The 20 Scariest Movies Of All Time According To Science

For those horror aficionados who grew up in the 1970s, Tobe Hooper’s low-budget The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is probably the most terrifying movie of all time. Audiences hadn’t seen anything like the sight of masked cannibal Leatherface torturing a bunch of 20-somethings with his beloved chainsaw before. And nearly half a century on, it still has the power to bring out audiences in a sweat.

The scientists, who were backed by the website BroadbandChoices.co.uk, found that the franchise-spawning slasher increased audiences’ heart rates by an average of 13 BPM. And there was also one particular moment when this jumped all the way up to 99 BPM. This could have been the moment of the first gruesome kill, the hellish dinner table scene, or the finale where Sally finally manages to flee the clutches of Leatherface for good.

You might have expected John Carpenter’s Halloween to be higher up the list. After all, it was the film that established Jamie Lee Curtis as the ultimate scream queen, introduced us to masked killer Michael Myers, and paved the way for countless slasher imitators. Still, a 13 BPM increase is nothing to sneeze at.

And at one point the iconic horror even pushed audiences’ heart rates past the 100 BPM mark. Could this have been the moment when a young Myers bludgeons his older sister to death in the opening scene? Well, Halloween has so many great nerve-shattering kills that it’s hard to determine. It’s also the highest film on the list to have been released before 1980.

We’re obviously talking about the 1984 original here and not the inferior 2010 remake. With his red and black jumper, fedora hat, and face disfigured by horrific burns, Freddy Krueger instantly became one of the most iconic-looking horror villains of all time. And he also made every child who managed to sneakily watch a copy on VHS afraid to ever shut their eyes again.

As the film’s title suggests, Krueger taunted his victims in their dreams, so there was never a permanent form of escape from his clutches. Little wonder, then, that Wes Craven’s game-changing slasher still has the power to get everyone's hearts racing. Like Halloween and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, it boosted the average heart rate by 13 BPM. But its all-time highest spike was 105 BPM.

Audition proved to be the most heart-pumping foreign-language horror in the study, placing at No.35. But the film 24 positions higher also has origins in Japan. Gore Verbinski’s take on J-horror classic The Ring was hailed as one of those rare Hollywood adaptations that doesn’t ruin the source material. And nearly 20 years on, audiences are still being creeped out.

Yes, the story of a videotape which appears to result in the death of anyone who watches it raised the heart rate to an average BPM of 78. The first time that long-haired Samara crawls out of the TV remains one of the most indelible images of 2000s horror. And we can imagine this is the moment that sent participants’ hearts racing all the way up to a 111 BPM spike.

A Quiet Place might only be rated PG-13, but for some, it sends more shivers down the spine than any X-rated gorefest. Starring and directed by John Krasinski, the post-apocalyptic tale centers on a family who must forever stay silent if they’re to evade the blind extraterrestrials who hunt their prey by sound alone.

The breakout horror of 2018 got participants’ heart rates speeding up to an average of 78 BPM. At one point, that figure moved all the way up to 120 BPM, the fourth-highest spike on this list. That’s little surprise when you consider that the devastating and incredibly tense opening scene proves that no one is safe.

Direct André Øvredal's The Autopsy of Jane Doe from 2016 was a new entrant on this ranking in 2022. The premise is deceptively simple: a father-and-son team of coroners tries to figure out what has killed an unknown woman. But this set-up allows a creeping sense of dread to fill the movie as we begin to realize not everything is as it seems.

Audiences responded to that sense of dread with significantly raised heartbeats. In the Science of Scare study, the average heartbeat notched up to 78 BPM, spiking at 122 BPM. If we were betting people, we'd say this spike came in that moment our main characters are waiting for an elevator as a wretched corpse stomps toward them...

It's interesting to dive deep into the statistics of Hush — director Mike Flanagan's home-invasion thriller from 2016. Because although moviegoers' average BPM was 78, the measured heartbeats didn't spike above 89. This no doubt speaks to the intensity of a film that relies more on sustained terror than cheap jump scares. The neat twist in Hush is that the main character — played by Kate Siegel — is deaf and therefore partially unaware of the danger lurking around every corner of her house.

This underseen film also has a connection to the Netflix horror series Midnight Mass. In the story, Siegel's character is an author who just happens to be writing a novel called Midnight Mass. Both Flanagan and Siegel — who are married in real life — also collaborated on Netflix's Midnight Mass, The Haunting of Hill House, and The Haunting of Bly Manor.

It’s difficult to determine which part of The Descent caused audience members’ heart rates to shoot up to a mighty 121 BPM. Neil Marshall’s cave bound horror is packed with unbearable tension throughout. Yes, long before the mutants who stalk the all-female group of spelunkers show their hideous faces, this 2005 horror has already packed several punches.

There’s the tragic car accident in the opening scene, for one thing. And anyone even the tiniest bit claustrophobic no doubt broke out in a cold sweat the minute the action moved deep into North Carolina’s Appalachian Mountains. We’re only surprised that the average BPM isn’t higher than 79.

Mr. Babadook may have been repositioned as an unlikely ally of the LGBT community, but there’s nothing friendly about his behavior in this Australian psychological horror. The children’s book character continually taunts Noah Wiseman’s troubled youngster in the 2014 tale, pushing Essie Davis’ single mother to breaking point in the process.

The Babadook was hailed as one of the most effective horror movies of the 2010s. So it’s not surprising to see it nestled inside the top ten of all-time heart-racing scare fests. Jennifer Kent’s feature-length directorial debut sent participants’ average heart BPM a full 15 higher than that of the resting. That’s practically a workout!

Turns out that if you want to increase the average heart rate of cinemagoers, James Wan is your man. The director is behind no fewer than three different films inside the study’s Top 10 including this 2016 sequel. The Conjuring 2 sent viewers' average BPM soaring to 79 and at one point, all the way up to 116!

This time Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga’s paranormal investigators head to North London where a single mother of four is being haunted by an unknown entity. Cue a number of effective jump scares which proves that The Conjuring universe is the go-to place for supernatural frights. And this certainly isn’t the last that we’ll hear from it.

The Blair Witch Project is credited with pioneering the found-footage format. But it’s the Paranormal Activity franchise that’s taken it to new heights. The first in the series makes inspired use of cameras placed around the couple’s home to prey upon many viewers’ biggest fear: being terrorized in the place you should feel the safest.

On a budget of just $15,000, the flick made a colossal worldwide box office total of $193 million. It also posted a BPM spike of 115 BPM. No doubt that the terrifying finale in which one half of the loving couple is revealed as the demonic presence was to blame.

You can't create a successful movie these days without the studios asking you for a sequel. A Quiet Place Part II came out three years after the first film — and is the first step in what is now a larger franchise. Expect A Quiet Place: Day One to hit theaters in 2024 and A Quiet Place Part III to be released a year or two after that.

That's good news for horror fans, who clearly can't get enough of these stories. The concept has a built-in mechanism for getting characters to creep around as quietly as possible — a perfect fit for the horror genre. That's probably why audiences had an average BPM of 80, peaking at 123. The scariest moment has to be when the family is trapped in that factory...

If you'll excuse the pun, your mileage on DASHCAM may vary depending on how you feel about its main character. The personality of Annie — played by musician Annie Hardy — will either "undercut the effectiveness" of the movie, as argued by Rotten Tomatoes, or get you ready for some rip-roaring horror sequences. Wherever you fall with this character, though, there's no denying that the idea of a horror movie filmed on a dashcam is ingenious.

Over its scant 66-minute running time, though, DASHCAM appears to keep audiences under its spell. The average BPM is 81 and the peak is 112. For some, of course, the scariest thing about DASHCAM is its protagonist — or perhaps the realistically nauseating camera work. But we think the car crash scene is up there in terms of sheer heartbeat-raising scares.

It Follows may well be the least-known film inside the Top 15. The 2014 release was more of an indie sleeper hit with an overall budget much smaller than what most Hollywood horrors spend. But David Robert Mitchell’s calling card proved that you don’t need big bucks to produce big scares.

Raking in a creditable $15 million at the U.S. box office, the film stars Maika Monroe as a student who’s stalked by a supernatural entity. And for reasons that will become clear, it’s only after she’s first had sex with her new boyfriend that this occurs. Pushing viewers’ average heart BPM to the 81 mark, the minimalist suspense-filled film shows that when it comes to horror, sometimes less can be more.

It's only appropriate that a film called Terrified should make it into a ranking of the scariest movies of all time. This Spanish-language horror deals with a number of supernatural occurrences in Argentina. Vulture compared it to Insidious and The Conjuring, and the film took the best horror feature prize at Fantastic Fest in 2018. So if you've got a Shudder subscription and you haven't fired this one up, this is your signal to get going.

The average BPM of audiences who watched Terrified was 82, and the peak was an exceptional 122. This is not too surprising considering that the movie barely gives you a moment to catch your breath. The paranormal activity begins in the very first scene and includes everything from floating dead bodies, moving furniture, strange voices, and some impressively rendered monsters.

The most recent film on the list, 2018’s Hereditary earmarked first-time director Ari Aster as one of the horror genre’s most important new voices. As with his equally acclaimed follow-up Midsommar, this classic is just as much a meditation on grief as it is a chiller. For it’s only when a family is forced to deal with a tragic death that things get really creepy.

That shocking decapitation scene was surely the moment that audiences' heart rates rose to 104 BPM. But thanks to a spellbinding performance from Toni Collette, Hereditary manages to sustain the almost unbearable tension throughout. The result is an average BPM of 82, which deservedly places the critical and commercial hit as the fourth scariest movie ever.

We can now say that the first chapter of The Conjuring is officially scarier than the second. Yes, James Wan’s original haunted house tale got audiences’ heart rates racing a full five beats per minute more. And its most effective scare resulted in a BPM of 132, a figure which beats the sequel’s by 16 beats!

So what was it about 2013’s The Conjuring that got viewers in a tizzy? Perhaps it was the fear of the unknown. Because it’s the first time we see just what Lorraine and Ed Warren have to deal with as paranormal investigators. And you could argue that Wan deployed every trick in the ghost story handbook more effectively here, too.

James Wan and regular leading man Patrick Wilson’s pièce de résistance when it comes to giving cinemagoers the heebie-jeebies emerged in 2010 with another franchise-spawning horror. There are four chapters and counting of the Insidious series. According to the Science of Scare Project, though, none have scared as easily as the first.

Insidious sees a young boy become comatose as a parade of evil spirits from another dimension attempt to take over his body. It also posted the highest BPM for a single scare at an almighty 133! But this might not have happened during the actual film. Because for many, the sneak peek at the ghoulish old lady we get in the closing credits was the moment that made us truly jump out of our seats.

So what film could have got participants’ hearts racing to an average of 86 BPM, 32 percent higher than the resting rate of 64? We’ve still not mentioned classics such as The Evil Dead, The Silence of the Lambs, or Rosemary’s Baby. Well, you might be surprised to learn that the most effective horror was deemed to be a much lesser-known Ethan Hawke vehicle named Sinister.

That’s right: the story of Hawke’s true crime reporter uncovering the truth behind a series of family killings got viewers palpitating more than most others. The film was a modest critical and commercial hit on its 2012 release. But it does possess one of the all-time great jump scares: the grainy home video, point-of-view footage in which a body is run over by a moving lawnmower. Ouch!

Director Rob Savage didn't waste his pandemic-enforced lockdown baking sourdough and re-watching The Sopranos. Instead, he co-wrote and directed Host, the scariest movie of all time — at least, according to this study. The movie was actually filmed on Zoom during COVID, with even the cast being responsible for their own cameras and lighting. The result? 50 minutes of pure terror.

Host managed to beat Sinister to the top of this ranking for two years in a row. The average BPM of audience members was 88, 2 BPM higher than Sinister's. The BPM for Host peaked at 130, in line with Sinister, but slightly behind Insidious and The Conjuring. What could cause that spike in the heartrate? Probably that ending!

You can't argue with science, but just because they're the 'scariest' films doesn't necessarily mean they are the best. We decided to take our own audience poll of the greatest horror films out there, and our round-up proved that while people love to be scared, they also love to be disturbingly entertained. It's not science, but these are horror movie fans' favorite flicks of all time...

It’s only right that a movie about someone being locked in a mental institution against her will should feel so claustrophobic and, well, unsettling. And to capture this queasy feel, Ocean’s Eleven director Steven Soderbergh used only an iPhone to shoot Unsane. The result? As one reviewer put it, Unsane “is effective to a deeply disturbing degree.”

Did you ever see Hereditary? That was messed up, right? Well, the guy who made that – Ari Aster – also made Midsommar. So you know when this movie is praised for being “a waking nightmare” and “genuinely disturbing,” you can probably believe the hype. Midsommar’s about a couple unwittingly becoming part of some seriously weird pagan rituals. And we’ll never look at cliffs the same way, that’s for sure. 

Hostel is essentially about backpackers getting tortured. But when director Eli Roth told Quentin Tarantino the story, Tarantino reportedly thought it was the “sickest” movie plot he’d ever heard. The filmmaker also told New York magazine that Hostel was “the most horrifying entry” in the contemporary crop of “ultraviolent, get-under-your-skin movies.” And that’s coming from the guy who made Kill Bill.

Stephen King thinks The Blair Witch Project is terrifying. And if Stephen King thinks something is scary, you better believe it’s going to freak you out! Why did King react so strongly to Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez’s “found footage” horror? “The damn thing looks real” and “the damn thing feels real,” he wrote in his book Danse Macabre. 

If you tell a horror movie director that someone fainted watching their flick, chances are they’ll be pretty pleased with themselves. Take Eli Roth. He said that a moviegoer passing out during The Green Inferno was his “best review ever.” But given the fate of The Green Inferno’s activist heroes, blacking out seems like a pretty reasonable reaction.

Oliver Stone thought he’d made a media satire with Natural Born Killers – but that’s not how some people saw it. Because his violent depiction of lovebirds on the lam apparently inspired real-life killings. Some even went so far as to blame the Columbine High School shooting on, in part, Natural Born Killers. You have been warned.

We won’t spoil anything here, but rest assured that most people won’t make it through Hereditary without gasping in horror. There is even one scene – that scene – that left the actor involved “haunted.” Yep, director Ari Aster certainly messed with a few heads with his brutal tale of grief. And don’t even mention the haunting tongue clicks from actress Milly Shapiro!

People either love Mother! or they hate it. There is no middle ground with Darren Aronofsky’s startling horror. And the reason why is because the movie is packed with disturbing images that will stay with you for a long time. Sure, the plot sounds like a standard home invasion movie, but trust us: this goes to very dark places. 

Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer proved so disturbing that it took three years just to get it past the censors and into theaters. The problem seemed to be that people felt the movie was too good at showing shocking and violent acts. Why? Because director John McNaughton made a realistic docu-drama about a fictionalized serial killer.

YouTube yanked an ad for The Nun off its site before the movie had even hit theaters. The six-second clip, you see, contained enough “violent and shocking” content to warrant an outright ban. And considering Corin Hardy’s possessed-nun horror is 96 minutes long, that doesn’t bond well for any viewers with nervous dispositions.

Requiem for a Dream is a real only-watch-it-once movie. Those final images? Eesh. What a gut punch. Darren Aronofsky’s drama so effectively details the disturbing, depressing and downright horrifying consequences of addiction that it’s story will haunt you forever. You’ll never look at diet pills in the same way again.

The good news is that director Michael Haneke seemingly wants you to be offended by Funny Games. That’s the whole point of the movie. And plenty of people have never made it to the end of this unconventional home invasion thriller. So don’t be surprised if you find yourself reaching for the “off” button halfway through… 

IMDb lists Coraline as an animated movie suitable for all the family. But we know it’s really a scary-as-hell horror movie, don’t we? Henry Selick’s creepy fantasy about a girl who stumbles on a hidden world is just all kinds of wrong. There are characters who want to give a kid buttons for eyes, for crying out loud!

An African-American meets his white girlfriend’s parents for the first time – and things do not go well. At all. Yep, Jordan Peele’s Get Out has jump scares, scenes of violence and the kinds of things you’d expect from a horror movie. But it’s what’s going on beneath the surface that pushes Get Out into truly disturbing territory. Everyone check your brains are okay...

Even if you’ve never seen The Shining, you probably know it’s a greatest hits of disturbing images. You’ve got the blood in the elevators, the weirdo twin sisters and, of course, the iconic, “Here’s Johnny!” scene. But Stanley Kubrick’s creepy tale of a family man going mad in isolation is terrifying from beginning to end. Seriously, he is anything but a dull boy!

After Verónica dropped on Netflix, the scary movie made headlines for being… well, seriously scary. It seemed that people had flooded Twitter confessing that they couldn’t even make it to the end of Paco Plaza’s flick. But then what did people expect from a horror movie about a girl playing with a Ouija board?

Horror expert Kim Newman called Inside (or À l’intérieur, to give the movie its French title) “as gruesome as cinema can get.” That sounds like high praise indeed! The film, directed by Alexandre Bustillo and Julien Maury, is about a pregnant woman defending her and her unborn child from a mysterious tormentor. 

You may be thinking Jaws is so old and creaky that it couldn’t possibly disturb anyone. But you’d be wrong. Because anyone who saw Steven Spielberg’s shark adventure as a young person will probably be scarred for life. There’ve even been studies to prove that Jaws is still the reason people won’t go swimming in the ocean. Now that’s what we call disturbing.

Scarlett Johansson is no stranger to aliens, right? Avengers: Endgame is one of the biggest movies ever made! But seeing Johansson in Under the Skin couldn’t be more different – or more disturbing. She roams the streets of Glasgow in Jonathan Glazer’s film, and does terrible things to unsuspecting guys. It’s hella freaky and unlike anything else you’ve seen before.

People had a real problem with Birth when it was released. The main issue was that Nicole Kidman’s 36-year-old Anna appears to fall in love with a 10-year-old boy she believes to be her reincarnated husband. But Jonathan Glazer’s drama is actually a thoughtful – if creepy and unsettling – examination of grief and love.

Straw Dogs has a big-name director in Sam Peckinpah and a big-name star in Dustin Hoffman. But it also had some big-time controversy. The thriller’s depiction of violence toward women is so intense that it took 30 years for it to get a home video release in the United Kingdom. Be warned: this is not for the faint hearted.

Audiences in the 1970s were clearly not prepared for The Exorcist. But how many other films feature a 12-year-old possessed by the devil spinning her head all the way around? That’s probably why some theatergoers reportedly passed out when watching the movie upon release. William Friedkin’s horror has lost none of its evil power today, either.

The Skin I Live In is rated R for “disturbing violent content.” And that includes just about every depraved act that you can think of – sometimes on multiple occasions. Yet most viewers are still unable to look away from Pedro Almodóvar’s creepy tale of a plastic surgeon playing god. Maybe it’s because that plastic surgeon looks like Antonio Banderas.

Wes Craven knew what he was doing when he directed The Last House on the Left. “We showed violence in its true ugliness, rather than taking the usual Hollywood path of making it glamorous and exciting,” he told The Independent. And people have been disturbed by its horrifying depiction of kidnap and torture ever since.

In 1960 critics hated Peeping Tom so much that their savage reviews basically ended Michael Powell’s directing career. But then the message of the film – about a murderer who records and rewatches his kills – was perhaps one they weren’t ready to hear. And in the age of YouTube, Peeping Tom’s ideas are arguably more disturbingly relevant than ever.

Author Stephen King tweeted that Gerald’s Game is “horrifying, hypnotic, terrific” and was “gonna freak you out.” And guess what? He was right! After Mike Flanagan’s horror adaptation dropped on Netflix, a fan reportedly fainted after one particular scene. And as the flick is about a woman handcuffed to a bed, we’ll let you figure out which scene it was.

What’s in the box? Oh, you don’t wanna know what’s in the box! Because in a movie about a guy killing people in crazy ways because of the seven deadly sins, the ending of Se7en is truly messed up. And even 25 years later, David Fincher’s thriller still has the ability to creep us the heck out.

Did Dakota Johnson enjoy making Suspiria? No, she did not. It messed her up so badly that she “had to go to therapy,” the star told Elle in 2018. Only she didn’t say “messed,” if you catch our drift. We wonder if it was that scene in Luca Guadagnino’s horror remake about a mysterious dance company that scarred Johnson so much…

There’s a part in Oldboy where the main character eats a live octopus. Like, a real live octopus. But that’s not even close to being the strangest or most disturbing scene. Park Chan-Wook’s revenge actioner is “extreme cinema” in every sense of the phrase. And the ending… Well, we won’t spoil it, but it’ll stay with you for days.

Robert Eggers’ The Witch is disturbing for the things it doesn’t show on screen. So while there are no jump scares or crazy violence in this film about witchcraft, its dread-filled atmosphere will really get under your skin. Or, as Mashable put it, “The Witch is so wicked it could make Satan cry.”

If you know the line “squeal like a pig,” then you probably know Deliverance. But just because John Boorman’s thriller about a canoeing trip gone wrong is infamous, doesn’t mean it’s lost any of its power. The notorious scene in Deliverance, in fact, takes things so far that it’s not surprising so many people find it disturbing. 

Horror fans felt compelled to inflict Martyrs upon themselves after hearing about other audience’s reactions. Because who wouldn’t want to watch a movie that caused people to pass out or throw up? And Pascal Laugier’s brutal revenge tale is full of scenes that will make you want to do both. Possibly at the same time.

“I’ve never seen a more terrifying film than The Babadook,” tweeted William Friedkin in 2014. And when the guy who directed The Exorcist says that a movie is scary, you need to start paying attention. Friedkin also warned that Jennifer Kent’s horror about a children’s book coming to life “will scare the hell out of you.” Watch out for those long claws now!

Robert Pattinson is a long way from Twilight territory here. And even though The Lighthouse is shot in black and white, Robert Eggers’ horror is just as disturbing as anything else on this list. Pattinson stars opposite Willem Dafoe as a pair of lighthouse keepers slowly losing their minds. You might lose yours when you see what happens, too.

Why is Ringu (the original film that inspired the Hollywood Ring series) so scary? Is it the undeniably creepy imagery, or the idea of a curse you can’t hide from? Or is it because the bad guy actually comes through the screen to get you? Maybe it’s all of the above! But whatever it is, Hideo Nakata’s horror flick brought a new wave of terror into the world. 

If you haven’t heard about what happens in Antichrist yet, we’re not going to spoil it for you. Suffice to say… it’s not an easy watch. The story is about a married couple trying to rebuild their lives after a tragedy. But this is a Lars von Trier film so it inevitably ends in disaster.

Nobody ever thought “Singin’ in the Rain” could be disturbing – before A Clockwork Orange came out. The controversy around the movie – and its shocking violence – was so intense that director Stanley Kubrick actually banned the film from being shown in the United Kingdom himself. And the sci-fi cautionary tale about the fate of a brutal gang leader is still disturbing today.

“Who will survive and what will be left of them?” asks the poster for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. And that gives you a good idea of what the film is about – and what happens to Leatherface’s victims. It’s not for nothing that Tobe Hooper’s horror is still considered one of the scariest flicks ever inflicted upon the public.

Takashi Miike has grossed people out with plenty of his films before. But Audition stands out from the pack for just being so damn disturbing. It’s about a guy pretending to screen girls for television, getting duped by a woman who’s also not who she says she is. And trust us, the guy gets his comeuppance in more horrific ways than one.

“Irréversible is a movie so violent and cruel that most people will find it unwatchable,” said Roger Ebert in his 2003 review. And truer words have rarely been spoken. Even some critics couldn’t make it to the end of the film. Why? Gaspar Noé’s revenge drama shows the crime and the revenge in such brutal, matter-of-fact style that it causes serious upset. Watch with caution.