The genre of horror films is widely arrayed with each movie spinning every which way, with some being told as a “true story” and others being utterly fictionalized. As one of the more popular and specified as truly told stories, the film The Amityville Horror is one of the most speculated horrific happenings. The film touches on the murders of the DeFeo family by their oldest son Ronald DeFeo Jr. The film centers on a supposed haunting of Ronald and the entire family inside of their house in Amityville. But the Netflix documentary The Real Story: The Amityville Horror tells the true horror of Amityville that occurred in 1974 without the faked aspect of a haunting.

The documentary first catches its audience’s attention with the words “The Real Story” infused into its title and continues to carry a theme of truthfulness throughout its entirety. The producers of the documentary use credible critics to their advantage in convincing their audience of misleading information from previous films and books produced in favor of a haunting rather than murder. The critics also go on to explain Ronald’s troubled relationship with his father leading up to him murdering his family. This allows the audience to determine that a troubled past explains the murder of his family. Another aspect that the producers ingrained into the documentary was the overall aspect of its audience as being previously lied to and lead astray.

Although the producers end the documentary with speculation of the DeFeo’s family murders, they were successful in convincing their audience that it was indeed murder and not an acclaimed haunting.