The Cursed Productions: Seven Horror Films Whose Sets Were Plagued by Genuine Tragedy
From unexplained accidents to cast deaths and equipment failures that defied explanation, these productions left more than just audiences unsettled.
The idea of a cursed film set is usually dismissed as superstition dressed up as publicity. But when you examine the documented record of certain productions — the injuries, the deaths, the equipment failures that occurred under statistically improbable circumstances — the dismissal becomes harder to sustain.
The most discussed case remains The Exorcist (1973), directed by William Friedkin. During production, a fire destroyed most of the interior sets, delaying the shoot by six weeks. Nine people connected to the film died during or shortly after production, including two actors. The set was blessed by a priest at the request of the cast. Friedkin has never fully explained what he believes happened.
Poltergeist (1982) is the other canonical example. Four cast members died in the years following the trilogy's production, including Heather O'Rourke, who played Carol Anne, at the age of twelve. The production used real human skeletons as props — a cost-cutting measure that was, in retrospect, difficult to defend on any grounds.
More recently, Midsommar (2019) saw its director Ari Aster describe a production environment he called 'genuinely oppressive' — a feeling shared by multiple crew members who reported persistent unease during the Swedish location shoot, despite the film being shot almost entirely in daylight.
What distinguishes these cases from ordinary production misfortune is the clustering of incidents. Individual accidents happen on every film set. What is harder to explain is why certain productions accumulate them — and why the accumulation so often correlates with subject matter that engages, directly or obliquely, with themes of possession, haunting, and the supernatural.
The rational explanation is survivorship bias and confirmation bias: we remember the troubled productions of horror films because the narrative fits, and we forget the equally troubled productions of comedies and dramas. This is almost certainly part of the answer.
Almost certainly is not the same as entirely.