Nearly 70 years after The Twilight Zone first hit the airwaves, it remains one of television’s most influential shows. Countless TV dramas, going back to The Outer Limits, have attempted to replicate the success of Rod Serling’s classic anthology series, and hit movies ranging from Child’s Play to Liar Liar all owe a little something to it. And when you consider that a prominent Disney World attraction basically serves as a giant billboard for the show, it’s not surprising that it’s still relevant today.
However, it’s interesting to note that three of the more well-received horror films that’ve come out in the past year were seemingly based on Twilight Zone episodes.
1. ‘Obsession’
Take Obsession, for example, which tells the story of a man who uses a novelty toy to make his crush fall in love with him. This leads the girl to obsess over him in bizarre ways, and he starts to second-guess his desire to be with her. The movie’s premise is very similar to the Twilight Zone episode “The Chaser,” whose main character buys a love potion for the same purpose. Before long, he also grows tired of his newfound lover’s stifling behavior and tries to reverse the effects of the spell he’s put on her.
2. ‘Backrooms’
Then there’s Backrooms, a sci-fi horror flick about a furniture salesman who finds what appears to be a passageway into another dimension in the store’s basement. For unknown reasons, part of the downstairs wall acts as an invisible door to a mysterious, distorted area known as the Backrooms. In The Twilight Zone’s “Little Girl Lost,” a couple’s young daughter accidentally falls through a hidden doorway in her bedroom, not unlike the one featured in the movie. Her father then has to rescue her from the strange, abstract realm he discovers beyond the entryway.
3. Passenger
Lastly, Passenger is a supernatural thriller about a demonic entity that stalks and kills the travelers it encounters on the road. In one suspenseful scene early in the film, a man tries to outrun the so-called “Passenger” in a car, but it always manages to be waiting for him up ahead. As you probably could’ve guessed by now, this concept was used on The Twilight Zone as well. In fact, Inger Stevens’s character in “The Hitch-Hiker” ran into that exact problem 66 years earlier:
And for the record, we’re not lodging a complaint here. Honestly, given how decent these movies turned out, we think it might actually be a good idea for more horror directors to rip off The Twilight Zone. There’s certainly plenty of other episodes to draw from—for the time being, at least.
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