Featured Image Credit: A24
Topics: Zac Efron, Wrestling, Rotten Tomatoes, Film and TV
Emily Brown
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Film fans have admitted to feeling like they could 'throw up' after watching a Zac Efron movie based on a true story.
And as much as we might love for High School Musical to be entirely non-fiction, that's not the movie I'm talking about it.
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Efron has starred in a couple of films based on real-life, and after taking on the chilling role of murderer Ted Bundy he switched gears into the sporting world, portraying wrestler Kevin Von Erich.
Also starring Jeremy Allen White, Harris Dickinson, Holt McCallany, Maura Tierney and Lily James, the movie tells the story the Von Erich family and the inseparable brothers who made history in professional wrestling in the early 1980s.
It might sound like a feel-good sporting flick, but the reality of what happened to the Von Erich family is truly tragic, even prompting some people to believe they may have been 'cursed'.
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The family lived through losses, injuries, mental health issues and deaths, leaving director Sean Durkin actually struggling to fit all of the tragedy into the movie, which is titled The Iron Claw.
Speaking to UNILAD, Durkin explained: "There's just there's so much tragedy in this family that didn't make it into the film, because it just couldn't fit.
"It's hard on a human level to leave all that stuff out. Because it was so impactful to them and their story, but you have to make really tough choices so that it can even be a movie."
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The resulting movie, available to stream on Max, is a gripping and heartbreaking tale that's received an impressive rating of 94 percent from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes, though it's also left viewers struggling to comprehend its contents.
After watching the movie, one person wrote: "Finally watched The Iron Claw last night and now I’m just supposed to go to work like nothing happened."
Another responded: "Cried so hard during the last 20 minutes of that movie that I almost threw up. It was viola davis level."
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This particular viewer wasn't the only person to end up feeling nauseous, as another added: "I literally wanted to throw up I couldn’t take anymore sadness."
Efron himself admitted he struggled to get through certain scenes while filming, with one particular moment at the end of the movie causing him to 'lose it'.
"I thought I’d ruined the take at that point but I decided to stay in it and when we finished … I looked up at Shaun, I was about to apologise and he was like ‘no, that’s it’," Efron recalled.
So there's no pretending it's going to be an easy watch, but it's worth it all the same.