Terror in the Woods and 5 Lifetime movies that are actually scary
By Mads Lennon
4. Lizzie Borden: Took an Ax (2014)
Lizzie Borden: Took an Ax isn’t necessarily pee-your-pants-scary, it’s more campy than anything. But this biopic of the Lizzie Borden tale is tons of fun and offers a surprising amount of bloodshed. Christina Ricci shines in the leading role.
For those unfamiliar with the sordid story of Lizzie Borden, this famous nursery rhyme says it all: “Lizzie Borden took an ax, she gave her mother forty whacks when she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one.”
Grim stuff. If you need more incentive to watch, it was successful enough for Lifetime that the network even ordered a miniseries titled The Lizzie Borden Chronicles.
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3. Happy Face Killer (2014)
David Arquette of Scream fame stars in this true-crime film from 2014. It’s a fictionalized retelling of the events leading up to serial killer Keith Hunter Jesperson’s capture. Jesperson claims to have murdered more than 180 people in total, but only eight murders were ever confirmed.
In media, most depictions of the killer have him as leaving grisly smiley faces behind. I can’t find a record of him doing that in real life, but he did write smiley faces on the notes and confessions he left for people, hence how he got the name Smiley Face/Happy Face, Killer. I recommend reading this fascinating op-ed written by his real-life daughter, Melissa Moore, about how she discovered her father was a serial killer.