Scientific study proves which horror movie is the scariest of all time

“What’s your favourite scary movie?” Ghostface repeatedly asks his victims.

Well, that’s a matter of preference, but if you (and possibly whoever’s donning the Scream franchise disguise) were wondering what the scariest scary movie is, ponder no more.

The Science of Scare study, now in its fourth year, tracks the pulses of hundreds of volunteers, who watch hours of English-language horror movies whilst fitted with heart rate monitors.

Not a bad gig... But despite some jealousy here at Euronews Culture, several of us are hardened dreadheads, so we’d just mess up the study with our steady heartbeats.

The Science of Scare Project monitors the heart rates of the 250 participants to establish a Scare Score system, which combines both heart rate (measured in beats per minute - BPM) and heart rate variance (HRV - measured in milliseconds), which measures the time in between each beat of your heart.

According to this year’s study, the scariest horror film of all time is Scott Derrickson’s 2012 supernatural horror, Sinister.

The audience experienced a 34 per cent uplift in heart rate on average when watching the movie - from 64 resting BPM up to 86 movie BPM, with the films scariest moment sending hearts pounding to 131 BPM. HRV dropped by 21% among viewers. Both combined to give Sinister a chart-topping Scare Score of 96 out of 100.

Here’s the list of the 20 scariest horror movies according to the study:

As you can tell, the list is largely dominated by modern horror films, and the only 2024 release to break into the Top 20 happens to be one of our favourite horror films here at Euronews Culture.  

Damian McCarthy’s Irish supernatural thriller Oddity, which follows a blind psychic investigating the death of her twin sister, tallied a