Dan Clifford of broadbandchoices.co.uk has scientifically determined the scariest movies of all time and listed them in The Science of Scare.
“We’ve explored the science of 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 and crown the king of fright night.”
The Top Three?
My take: I think using increased heart rates is a valid method to measure fear. It might be interesting to correlate those quiet passages that followed by very loud sounds with spikes in heart rates as well. Interesting that “classic horror films” aren’t that scary anymore.
