There are times when you watch a movie that is based on a
true story, that you scratch your head and just say no way. Some of the
depraved, disgusting and violent acts depicted in movies just cannot be true.
One such film that left me feeling this way was The Afflicted from Midnight
Releasing. However, after a couple emails with them on another subject, the passed on the name of the actual person and case which the movie was based. Yes, it seems, as some of the flick was fictional (the ending), but the majority of the story was indeed based on fact.
This lady, Theresa Knorr, was
that immoral and evil. Born in 1946, Knorr was convicted of torturing and murdering
two of her children and was sentenced to two-consecutive life sentences after
pleading guilty to save herself from the Death Penalty. Incredibly, some of the most intense parts of movie are in
fact true. The story arc of the mother shooting her daughter, leaving her to
rot in the bath tub handcuffed to the soap dish, nursing her back to health
before torturing her by performing surgery to remove the bullet with alcohol
and a box cutter, you guessed it, true, as was burning her body along the
roadside. The same can be said of
the death of another daughter, who was forced into prostitution by her mother,
tortured, locked in a closet until her death by dehydration and starvation some
days later.
As a fan of
horror, stories like this that are mostly true are much more disturbing than
the slasher films I grew up on. In a weird twist, it seems like religious
fanaticism lay at the heart of these and other torturous crimes that are too
hard to even imagine. Unfortunately, these tales are truly the mantra behind
the statement that sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, especially when you consider she is eligible for parole in 2027. The Afflicted is
a disturbing movie that honestly captures the darkness in this story. I definitely
applaud Midnight Releasing for pushing the boundaries with films that stay true
to the brutal depths of human darkness.
