The scariest movie ever made according to science
Some people just can’t hack the scary and spooky nature of horror films and find them too much, but for horror aficionados, there is no better feeling than sweaty palms, a high heart rate and hiding behind the pillows. There have been so many excellent and genuinely terrifying horror movies over the years, but what is the scariest of all?
Judging scariness is a problematic metric, but thankfully, the company Broadband Choices once ran a scientific experiment to find out what the scariest movie of them all is as part of their Science of Scare project. The trial included 250 participants, who were shown a list of the most terrifying cinematic moments in special screaming rooms where they were attached to a heart rate monitor.
The team then measured the audience’s heart rates throughout the given films and compared the average with their resting BPM average, which is generally around 64 BPM. Now, of course, watching too many horror films at once might take some of the scares away, so the screenings are held over several weeks throughout the year.
Several horror movies ranked highly in terms of being the scariest, including Paranormal Activity, A Quiet Place Part 2 and Ari Aster’s Hereditary, but the top four is occupied by a quartet of genuinely terrifying cinema moments, beginning with James Wan’s The Conjuring, the first film in the popular horror franchise.
For the picture, audience members had an average heart rate of 85, with it peaking at 129 during the scariest moments. Insidious took the title of being the third scariest movie of all time, with an average heart rate of 86, peaking at 133. In fact, before the most recent version of the experiment, Insidious had been the number one most terrifying horror.
In 2020, Scott Derrickson’s Sinister was crowned the victor with a high BPM strike of 131 and an average heart rate of 86 BPM. The film stars Ethan Hawke as a true-crime writer who comes across a mysterious snuff film that endangers his family. Scary stuff, indeed, but Derrickson’s film would not be top of the pile for long.
Just a year later, Broadband Choices named the 2020 British screenlife supernatural horror movie Host, directed by Rob Savage, as the scariest movie ever made. The average heart rate was right up at 88 BPM, while the high BPM strike was 130. The film focuses on a group of friends who are stalked by a deadly supernatural entity and was shot entirely on Zoom.
Check out the trailer for Host below.
