Movies
The Science of Scare: Scientific Study Tracks Heart Rates to Determine the Scariest Horror Movies Ever Made
Everyone loves horror when Halloween is near, and during the month of October we’re regularly being emailed various studies and infographics from unlikely sources. Such is the case with Broadband Choices’s “The Science of Scare,” an infographic put together based on a scientific study that set out to determine the scariest movies ever made.
The outlet explains, “Is there anything better than a night in with the lights off and a truly terrifying movie that gets your heart pounding? We don’t think so. That’s why we’ve explored the science of the scare, with our experiment to categorically find the scariest films for your scary movie night. Our team studied critic’s lists and Reddit recommendations to curate 50 of the best horror films ever made, before subjecting them to our test subjects.”
“Watching each movie in 5.1 surround sound, our panel of 50 people consumed over 120 hours of the best horror movies, each fitted with a heart rate monitor to measure which movies got their blood pumping the most to find the ultimate horror movie.”
The “king of fright night,” according to this particular experiment, is Scott Derrickson’s Sinister, with heart rates also spiking considerably when the panel watched Insidious, The Conjuring, Hereditary, Paranormal Activity, It Follows, The Conjuring 2, The Babadook, The Descent and The Visit. Those films make up the top ten “scientifically scary movies.”
Other movies that made the cut include Halloween, A Quiet Place, The Ring, Scream, The Exorcist, Hush, The Blair Witch Project, Alien, The Thing, Poltergeist and Audition.
You can check out the full “Science of Scare” infographic below.
Before updating the video nasty Faces of Death, director Daniel Goldhaber and writer Isa Mazzei explored the dangers of online life in tech-thriller Cam, their feature debut that was acquired by Netflix in 2018 after making waves on the festival circuit.
At the end of last year, the Netflix exclusive quietly departed from the streaming platform, left without another streaming home.
It’s not an isolated story; Mike Flanagan’s Hush also left streaming entirely for a period until it was finally picked up on both physical media and other streaming services.
While the tech-thriller currently isn’t available to watch on Netflix, Tubi, Hulu, or any other platforms, that’s not a problem for Cam thanks to a very cool move by Goldhaber: the director has made his breakout film accessible to watch online for free via his website.
As his site notes: “CAM is unfortunately not currently available to view on any platforms, so you can watch it here if you like :).“
No subscriptions or fees necessary, just hit play.
Cam follows Alice (Madeline Brewer), who works as an online cam girl obsessed with her ranking on the cam site. The higher her ranking goes, the more it draws unwanted attention, and Alice soon finds herself replaced on her own show with a doppelganger.
Written by Mazzei, a former camgirl, it uses the horror thriller premise to examine the life of a sex worker; Alice’s career ambition is directly at odds with the shame it brings to her family, and how she tries to spare them from it by keeping them in the dark. It only compounds her danger when the doppelganger enters the equation in Goldhaber’s engaging thriller.
For a deep dive into the treacherous world of Cam, listen to Horror Queers’ episode on it now.
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