It’s official: one of the most depraved creepypasta stories ever is being turned into a feature-length movie. The Russian Sleep Experiment – the messed-up urban legend about a 1940s psychological endurance test – scarred audiences when it first circulated online in 2010. It involved five subjects facing forced sleep deprivation, cannibalism and other horrific consequences. Now, in The Soviet Sleep Experiment – due for release in 2024 – we’ll get to see it acted out in all its dark, macabre detail.
But it’s not the first example of the disturbed world of creepypasta getting a screen adaptation. The stories, usually written by lowkey online nightmare-makers, have regularly been transformed from internet lore into terrifying big-screen movies or television shows — another upcoming project being A24’s movie on the haunting Backrooms made by the OG video creator. Before you dive into The Soviet Sleep Experiment, though, here are seven creepypasta adaptations that will keep you awake at night.
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The Rake
20 years after their parents’ death, brother and sister Ben and Ashley come together to try and make sense of what happened to them. In the process of doing so, they uncover The Rake, the violent supernatural creature responsible for killing their parents who, it turns out, won’t stop until their entire family is dead. The Rake is inspired by the creepypasta story of the same name, of a violent force that haunts upstate New York. Read the original story here and stream the movie on Plex here.
Living Dark: The Story of Ted the Caver
When two estranged brothers reunite on the day of their father’s funeral, they learn of how he met his fate. Compelled to find out what led him to the cave where he died, and what it was that killed him, they visit themselves, only to find the sinister forces lurking inside it. The film is based on the 2000 creepypasta story Ted the Caver, a thoroughly documented breakdown of the dangerous cave from those who claim to have discovered it. Read the original story here and stream the movie on Amazon Prime Video here.
We’re All Going to the World’s Fair
Not directly inspired by a creepypasta story, but instead a film about a teenager living within the community itself, We’re All Going to the World’s Fair is a skewed take on internet horror. In it, Casey, a loner teenager living with her dad, quells her boredom by undergoing the ‘World’s Fair Challenge’ online – repeating a riff on the titular phrase on camera, smearing blood across her screen and staring into strobe lights. It opens a portal into a weird online world full of sleepwalking and shotguns. Stream the movie on Max here.
Beware the Slenderman
The Slender Man story is arguably the most iconic creepypasta tale, but it also spawned a real-life crime. Beware the Slenderman is a documentary that recounts the attempted murder of Bella Leutner, a teenage girl who was attacked by her two school friends, who claimed they were enlisted to kill her at the direction of Slender Man himself. Read the original Slender Man story here and stream the movie on Max here.
Channel Zero
Widely considered the most thorough and well-made creepypasta adaptation, the horror anthology series Channel Zero dedicates one season to a story taken from that universe. From the story of Candle Cove (about a violent and sadistic TV series only young children can recall seeing), to The Dream Door (about a couple tormented by what lies behind a mysterious door in their house) creator and showrunner Nick Antosca made four seasons of the show. He went on to create hit series like The Act and the TV Chucky reboot.
Severance
This hit Apple TV+ series is set inside a biotech firm in which its employees go through a mindwipe, separating their work lives from the lives they lead outside of it. But as the separation between the two becomes starker, one employee strays off and discovers a conspiracy at the heart of it. The show is loosely inspired by the creepypasta legend The Backrooms, which revolves around a repetitive liminal space that people “noclip” into, separating themselves from reality. Read the original The Backrooms story here and stream the show on Apple TV+ here.
Always Watching: A Marble Hornets Story
A Sony Pictures adaptation of the Slender Man story was released – and quickly derided – in 2018. Real fans know the superior take is this, a low-budget 2015 film about a local news crew visiting repossessed houses who stumble upon a box of video tapes. On them, they discover footage of a ghostly figure (one we know better as Slender Man) terrorising a family, and soon realise this figure, known as “The Operator”, is stalking them too. Read up on the Marble Hornets mythology here and stream the movie on Amazon Prime here.