Science Says The Scariest Horror Movie of All Time is From 2012

I'm a huge fan of horror, and with it being October and Halloween coming up, it's even more of a reason to curl up with a scary movie. Recently BroadbandChoices.co.uk released a study, called the Science of the Scare. In this study they curated a list of the 50 top horror movies by combing through critics lists on Reddit threads. Once they curated the top 50 they took 50 people and put heart monitors on them while they watched over 120 hours of horror films. Then by monitoring the participants heart rates, they came up with the scariest horror movie, and it turns out to be 2012's Sinister.

IMDB describes Sinister:

Washed-up true crime writer Ellison Oswalt finds a box of super 8 home movies in his new home that suggest the murder that he is currently researching is the work of a serial killer whose work dates back to the 1960s.

According to their study they found the average resting heart rate of the participants was 65 BPM. Throughout the majority of Sinister most participants resting heart rate jumped to 86 BPM, with the biggest jump scare in Sinister spiking heart rates to 131 BPM. That's quite the jump! However according to their research Sinister had the highest overall average heart rate, but not the highest jump scare. According to their study, the scariest jump scare was in the movie Insidious where the biggest jump scare raised heart rates of participants to 133 BPM.

The study goes on to share their top 35 horror movies by how scary they were, the top 5 are as follows:

Sinister
Insidious
The Conjuring
Hereditary
Paranormal Activity

See the full list, and learn more about the horror movie study, here. In the very bottom of the study in fine print they write that "scariest does not equal best" and they believe The Witch and Alien were robbed! I imagine they put this in as a tongue in cheek jab at the findings, but I do have to say I agree with them here. The Witch is one of my favorite horror movies of all time, but it is a rather slow burn, so I can see where it isn't a heart pumping horror thriller that would register on a heart monitor. However story line wise, it's great, and very creepy!