What is the scariest film of all time?
Well, whatever your answer, you are wrong. It is actually Sinister, the 2012 supernatural horror movie starring Ethan Hawke.
That is not our decision, by the way. It is the decision of science. Or a least a study that was done by the “Science Of Scare Project” put together by Broadband Choices.
The completely infallible research took a sample group of 50 people and made them watch “over 120 hours of the best horror movies”. The participants were fitted with a heart rate monitor to record which movies got their blood pumping the most.
The 50 movies shown to participants were selected by going through both “critic’s lists and Reddit’, so, erm, that’s got to be a definitive list of choices, right?
Sinister was awarded the title of the ‘ultimate horror movie’, as it was found to increase participants’ BPM by an average of 32%. The highest spike – indicating the highest jump scare – saw heart rates jump to 131 BPM.
The single biggest jump scare, however, was found to be in 2010’s Insidious, starring Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne, which saw heart rates jump to 133 BPM.
Insidious was also second on the master list of ultimate horror movies behind Sinister, with The Conjuring coming in third. Hereditary was fourth, and Paranormal Activity was fifth.
It Follows, The Conjuring 2, The Babadook, The Descent and The Visit made up the rest of the top ten.
Notably, all of the top ten were released this century, with The Descent being the oldest from 2005. Older, classic horror films like The Exorcist, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre all appear between slots ten and twenty though.
Does this suggest that horror movies have got a lot scarier in recent years? Or is that just the skew you get when you pick your movie choices from Reddit?
