre allure of a human smile on a fish feels a bit more sinister.

4 Giant African Land Snails

The giant African land snail is not to be confused with any meager snail of small proportions. It is, in fact, the world’s largest terrestrial mollusk. We’re talking a 20-centimeter-long (8 in) snail that’s 10 centimeters (4 in) in diameter. This destructive little creature carries a parasitic worm that burrows into humans and spreads meningitis. It consumes at least 500 types of plants and causes permanent damage to the plaster and stucco of buildings. An adult lays up to 1,200 eggs in a single year, and with no natural predators in Florida, there’s no end in sight for its infestation.

It’s a bit of a mystery why giant African land snails populate South Florida. They are illegal to import into the United States without a permit, and no permits have ever been issued. While no one is positive, it seems the pet trade is to blame for the giant snail takeover. The last known invasion was in 1966, when a young boy smuggled three snails into the country as his secret pets. When his grandma found out, she made him set them free in the garden. It cost more than $1 million to eradicate the 18,000 snails that this incident created.

Another suspicion is that the current infestation of hundreds of thousands of giant African land snails in South Florida has been the result of religious ritual. Santeria is an Afro-Caribbean religion steeped in traditions that developed from the Cuban slave trade. Some of the religious rituals put emphasis on the juice of these snails. It’s suspected that they are smuggled into the country for this purpose.^[8]

3 Wild Boars

Wild boars have been roaming free throughout the Sunshine State since the 1500s, when Hernando de Soto brought them to Florida, not as a beloved pet but as a food source. Now, it has been over 500 years, and these feral pigs are nowhere near domesticated. Four million wild boars have spread across the United States, but in Florida alone, there are half a million.

They are an aggressive, tusked, 91-kilogram (200 pound) Old World swine that carry up to 24 diseases, from tuberculosis to cholera, and constantly consume farmers’ feed and even livestock. They are difficult to control, to say the least, as they are basically one giant muscle. There are also all the usual unpleasantries of invasive species, like damaging native plants and competing with native species. It basically messes up the proper chain of events that lets an ecosystem flourish.

As a result of their continued population growth, Florida hunters have trained bloodhounds to track them down at night. There are no rules that limit hunting to a certain season. There are no size, bag, or gender restrictions. Behind the white-tailed deer, the wild boar is the second most popular animal to hunt in Florida. Some inventive entrepreneurs are even flipping the boar problem on its head, making profit by serving them up on a platter and calling them prime pork.^[9] Bacon anyone?

2 African Clawed Frog

Before modern-day pregnancy tests were invented, doctors used an African clawed frog to assess the situation. The procedure involved exposing the frog to a woman’s urine, commonly via injection, and waiting for hours to see what would happen. If the frog laid eggs, it meant the woman was having a baby. This method of pregnancy detection remained popular until the 1970s, when modern pregnancy kits went on the market.

Needless to say, there was a high demand for African clawed frogs until this time. Thousands of these little critters were shipped from South Africa to labs and hospitals, not only in the US but all over the world. To supply the high demand, they were bred in captivity. They were easy to care for, so a pet trade developed around them in the 1950s and 1960s. From unwanted pets and escapees to doctors releasing them from their labs due to technology advancements, they multiplied fast. These frogs with clawed toes live for up to 15 years in the wild, and females create 27,000 eggs per reproductive cycle.^[10] Their growing numbers are alarming, to say the least.

1 ‘Man-Eater’ Nile Crocodile

The Nile crocodile can grow over 6 meters (20 ft) long and weigh as much as a small car. They eat whatever they can get hold of, including the occasional human (hence its description of “man-eater”). From sub-Saharan Africa, they were introduced to South Florida, presumably via the pet trade, even though whoever thought that a crocodile would make a great pet clearly didn’t have a permit.

Nile crocodiles are much more dangerous than the native alligator population in Florida. In six years, American alligators and crocodiles were the cause of 33 human fatalities, but in the same time period, the Nile crocodile killed 268 people. As far as we know, they have been surviving and breeding for at least six years in the Florida swamps.^[11] As if Floridians didn’t have enough monsters lurking in the water.

In the wilderness, we have little control over our surroundings, and, whether a provincial park, a rain forest, a crocodile-infested area along a flooded river, or another forbidding location, our environment can be hostile, dangerous, or even deadly.

Trees obscure lines of sight; darkness impedes vision; sounds in the darkness seem ominous. Especially in remote locations, the wilderness isolates us, cutting us off from civilization and the assistance that social institutions and government agencies could otherwise provide. No ambulances, fire trucks, or police cruisers are standing by; no emergency telephone operators await our calls; no infrastructure of highways, hospitals, and other resources is available.

In movies that combine horror with wilderness environments, characters are likewise vulnerable and helpless. They are alone, in the dark, among wild animals or other threats. They may find themselves in the presence of killers, some of whom could be family members or friends. These 10 wilderness horror movies based on horrific true stories may make us think twice about power outages, camping, traveling, or even staying home alone.

Top 10 Classic Horror Movie Misconceptions

10 Razorback

Based on Peter Brennan’s novel of the same title, Russell Mulcahy’s 1984 film Razorback features opening footage that alludes to the investigation of the murder of Azaria Chamberlain, who was allegedly carried off and devoured by a dingo.

On August 16, 1980, as the Chamberlain family enjoyed dinner with other campers who had set up in an Uluru campsite near Ayer’s Rock, they heard their infant daughter scream. The child’s bassinet, which was situated just inside the opening of their tent, was empty: baby Azaria was missing! Searchers discovered a trail of paw marks accompanied by marks of the bassinet, but Azaria was not found.

When the Chamberlains, Seventh-Day Adventists mistaken for Jehovah’s Witnesses, returned home, rumors spread that they had sacrificed their daughter to atone for the world’s sins or because she was the devil’s child. Denis Barritt, the coroner, sought to dispel these wild stories, but he was replaced by Coroner Jerry Galvin, and Barritt’s findings were overturned.

The baby’s mother, Lindy, was tried, found guilty, and spent two years in prison before she was released. A review of her case by a Royal Commission found that laboratory findings had been misrepresented or falsified. For example, Azira’s “blood,” found in the family’s car, turned out to be the remnants of a “spilled milkshake,” and the baby’s “blood” on nail scissors was identified as the “industrial chemical, Dufiz 101, sprayed on during manufacture.” The Northern Territory Supreme Court “fully exonerated” Lindy and her husband Michael.

The parallels to the Chamberlain’s horrific experience and that of the film’s protagonist, Jake Cullen (Bill Kerr), are clear. While he babysits his grandson at his home in the Australian Outback, a razorback boar breaks into the house, making off with the child to devour. Charged with murdering the child, Jake is finally acquitted due to a lack of evidence. The movie’s plot then takes a direction of its own, as Jake seeks vengeance against the razorback, blaming the boar for the destruction of his reputation, borrowing now, perhaps, from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.

9 Alive

Directed by Frank Marshall, Alive (1993) recounts the horrific ordeal experienced by a rugby team and the player’s family members and friends as they fly to a match in Chile. The movie, based on Piers Paul Read’s 1974 book Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors, is horrifying, but the actual incidents on which the film is based are even ghastlier and more horrendous.

Not much of their plane survived the crash into the Andes that occurred on Friday the 13th, October 1972. Lying on its side on the snow-covered mountainside, its nose crumpled, its wings sheared off, and its tail pulverized, the remains of the fuselage were smashed and dented.

Roberto Canessa, another surviving member of the rugby team, also wrote an account of the ordeal. In his own book, I Had to Survive,
he recalled the “irreversible” decision that he and three others made, a choice that cost them their “innocence.” Cut off from “vegetation” and “animal life,” the survivors “lacked food,” he reported, although they “knew the answer”: “The bodies of our friends and team-mates, preserved outside in the snow and ice, contained vital, life-giving protein that could help us survive.” Nevertheless, they resisted: “It was too terrible to contemplate.”

Finally, nine days following the crash, hunger persuaded them. “I will never forget that first incision nine days after the crash,” Canessa declared, explaining how he and the other three men cut “thin strips of frozen flesh” from the dead and “laid [them] aside on a piece of sheet metal” to be claimed and consumed when each of the men “could bear to” do so.

Twenty-seven of the 45 passengers aboard the ill-fated aircraft survived the crash, but an avalanche killed an additional eight. The slide also carried off the dead, upon whose flesh the men had been feeding. Canessa recalled steeling himself “to do what needed to be done,” as he decided “to use one of the bodies of the newly dead.”

The survivors were not rescued until December 23, seventy-two days after the airplane’s crash. At home again, Canessa confessed, “Mother, we had to eat our dead friends.” “That’s okay, that’s okay, sweetie,” she replied. The son also told his father that he would next inform the families of those he’d eaten of his deed. To his surprise, Canessa found them to be understanding and “supportive.”

Now a pediatric cardiologist, Canessa attributes his survival to his family and his desire to see them again.

8 Cabin Fever

An eruption of psoriasis resulting in “cracked and bleeding” legs that made walking impossible and a later infection on his face, resulting in his shaving “off chunks of [his] face,” made Eli Roth, the director of Cabin Fever (2002), realize that “weird things . . . can happen to your body.” These unsettling experiences also helped him to realize that a similar infection “would be a great idea for a horror movie.” The result was Cabin Fever, which involves a flesh-eating virus.

Since the movie is a horror film, audiences know something horrific will happen, but the infection of a hermit who stumbles upon a dead dog and becomes a bloody, disfigured mess as a result is also certainly a clue that disgusting and terrible incidents are at hand, especially when the hermit vomits blood during a visit to the cabin of college students vacationing in the deep woods. When one of the vacationers, Karen, develops an infection between her legs, the audience receives another clue that things are probably going to get much worse before they get better, if they get better.

7 Wolf Creek

Wolfe Creek National Park in the Western Australian Outback is the setting for the movie Wolf Creek (2005) directed by Greg McLean. British tourists Liz Hunter (Cassandra Magrath) and Kristy Earl (Kestie Morassi) and their Australian friend Ben Mitchell (Nathan Phillips) are victimized by Mick Taylor (John Jarratt), who poses as a good Samaritan after the trio’s car fails on the Great Northern Highway, leaving them stranded.

In reality, as Joanne Lees points out in her autobiographical account of her horrific ordeal, No Turning Back: My Journey, the movie’s British tourists were Peter Falconio and Lees herself, who were traveling the Stuart Highway at night, 2,000 kilometers from Wolfe Creek National Park. They were between Alice Springs and Darwin when a mechanic, Bradley John Murdoch, pulled them over to advise them that their vehicle’s exhaust was throwing sparks. Murdoch shot Falconio and bound Lees, placing her in his own four-wheel-drive vehicle, while he concealed Falconio’s body. She escaped, staying hidden in the bush until Murdoch gave up looking for her. Later, she was assisted by two truck drivers, after she’d walked back onto the highway. Murdoch was subsequently arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to serve from 28 years to life in prison.

The movie’s Mick Taylor is also based on serial killer Ivan Milat, who, during the 1990s, took hitchhikers whom he picked up in New South Wales into the Belango State Forest, where he tortured and killed them. McLean added elements of the actual cases involving Murdoch, Lees, Falconio, Milat, and Milat’s victims only after he’d learned of them, following his writing of his film’s original script. Art imitates life, it seems—and vice versa.

6 Turistas

Director John Stockwell’s warning to potential cast members of his upcoming film Turistas (2006) indicated the discomforts and potential dangers they would face in the wilderness if they signed on to star in the movie, which was to be shot on location in the rain forests of Brazil. The actors’ home would be a tent. Their chairs would be rocks. They’d wade through water polluted with bat excrement. They’d probably be injured, although, he added, it was highly unlikely any of them would die.

A bizarre incident that occurred to Stockwell during a surfing expedition in Peru interested him in directing Turistas. He’d been “robbed,” he said, “by a group of 13-year-old, glue-sniffing kids and had been shot at.” When he reported the incident to the local police, they said he could “kill” his attackers in exchange for $300. Upon his return to the United States, he read the script for Turistas, and “it resonated” with him, he said.

In the movie itself, American tourists Alex (Josh Duhamel), his sister Bea (Olivia Wilde), and Bea’s friend Amy (Beau Garrett) are backpacking through Brazil when they’re joined by British men Finn (Desmond Askew) and Liam (Max Brown). Drugged during a party, they awaken stranded on a deserted beach, the latest turistas to become part of a heinous black-market enterprise.

5 Backcountry

Possibly, the black bear wandering a provincial park in northern Ontario, Canada, had developed a taste for human flesh and blood. The animal attacked Jacqueline Perry while she was camping with her husband Mark Jordan eighty kilometers north of Chapleau. He fought back, stabbing the predator with his Swiss Army knife, before the bear could drag his wife further into the deep woods.

Jordan carried his badly injured wife to their kayak and paddled to the closest campsite, where he was assisted by a father and son from Pennsylvania who were visiting the park. Unfortunately, although a North Carolina doctor treated Perry aboard the Pennsylvanians’ boat, Perry did not survive the ordeal.

The couple’s horrific experience inspired the movie Backcountry (2014) directed by Adam MacDonald. In the film, thanks to Alex (Jeff Roop), he and his girlfriend Jen (Missy Peregrym), a lawyer, get lost during a weekend camping trip to a provincial park, and Alex fights a bear, allowing Jen to escape. The bear kills and devours him, but she lives, finds her way back to the shore of the lake where she and Alex beached their canoe, and paddles across a lake to a group of tourists and their guide. Although she has broken her leg in a fall and is much the worse, emotionally and physically, she survives, unlike Alex.

MacDonald was inspired by Open Water (2003), in which a couple are attacked by sharks after they are stranded at sea. He wanted Backcountry to be an “Open Water in the woods,” he said. However, rather than having Jen be attacked and killed by the bear, he made Alex the victim because he wanted to show the experience that caused Jen to become a strong woman. In the film, he said, audiences “can actually see the moment where she becomes strong and faces life for what it is.” The test of her ordeal was a test of her character, and her survival proved her mettle, MacDonald suggests.

Gov. Gen. Michaëlle Jean was so impressed by Jordan’s bravery that she awarded him the Star of Courage for protecting Perry in an attempt to save her life at the risk of losing his own, during which attempt he received wounds requiring 300 stitches. The governor said that the award is reserved for “acts of conspicuous courage in circumstances of great peril.”

4 Bodom

Directed by Taneli Mustonen, the Finnish film Bodom (2016) concerns four young adults who camp near Lake Bodominjärvi in Espoo, a city in Finland’s Uusimaa region. The director, who had grown up in Outokumpu, thought the events surrounding a murder mystery constituted an intriguing story, but he also saw a problem with making such a film. How could he make “a universal topic,” such as “young people camping,” offer audiences “something new”? Visiting “the scene when the murder trial was reopened in 2004,” he found his answer: “I went there on a trek during the trial and noticed that there were young people out there looking for that same headland. That’s when I got the idea for the movie.”

In the film, friends, Nora, Elias, Atte, and Ida, go camping near Lake Bodom, as Lake Bodominjärvi is called. They aren’t just vacationing, though: they want to reconstruct the murders that occurred there in 1960. Unfortunately, they themselves encounter a killer. Interesting twists follow, although the ending of the film may strain its audience’s credulity.

3 Black Water

Black Water (2018), written and directed by Andrew Traucki and David Nerlich, is set in an Australian mangrove swamp, the home of hungry crocodiles. During a vacation, Grace (Dianna Glenn), her husband Adam (Andy Rodoreda), and Grace’s sister Lee (Maeve Dermody), take in a crocodile show. The next day, during a fishing trip, a crocodile capsizes the boat they’ve rented, and their armed guide (Ben Oxenboul) is killed, leaving the hapless vacationers alone with the swamp’s top predator and no help in sight.

According to an article in The Guardian, “The Wet,” located in Australia’s Northern Territory, is notorious for the occurrence of “tropical cyclones, monsoon rains, and stifling humidity,” its downpours frequently flooding the Finniss River and turning dry land to mud and “partially submerging . . . trees.” The area’s crocodiles have killed as many as a dozen people, including tourists, over the last two decades, and the reptiles’ attacks are the basis of Black Water’s storyline. However, as the Guardian’s article points out, although Black Water “claims to be ‘based on true events,’” it is, in reality, merely a “monster” movie, the “horror” of which does not approach that of the actual victims’ anguish and terror.

2 Cocaine Bear

Cocaine Bear hasn’t been made yet. Its production is scheduled for the summer of 2021. The movie’s script is based on a 1980 incident: a parachuting drug smuggler, finding it necessary to lighten his load, dropped bags of cocaine as he drifted over Georgia, and a 175-pound black bear helped itself to the unexpected treat, dying as a result of an overdose.

A few months later, a hunter found the bear dead in the Chattahoochee National Forest in Georgia, its belly “literally packed to the brim with cocaine,” according to the animal’s autopsy, and the bear suffered “cerebral hemorrhaging, respiratory failure, hypothermia, renal failure, heart failure, [and] stroke.” The ursine victim was stuffed and sold to various owners, including country singer Waylon Jennings. In 2015, the animal was on display, under the name Pablo Escobear, at the Kentucky Fun Mall. Soon, greater exposure will follow, with the premiere of Cocaine Bear!

The bizarre event attracted the attention of producers Phil Lord and Chris Miller, who plan to produce the movie as part of their deal with Universal Pictures. Elizabeth Banks will direct.

1 The Widow

Due in the spring of 2021, The Widow, directed by Svyatoslav Podgaevsky, is set in a thick forest north of St. Petersburg, Russia, where people have been disappearing for thirty years, often without a trace, and the few bodies that have been found were invariably naked. Now that a teenage girl has vanished, volunteers search for her among the dense trees and brush. Mysteriously, they lose communication with one another, leading the local population to wonder whether this strange incident is further work of the Limping Widow’s spirit.

The movie, starring Viktotiya Potemina, Anastasiya Gribova, and Margarita Bychkova, is based on the strange fact that 300 people each year actually do go missing in this part of the country. As in the film, when the bodies of the dead are discovered, they are sometimes naked and bear no signs of violence. Ironically, the crew began filming on October 14, 2018, the Holy Virgin’s Day, when, folklore claims, the forest becomes a deadly location. As far as we know, folklore doesn’t account for the corpses’ nudity, however. The picture is scheduled for North American release on digital, on-demand, DVD, and Blu-Ray in March 2021.

Top 10 Must-See Recent Genre-Defying Horrors

About The Author: An English instructor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, Gary L. Pullman lives south of Area 51, which, according to his family and friends, explains “a lot.” His four-book series, An Adventure of the Old West, is available on Amazon.