Movies
A Scientific Study Has Determined That These Are the 30 Scariest Horror Movies of All Time
For the second year in a row, the “Science of Scare” project from Broadband Choices has set out to scientifically prove which horror movie is truly the scariest of all time, with Scott Derrickson’s Sinister awarded the winner of the challenge last year. Sinister, however, has been dethroned this year, with the “Science of Scare” team finding a new world champion.
The new “king of fright night,” you ask? Shudder and director Rob Savage’s “screenlife” horror movie Host, which was filmed and released during the pandemic last year!
The team details, “Our scientific study tracked heart rates throughout some of the world’s most iconic horror films, to study the science of scary, and find the undisputed scariest horror film of all time! We invited 250 ‘victims’ to watch 40 of world’s scariest horror movies, including new entries to the genre from the past 18 months selected from Reddit recommendations (thanks r/horror) and critic’s best of lists. Our shortlist of movies was based on the top 30 films that charted in our 2020 Science of Scare Project, along with new entries and other movies that may have slipped through the net. Once we had our shortlist, we fitted our participants with heart rate monitors and invited them into our specially designed ‘screaming rooms’ to watch the movies over the course of several weeks, under medical and researcher supervision. We measured the average impact our shortlisted movies had on the heart rate (measured in BPM) of our subjects, compared to the average resting BPM of 64.
“Despite being shot in just 12 weeks and entirely through Zoom video conferencing, Host terrified our audiences in its short 56 minute runtime, increasing heart rates by an average of 24 BPM and pushing Sinister to second place.”
Host and Sinister top this year’s list in the #1 and #2 slots, followed by “Top 30” runners up Insidious, The Conjuring, Hereditary, Terrified, It Follows, A Quiet Place Part 2, Paranormal Activity, The Conjuring 2, The Babadook, The Descent, Hush, A Quiet Place, The Ring, A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), Halloween (1978), The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974), It (2017), The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, The Exorcist, [REC], 28 Days Later, Candyman (2021), The Grudge, The Invisible Man, Poltergeist, Friday the 13th, and Alien.
Some other key findings from this year’s study include:
- The best jump scare in horror history belongs to Insidious (133 BPM) with The Conjuring, Host, Sinister and A Quiet Place Part 2 also ranking highly
- Modern horror movies performed better than classics, with just three films more than 20 years old, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween & The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) appearing in the top 20.
- The Exorcist has officially fallen from the top 20 scariest films ever made.
- 2016’s Terrified is the scariest foreign language horror film made, and the only foreign language movie to break the top 10
Check out the full infographic below and head over to Broadband Choices for more.
After pulling in $28 million at the worldwide box office this month, director (and star) Dev Patel’s critically acclaimed action-thriller Monkey Man is now available to watch at home.
You can rent Monkey Man for $19.99 or digitally purchase the film for $24.99!
Monkey Man is currently 88% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, with Bloody Disgusting’s head critic Meagan Navarro awarding the film 4.5/5 stars in her review out of SXSW back in March.
Meagan raves, “While the violence onscreen is palpable and painful, it’s not just the exquisite fight choreography and thrilling action set pieces that set Monkey Man apart but also its political consciousness, unique narrative structure, and myth-making scale.”
“While Monkey Man pays tribute to all of the action genre’s greats, from the Indonesian action classics to Korean revenge cinema and even a John Wick joke or two, Dev Patel’s cultural spin and unique narrative structure leave behind all influences in the dust for new terrain,” Meagan’s review continues.
She adds, “Monkey Man presents Dev Patel as a new action hero, a tenacious underdog with a penetrating stare who bites, bludgeons, and stabs his way through bodies to gloriously bloody excess. More excitingly, the film introduces Patel as a strong visionary right out of the gate.”
Inspired by the legend of Hanuman, Monkey Man stars Patel as Kid, an anonymous young man who ekes out a meager living in an underground fight club where, night after night, wearing a gorilla mask, he is beaten bloody by more popular fighters for cash. After years of suppressed rage, Kid discovers a way to infiltrate the enclave of the city’s sinister elite. As his childhood trauma boils over, his mysteriously scarred hands unleash an explosive campaign of retribution to settle the score with the men who took everything from him.
Monkey Man is produced by Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions.
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