SINISTER Is the Scariest Movie Ever Made According to Science
There are a lot of horror movies that claim to be the scariest thing you'll ever see. But science has spoken, and according to one study, Sinister stands above them all as the most terrifying film ever made. That’s backed by cold, hard biometric data.
Directed by Scott Derrickson and co-written with C. Robert Cargill, this 2012 supernatural horror stars Ethan Hawke as true crime writer Ellison Oswalt, a man desperate to recapture his former glory.
So, he moves his family into a house where a brutal murder took place, conveniently forgetting to mention that detail to his wife and kids.
It doesn’t take long for things to go off the rails. Oswalt discovers a box of dusty Super 8 home movies in the attic, which turn out to be straight-up snuff films showing different families being murdered in creatively disturbing ways.
One by one, he watches them unravel what becomes a much darker mystery tied to a sinister entity that thrives in the shadows.
From the opening scene alone, a grainy Super 8 clip of a family being hanged from a tree, the dread sets in and doesn’t let up. That haunting sequence was apparently so intense to film, a stuntman almost got seriously injured when the hanging rig failed.
What really cements its reputation is the Science of Scare Project, a study conducted by broadbandchoices in the UK. The experiment involved tracking the heart rates of 50 participants as they watched over 100 hours of horror films.
According to the data, Sinister was the film that spiked viewers' heart rates the most, jumping from a resting average of 65 BPM to a pulse-pounding 86 BPM.
Sure, that’s a serious jolt of fear. But, I think they must’ve brought in participants who all scare easy. While I like the movie Sinister, and I love horror movies, I didn’t think it was all that scary.
I watched the movie recently on Hulu with my wife and teen daughter, who were were watching it for the first time, and while they thought is was a creepy movie, it’s didn’t really scare them. I can’t say that I agree with the science on this one.
Regardless, for a lot of people who have seen it, the results probably aren’t surprising. The combination of grainy murder footage, eerie ambient noise, and the psychological descent of a man willing to risk his family for another bestselling book creates an unrelenting sense of unease.
One thing that I love about the movie is the the slow, creeping horror of the story. I just didn’t lose any sleep over it. For me, the movie that scared the most when I first watched it was Pet Semetary. I watched that when I was a young teen and it jacked me up! I had problems sleeping for months because of that movie!
If you haven’t experienced Sinister yet, you should check it out this Halloween season on Hulu!
What do you think about Sinister? Do you think it’s the scariest movie ever made?
Source: Forbes