Heather Graham is about to have quite a spooky couple of months. On October 7, she’ll appear as part of the cast of Mike Flanagan‘s modernized Stephen King adaptation, Carrie, on Prime Video, playing the mother of vicious mean girl Chris Hargensen. Before that, however, the veteran actress of Boogie Nights and Drugstore Cowboy fame is taking on one of the most famous reported cases of paranormal activity in U.S. history. What Happened to Doris? makes its world premiere at the 21st iteration of Fantastic Fest this month and casts Graham as single mother Doris Bither, who was allegedly violently assaulted by an unseen entity in her Culver City home in 1974.
As part of Collider’s Exclusive Preview series, we can share a new image from the horror flick that shows Graham looking deeply uncomfortable in her home. Knowing the reality of what happened there gives the wide shot of her alone at the table, pencil in hand, a sense of dread that this normal home could become a house of horrors at any moment. In the real-life case, also known as the Entity haunting, Bither claimed to have experienced torment from one or more invisible beings escalating to incidents of physical and sexual assault. Enter investigators from UCLA’s parapsychology department, who, over a ten-week period, repeatedly visited the home and documented a series of inexplicable and deeply terrifying events that ranged from reported poltergeist activity to strange, floating lights. Over the years, the findings and Bither’s claims have been subject to heavy scrutiny, though no conclusion has ever been officially reached.
What Happened to Doris? will re-explore the infamous case through the family’s eyes as the supernatural terror unfolds all around them and reckoning with the cost of refusing to believe the victim of it all. Nick Simon, who previously helmed the 2021 horror-comedy Untitled Horror Movie, directed the feature from a screenplay by Thomas Fenton, best known for his work on the story of Saw IV. The cast is led by a 1998 Lost in Space reunion, as Graham is joined by her fellow former Robinson and recent Bosch: Legacy star, Mimi Rogers. Also on board are Absentia alum Morgan Peter Brown, Smile‘s Kevin Keppy, and, in a re-team with Simon after co-writing and starring in Untitled Horror Movie, Luke Baines.
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Collider Exclusive · Horror Survival Quiz Which Horror Villain Do You Have the Best Chance of Surviving? Jason Voorhees · Michael Myers · Freddy Krueger · Pennywise · Chucky
Five killers. Five completely different ways to die — if you’re not smart enough, fast enough, or self-aware enough to avoid it. Only one of them is the villain your particular set of instincts gives you a fighting chance against. Eight questions will figure out which one.
🏕️Jason
🔪Michael
💤Freddy
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🎈Pennywise
🪆Chucky
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01
Something feels wrong. You can’t explain it — you just know. What do you do? First instincts are the difference between the survivor and the first act casualty.
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02
Where are you most likely to find yourself when things go wrong? Setting is everything in horror. Where you are determines which rules apply.
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03
What is your most reliable survival asset? Every survivor has a quality the villain didn’t account for. What’s yours?
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04
What kind of fear is hardest for you to fight through? Knowing your weakness is the first step to not dying because of it.
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05
You’re with a group when things start going wrong. What’s your role? Horror movies are brutally clear about who survives group situations and who doesn’t.
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06
What’s the horror movie mistake you’re most likely to make? Honest self-assessment is a survival skill. Denial is not.
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07
What’s your best weapon against something that can’t be stopped by conventional means? Every horror villain has a weakness. The survivors are always the ones who find it.
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08
It’s the final scene. You’re the last one standing. How did you make it? The final survivor always has a reason. What’s yours?
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Your Survival Odds Have Been Calculated Your Best Chance Is Against…
Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck.
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Camp Crystal Lake · Friday the 13th
Jason Voorhees
Jason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit.
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He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn’t strategise, doesn’t adapt, doesn’t outsmart. He simply pursues.
Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge.
The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance.
You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected.
Haddonfield, Illinois · Halloween
Michael Myers
Michael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it’s too late for anyone who isn’t paying close enough attention.
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But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound.
Michael’s power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is.
Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had.
You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it.
Elm Street · A Nightmare on Elm Street
Freddy Krueger
Freddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised.
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You are harder to destabilise than most. You’ve faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven’t looked away.
The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it.
Freddy’s greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on.
Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here.
Derry, Maine · It
Pennywise
Pennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it.
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The Losers Club didn’t survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly.
You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away.
That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise’s worst nightmare.
It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all.
Chicago · Child’s Play
Chucky
Chucky’s greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it’s already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is.
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You don’t have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance.
Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone.
Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing.
Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing.
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‘What Happened to Doris?’ Builds on a Horror Legacy
The Bither case is already cemented in horror history thanks to Sydney J. Furie‘s 1982 film, The Entity, starring Barbara Hershey. Frank De Felitta adapted the screenplay to the supernatural classic from his own 1978 novel of the same name, which drew heavily on the real-life haunting. Just over ten years ago, it was also close to getting a remake with horror maestro James Wan and producer extraordinaire Roy Lee producing, but nothing ever came of it. While the framework will be similar to the book and film, What Happened to Doris? aims to more faithfully recreate the original story, focusing on the real people victimized and the researchers who found terror in the search for answers.
What Happened to Doris? will world premiere at Fantastic Fest, which runs from September 17 through 24 at the Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar in Austin, Texas. Check out our exclusive image above and stay tuned here at Collider for more early looks at the genre event’s hottest premieres. Visit the official Fantastic Fest film guide for more information.
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