One thing the best scary movies do is masterfully create — and release — tension. Doing so spikes an audience’s adrenaline. So, a decent — if quite limited — way to gauge the best horror movies, then, is to see which ones elevate heart rate the most. That’s exactly the metric a team of researchers on behalf of the website BroadBandChoices used to find the 10 scariest movies of all time for their “Science of Scare” project. While there’s certainly much, much more that determines a great horror film, it’s an interesting way to group a list. Assembling a group of more than 50 film viewers, the UK-based team showed them 35 different scary films, from such old-school classics A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to more modern movies like The Ring, Hereditary, and The Conjuring. They then measured the group’s average rise in heart rate as they watched each film in 5.1 surround sound. So, what film spiked heart rates enough to win first place? That honor goes to Sinister, the twisty, very unsettling Scott Derickson film about a true-crime writer (Ethan Hawke) who discovers various terrifying movies in his attic that depict murders done by a “Mr. Boogie.” The film had the largest average rise in heart rate, elevating from 65 bpm (average resting heart rate) to 86 bpm. In second place was James Wan’s Insidious, which raised heart rates to 85 bpm, and in third place was The Conjuring, also by James Wan, which raised thumps to 84 bpm. Elsewhere on the top 10 are The Babadook, The Descent, The Visit, It Follows, Hereditary, The Conjuring 2, and Paranormal Activity. If you’re looking for a list of scary movies to watch this Halloween, this is a pretty decent offering. The entire 35-film list is below. As for me? I’ll be reading the Wikipedia entries. Is your preferred horror movie on this list? What do you think was left out?
