With the spooky season fully underway, you might be scrolling through your streaming
services looking for the best horror films to watch this Halloween. Well, the self-proclaimed
"mobile, TV, and internet experts" over at UK company Broadband Choices are way ahead
of you, as they recently announced the results of their "Science of Scare" project that aimed
to identify the scariest movies ever made.
“They’re here.”
Using heart rate monitors and a group of willing tributes, they determined the ten most frightening
movies of all time - at least according to one particularly interesting metric. To do
some scary movie science, the broadband company counted on the fact that nothing gets your
heart rate up like a huge dose of fear.
They attached to 50 people heart rate monitors, sat them in a room, and showed them some of
the best-rated horror films - sourced from critics' lists and Reddit discussions, and
screening in 5.1 surround sound to really hammer home the spooks.
In all, the 50-person panel "consumed over 120 hours of the best horror movies," while
their heart rate monitors measured "which movies got their blood pumping the most to
find the ultimate horror movie and crown the king of fright night."
The creator of the study, Daniel Clifford, explained in more detail why the study was
carried out:
"With more people than ever facing a Halloween at home, our Science of Scare study was designed
to help people find the most scientifically scary films ever made, to save them the time
of searching through thousands of titles across streaming services like Amazon, Netflix, and
Shudder."
While the study's sample size was small, and scariness truly is in the eye of the beholder,
the results of the "Science of Scare" study offer some fun insight into the most horrifying
films in history.
In tenth place is The Visit, the 2015 found-footage horror flick from director and co-producer
M. Night Shyamalan that sees a brother and sister visiting their eccentric grandparents
who aren't at all who they seem.
Writer-director Neil Marshall's The Descent, about a group of women who become trapped
inside a cave system and must fight for their survival, came in ninth place, with Jennifer
Kent's terrifying directorial debut The Babadook landing in eighth place.
James Wan's The Conjuring 2 and David Robert Mitchell's It Follows, regarded as one of
the best and most inventive horror movies in recent memory, occupy spots seven and six
on the "Science of Scare" study's list, with the found-footage film that kicked the genre
into overdrive, Paranormal Activity, coming in fifth position.
Hereditary, the jaw-dropping 2018 horror flick from writer-director Ari Aster that made everyone
look at telephone poles differently, is the fourth scariest movie of all time, according
to the study. And in third is the original Conjuring movie, directed by Wan.
In second place is yet another Wan feature: Insidious, which had the biggest jump scare
of all the films shown during the study, as determined by the highest heart rate spike
of the group at 133 beats per minute.
And finally, coming in at the top of the list - the scariest movie ever made, according
to the Broadband Choices study - is 2012's Sinister.
From Doctor Strange director Scott Derrickson, Sinister stars Ethan Hawke as a true-crime
writer who finds footage of disturbing murders in the attic of his new home. The film truly
got viewers' hearts racing, with the average heart rate amongst the 50 participants reaching
86 beats per minute - 32 percent higher than their average resting heart rate of 65 beats
per minute.
Insidious and Sinister producer Jason Blum once teased that there may be a crossover
between the two films in the future – which, considering they're both at the top of this
list, has the potential to be truly terrifying - assuming it doesn't mimic the disappointing
second chapter that was Sinister 2.
Interestingly, almost all of the films that made the top ten were released in the years
since Insidious upended the horror movie genre in 2011. And in an impressive coup, James
Wan directed three of these top ten scariest films - Insidious, The Conjuring, and The
Conjuring 2 – clearly securing his reputation as a horror master.
If you're a fan of horror but want to watch something a bit less terrifying than one of
the top ten scariest movies ever made, the people behind this study have your back. In
spots 11 through 20 are some true horror gems: The Ring, A Quiet Place, A Nightmare on Elm
Street, Halloween, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 28 Days Later, The Exorcist, Hush, It, and
Scream.
If that wasn't enough, the company also shared a section for "the best of the rest," which
included the likes of The Witch, The Blair Witch Project, Alien, The Thing, Poltergeist,
and The Shining.
Taken altogether, it's a pretty comprehensive list, though genre fans will of course feel
free to argue about what movie deserves - or doesn't deserve - the top spot. Rankings aside,
whether you're looking for something new or something old-school, there's bound to be
something in this selection that makes you want to scream - in a good way.
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Looper videos about the scariest
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