New Study Says These 30 Horror Films Are The Scariest 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 rightfully and truly, the scariest of all time. Last year’s winner was SINISTER.

Who this is this years winner? The title of Scariest Film goes to Shudder original, HOST, directed by Rob Savage.

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.”

“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.