When you talk about the best or worst or in this case, scariest horror movies out there, you are usually relying on personal opinion, even if you’re citing somewhere like Rotten Tomatoes, an amalgam of personal opinions. But there’s a project that tries to measure the scariest movies in existence using science. You can choose to believe it or not, but they have data to present.
This is the Science of Scare project, an ongoing experiment via MoneySuperMarket that uses viewer heartbeat changes to map out which horror movies are the scariest in terms of how much they result in a physiological change in the audience. Perfect scientific methodology? Unlikely, but it’s fun to see all the same, and see if you agree or disagree with the top 10.
Here’s how this is calculated, according to those running the project:
“The Scare Score system, which combines both heart rate (measured in beats per minute BPM), and heart rate variance (measured in milliseconds, or m/s), returns for 2025. With heart rate (BPM), the higher the number, the faster the movie got our audiences’ blood pumping, an indicator of excitement and fear as part of your fight or flight instinct.
“On the other hand, heart rate variance (HRV), measures the time in between each beat of your heart. The lower the heart rate variance the more stressed our audience members became, a good indicator of slow burn fear and dread.
“After collecting the average heart rate increase and HRV decrease, we then combine both scores to create a Science of Scare Score out of 100. For comparison, Shrek holds a ‘Scare Score’ of 3 out of 100.”
I love how they use Shrek as a control group. Anyway, here is the top 10 list of scariest horror movies:
1) Sinister – 96 Scare Score
2) Host – 95
3) Skinamarink – 91
4) Insidious – 90
5) The Conjuring – 88
6) Hereditary – 81
7) Smile 2 – 79
8) Smile – 78
9) The Exorcism of Emily Rose – 76
10) Talk to Me/Hell House LLC – 75
Not all that many movies are added to the list every year (this is only English-language horror films, incidentally). This year, that included Smile 2, which made the top 10, Bring Her Back (#24), The Conjuring: Last Rites (#49) and Weapons (#50). They only rank the top 50, and 28 Years Later, Together and Ugly Stepsister did not make the cut.
I can understand Sinister being #1, as it has at least one of the craziest jump scares I’ve ever seen that I won’t ever forget. Host is a often-overlooked horror film that takes place entirely over Zoom during quarantine lockdown, which sounds absurd, but it works, and it’s fantastic. I have little doubt that the most controversial entry on the list is going to be Skinamirink, a movie you will either love or absolutely, totally hate. I get why it’s here in terms of the “pervasive dread” metric, because the entire movie is more or less pervasive dread as you wait for something to happen. Very few things happen.
I am glad to see Smile 2 make the list. I didn’t love the first one, but Smile 2 is fantastic and I am not kidding, features an Oscar nomination-worthy performance from star Naomi Scott. Also on the list is Hereditary, which I count among my favorite horror films of all time. Check any of these out. I mean, really most of that entire top 50 list is worth watching. Happy Halloween!
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Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/paultassi/2025/10/20/10-scariest-horror-movies-according-to-viewer-heart-rate/
