Updated:
Save
When we talk about horror, we think of ghosts, monsters and other supernatural creatures. However, the tangible, the real, is almost always more frightening, because it is known to be possible and, therefore, true. On that fine and awesome line moves Ryan Murphyresponsible for the last two successes of Netflix.
First it was ‘Dahmer’, about the true story of Jeffrey Dahmer, a murderer who dismembered and ate his victims and who he played in fiction Evan Peters. Now the creator returns to the fray with ‘Vigilant’, which is now available on the streaming platform. “These docuseries serve us to reaffirm our moral points of view about what is right and wrong and make us feel more alive than ever”, analyzed the psychologist Ciara Molina in an event dedicated to the ‘realities’ of NBCUniversal organized by Hayu.
In ‘Vigilante’, which premiered on Netflix last week, Dean (Bobby Cannavale) and Nora Brannock (Naomi Watts) have just bought the house of their dreams in the idyllic neighborhood of Westfield, New Jersey. After spending all their savings, they realize that the neighbors are not exactly friendly. There’s an eccentric older woman named Pearl (Mia Farrow) and her brother Jasper (Terry Kinney), who breaks into the Brannocks’ house and hides in the dumbwaiter; Karen (Jennifer Coolidge), Nora’s old acquaintance and real estate agent, who makes them feel out of place; and Mitch (Richard Kind) and Mo (Margo Martindale), two busybodies who seem ignorant of what house boundaries mean. The icy welcome soon turns into downright hell when they start receiving disturbing letters from someone calling himself ‘the vigilante’. The frightened family is pushed to the brink as the neighborhood’s sinister secrets come to light.
Vigilante: A house more expensive than cursed
The series created by Ryan Murphy is based on the true story of Derek and Maria Broaddus, a married couple whose life was changed by a move. In 2014, they bought a 1,180-square-meter mansion in Westfield, New Jersey, for $1.4 million, an idyllic home built in 1905. Shortly after moving into the house, however, the couple began to receive strange letters signed as ‘the vigilante’, just like in the Netflix series. “657 Boulevard has been in my family for decades, and as his 110th birthday approaches, I’ve been tasked with watching and waiting (…) My grandfather watched the house in the 1920s and my father watched it in the 1920s.” 1960. Now is my time. Do you know the history of the house? Do you know what’s inside the walls of 657 Boulevard? Why are you here? », could be read in the first letter.
The stalker sent more letters, terrifying the family. He made reference to intimate details of the Broaddus, threatened the children of the marriage and vetoed the works in the house. The Broaddus took the case to the authorities and denounced the previous owners, the Woods. Just a year after buying the New Jersey home, they decided to move away from this strange stalker without solving the case or finding out his identity.
There were multiple suspects, family neighbors, video game fans… and female DNA was found, but it was never known who the vigilante was. It was even suspected that everything was part of a scam by the Broaddus family itself, who received the last letter from the mysterious stalker when they testified against the Woods. “Perhaps a car accident. Maybe a fire. Maybe something as simple as a minor illness that never seems to go away, but makes you feel bad day after day. Perhaps the mysterious death of a pet. Loved ones die suddenly. Planes, cars and bicycles collide. Bones break,” read the text.
We want to say thanks to the writer of this short article for this amazing content
The mysterious true story behind ‘Vigilante’, the new horror series from the creator of ‘Dahmer’