Science Proves the Biggest On-Screen Scares of All-Time – Who Made the List?
Published on October 20th, 2020 | Updated on October 20th, 2020 | By FanFest
What is the scariest movie ever? Depending on who you ask, you’ll get a different answer every time. Now, SCIENCE has answered this question for you and I and the rest of the world. We now know who is the king of scary movies!
Broadbandchoices.com did some research to find an answer to that question. In its “Science of Scare Project,” they tracked the heart rates of 50 people of a variety of ages who watched over 100 hours of scary movies. After all of the date, they put together their findings.
For the study, each member of the test audience was fitted with a heart rate monitor to see how much (on average) their heart rates rose above their resting heart rates during a film. All data was averaged for each film, and one film came out on top as the undeniably scariest movie of the bunch.
The results of the study? According to the heart rates of participants, no movie scared people more than Sinister, a 2012 horror/thriller that stars Ethan Hawke as a true crime writer who investigates a string of family murders.
The average resting heart rate of the participants was 65 BPM (beats per minute). But during Sinister, that average heart rate rose to 86 BPM—a 32% increase. That was the highest rise in BPM of any movie watched by the study participants.
The biggest jump scare, however, belonged to Insidious, which owned a moment that sent the participants’ heart rate up to 133 BPM. Overall, that movie came in second place to Sinister.
Check out all of the data below. Do you agree with these findings? Let us know in the comments!
Covering superheroes, anything dark, horror, and more! Lead writer for Fan Fest
Apparently I’m next to impossible to scare. Not one of these got me…ever. There is only 1 movie that ever scared me so much I still can’t watch it again and I’m in my 40’s now. Gave me nightmares for 3 months solid. I won’t get the title 100% correct but it’s either “It Lives or It’s Alive”. Sequel “It Still Lives or It’s Still Alive”. Just found out there’s a third one. Yeah…nope. Can’t do it.