Editorials
How 2016 Horror Brought Two Terrifying Internet Images to Life
It was the summer of scares. And it was awesome.
This year, despite any reports to the contrary, was a great one for the horror genre, and that’s true of both the indie output and the studio output. Oddly enough, horror reigned supreme at the summer box office in 2016, and two of the films that were both critical and financial successes in those warm months were sequel The Conjuring 2 and shark attack flick The Shallows.
Both films, though they deal with entirely different subject matter, share the common bond of bringing truly nightmarish images to the big screen this year, whether we’re talking about the demonic nun in The Conjuring 2 or that Jaws-like killer shark in The Shallows. And two of those images, well, they were plucked right out of the Internet’s “nightmare fuel” folder.
In The Conjuring 2, James Wan made good on a promise teased at the end of the first film by kicking off the hit sequel in Amityville, New York. Like in real life, Ed and Lorraine Warren arrive at the infamous Ocean Avenue home to help out the Lutz family, and it’s in the home that Lorraine comes face-to-face with one of the murdered DeFeo children.
The boy, who has glowing white eyes, stares at Lorraine from behind a wall, and if that terrifying image seemed familiar with you, it’s probably because you have indeed seen it before. A ghost photo taken inside the real Amityville house has become the stuff of legend here on the Internet over the years, and Wan brilliantly brought that very image to life in The Conjuring 2…
The real photo, seen at the top of this post, has never been disproven as a hoax, and while many believe that it’s the spirit of young John DeFeo that was captured by the camera, others are convinced it’s merely one of the investigators who was on the scene at the time. Why then are his eyes completely white? A camera glitch, perhaps? We may never know.
Either way, the creepy photo inspired James Wan, and made for one hell of a spooky scene.
And then there’s The Shallows, which similarly drew inspiration from a photo that has surely been shared to Reddit’s “Creepy” sub-site. It’s hard to tell whether it’s real or not, as many Photoshop experts over the years have conjured up nightmarish shark images, but this particular photo shows a surfer riding a wave… and there’s a big ass shark literally inside that wave…
The most striking image from Jaume Collet-Serra’s The Shallows is almost exactly that image…
Pure nightmare fuel is the only way to describe the scene, which sees Blake Lively’s character get attacked for the first time by the shark she battles throughout the film. Like the surfer in the photo above the screen-grab, we see the shark but the ill-fated character does not, and the sight of it quickly approaching her from within the water is truly breathtaking in the scariest of ways.
Fiction? Reality? Horror is often at its most effective when it’s blending the two.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Daniel Kraus took the literary world by storm back in 2023 with the release of his hit novel Whalefall. A terrifying yet intimate survival thriller with mythological undertones, the book was almost immediately bombarded with offers from movie studios wanting to adapt its claustrophobic imagery to the big screen.
Fast forward to June of 2026, and we finally got our first glimpse at Brian Duffield’s long-awaited adaptation of Whalefall, starring Austin Abrams as our unfortunate lead who gets swallowed alive by a sperm whale. While this two-and-a-half-minute teaser only covers the beginning of the story, it’s already been making waves online (and in-person at select 4DX promotional screenings) as one of the most stressful cinematic experiences of the year.
In fact, my own wife had to cover her eyes and exclaim, “You’re definitely not dragging me to watch this one” when we saw the whale’s jaws begin to close in on Abrams, with this incident alone already leaving me convinced that this will likely be one of the biggest genre hits of the year. With that in mind, I’d like to invite you to take a closer look at the teaser in order to break down interesting details and get a better idea of what’s in store for genre fans when the movie finally comes out this October.
Of course, as usual, don’t forget to comment below if you noticed something we didn’t!
Now, without further ado, here are five things we learned from the Whalefall trailer!
5. Austin Abrams Performed Many of His Own Stunts
Much like in his previous film, No One Will Save You, Duffield insisted that this visceral experience should be grounded by our main character’s believable reactions, regardless of the plot’s effects-heavy setup. That’s why the camera always makes sure to linger on Abrams through his diving mask, so we know that it’s really him going through this ordeal alongside the audience.
While plenty of CGI was used in order to bring this larger-than-life story to the big screen without killing our leading man, Abrams apparently insisted on performing many of his underwater stunts himself (several of which are visible in the trailer) – much to the chagrin of a worried Duffield and the flick’s stunt coordinator, Shauna Duggins.
4. The Film Seamlessly Transitions Between the California Coast and Underwater Sets
Duffield obviously wasn’t about to drag his crew out to the middle of the ocean and shoot inside a real sperm whale, but it’s reassuring to see the filmmaker blend on-location footage with the underwater tank segments and the literal belly of the whale set.
There may be plenty of CGI stitching these elements together, but the trailer shows us that only the truly impossible shots are completely digital, meaning that the filmmakers didn’t take the easy way out when it came to adapting this unique story.
3. The Whale is Only Part of the Story
Book adaptations tend to leave out inner monologues and the occasional flashback in order to streamline the narrative (which is one reason why it’s so difficult to translate Stephen King novels to the big screen), but a claustrophobic parable like Kraus’ Whalefall would get a bit dull after a while if the whole thing was entirely set within the creature’s stomach.
That’s why it’s such a relief that the trailer hints at how Duffield will also be adapting many of the book’s introspective moments chronicling our protagonist’s harsh upbringing under his troubled father. Not only do these inclusions give the audience some much-appreciated breathing room, but they also give Josh Brolin a chance to shine as a truly complicated character.
2. The Movie is Keeping the Book’s Scientific Accuracy…
While Kraus’ novel was inspired by a viral video of kayakers nearly being swallowed by a humpback whale, the writer ended up consulting with marine biologists about exactly what kind of situation might lead to a whale actually eating a human being alive.
The answer was surprisingly specific, as cetaceans are almost universally known to be friendly towards humans. However, even a gentle giant can make mistakes, and as we see in the trailer, Abrams’ unpleasant fate is more of an accident than anything else – with the massive sperm whale only trapping the poor diver in the first (and thankfully acid-free) chamber of its stomach due to a mix-up involving a giant squid.
Fortunately for the film’s special effects artists, they can now reference the first-ever footage of a real-life sperm whale chowing down on one such squid, as this freaky recording was released late last year.
1. …With a Catch!
Duffield may be doing his best to recreate the grounded (or is it submerged?) thrills of Kraus’ novel, but there are limits to what can be depicted onscreen while still guaranteeing an entertaining movie. That’s why it’s no surprise that Whalefall will take advantage of certain cinematic parlor tricks as the director tests the limits of both physics and biology so we can actually watch his movie.
For starters, the innards of the whale itself have been greatly exaggerated so there’s enough space to make out the action, and in the spirit of movies like Neil Marshall’s The Descent, there also seems to be plenty of non-diegetic lighting meant to show us what’s going on even if Abram’s character wouldn’t necessarily be able to see anything.
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