The Science of Scare releases a list of the scariest movies every year. On October 12th the list for 2023 was released! 

When they are determining what movie is the scariest, they invite several individuals to a screening of a movie. Screenings take place all throughout the year with a number of different movies. 

In past years they would only take heart rate, but this year they have taken in a different factor. They have added heart rate variance. With this new addition, they combined the heart rate in beats per minute, BPM, and the heart rate variance measured in milliseconds. 

This year Sinister, by Scott Derrickson from 2012, was ranked number 1. The average resting heart rate was 64, the average movie heart rate was 86, the highest spike was 131, and overall they got a 96 for the scare score. 

The top 10 were Sinister, Host, Skinamirink, Insidious, The Conjuring, Hereditary, Smile, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Hell House LLC, and Talk To Me. 

While talking to Colleen Schmucker she mentioned two movies that weren’t on the list for this year.

“My favorite movie is either Scream or Us,” Colleen said. 

She mentioned that she preferred scary movies over more Halloween-type movies.

“I just like watching how the scary stuff unfolds,” Colleen said.

In 2020 the Science of Scare Project was founded. And in that year the first list was put out. Scream was number 20 on that list with an average resting heart rate of 65, an average movie heart rate of 73, and the highest spike was 81.

When talking to Sofia Nilsson she said her favorite scary movie is Halloween. 

Halloween was ranked number 26 on the list. The average resting heart rate was 64, the average movie heart rate was 77, the highest spike was 103, and the scare score was 64. 

When asked why it was her favorite scary movie, she said, “It’s very interesting, he keeps you on the edge of your seat, and he’s mysterious.” 

Halloween can be a time to rewatch all the classics, horror films, musicals, and everything Halloween.