The scariest movies of all time, ranked by viewers’ heart rates

Horror is one of the few film genres whose success shows up in the body. A comedy works if people laugh. A horror film works if pulses jump, breathing stalls and viewers grip the armrest through the quiet stretches. That makes the question of the scariest movie something that can be measured, not just argued over.

The U.K. price-comparison site MoneySuperMarket has been running that measurement since 2020. Its Science of Scare 2026 study ranks the scariest movies of all time by fitting heart rate monitors to a panel of 250 viewers and tracking how their bodies react to English-language horror films. Screenings run over several weeks to avoid fatigue, and results land each October, ahead of Halloween. The roster now runs past 80 films.

Since 2023, each film has received a Scare Score out of 100 built from three readings. The first is how far a movie lifts the panel’s average heart rate above its resting rate. The second is the single highest heart-rate spike, which tends to mark a film’s biggest jump scare. The third is the drop in heart rate variability, or HRV — the natural beat-to-beat variation that shrinks when the body is under stress. That last measure was added after horror fans, including Reddit $RDDT’s r/horror community, argued that heart rate alone favored shock-heavy films over slow-burn dread. For calibration, Shrek scores three.

The 2026 edition, the project’s seventh, screened 15 new releases. None reached the top 25, so the top of the table is unchanged. The best newcomer, the A24 sound-driven chiller Undertone, tied for No. 33. Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil set a new record for the biggest jump scare, a peak of 134 beats per minute, but finished No. 56 overall.

Because two films tie for 10th place, the study’s top 10 contains 11 movies. Several names recur. James Wan has more films in the top 50 than any other director, and Patrick Wilson appears in six of them. Here are the scariest horror films ranked by the study, in order, with the data behind each.

Sinister, Scott Derrickson’s 2012 supernatural horror film, ranks No. 1 in the Science of Scare 2026 study with a Scare Score of 96 out of 100. It earned the top spot by pairing sharp jump scares with a long, steady build of dread.

The numbers explain why. Watching Sinister lifted the panel’s average heart rate by 34%, from a resting 64 beats per minute to 86. At the film’s most frightening moment, heart rates peaked at 131 beats per minute. Viewers’ heart rate variability fell by 21%, a sign of sustained stress. Only Skinamarink and the 2026 newcomer Undertone produced bigger HRV drops.

Ethan Hawke stars as a true-crime author who moves his wife and two children into a house where a family was killed. In the attic, he finds a box of Super 8 home movies. Each reel documents a different family’s murder, and the writer becomes fixated on the footage as the link between the killings grows clearer. The figure connecting them is an ancient entity named Bughuul.

The study credits the film’s sound design for much of its tension. The soundtrack pairs Christopher Young’s score with dark ambient and experimental tracks, and the grainy home-movie reels play with almost no dialogue. That approach keeps viewers uneasy even between scares.

Sinister was produced by Blumhouse on a budget of about $3 million and became a box-office hit, which led to the 2015 sequel Sinister 2. Derrickson co-wrote the film with C. Robert Cargill. He later directed Marvel’s Doctor Strange and reunited with Hawke on The Black Phone.

The film also has the longest record in the study. It placed first in the original 2020 experiment, then lost the title to Host in 2021. Sinister reclaimed No. 1 in 2023, when the project switched to its combined Scare Score, and has stayed there for four years running.

Derrickson is one of several directors with two films in the study’s top 50. His other entry, The Exorcism of Emily Rose, also sits inside the top 10, at No. 9.

Host, Rob Savage’s 2020 found-footage film, ranks No. 2 in the Science of Scare 2026 study with a Scare Score of 95. It finished less than a point behind Sinister and raised the panel’s heart rate more than any other movie in the ranking.

Viewers watching Host reached an average heart rate of 88 beats per minute, the highest average of any film on the list. That sustained elevation, combined with a place among the study’s top five jump scares, keeps it near the top.

The premise grew directly out of the COVID-19 pandemic. Six friends in lockdown hire a medium to lead a séance over a Zoom $ZM call. One participant treats the ritual as a joke, and the group soon invites in something hostile. The entire film plays out on a computer screen, through webcam windows, virtual backgrounds and video filters.

Savage made Host during the U.K.’s first lockdown in 2020. The cast members filmed themselves in their own homes, handling their own cameras, lighting and practical effects under remote direction. Haley Bishop, Jemma Moore and Emma Louise Webb are among the performers, several of whom use their real first names on screen.

The film runs just under an hour, which is unusually short for a feature. Horror streaming service Shudder released it in July 2020, when much of the audience was living the same isolated, screen-bound life the characters depict. That timing turned the film into one of the most discussed horror releases of the pandemic.

Host has a history at the top of this study. It took the No. 1 spot in 2021, displacing Sinister for a year before the switch to the combined Scare Score returned Sinister to first place.

Savage went on to direct Dashcam, another lockdown-era experiment, and The Boogeyman, a 2023 adaptation of a Stephen King short story. Host remains the film that established him, and in the study’s data it is still the movie most likely to set hearts racing from start to finish.

Skinamarink ranks No. 3 in the Science of Scare 2026 study with a Scare Score of 91. It earned that place through dread rather than shocks, producing a 22% drop in heart rate variability — tied for the biggest stress response the study has recorded.

That result is unusual for a film near the top of the table. Four of the study’s five highest-scoring films also rank among its top five jump scares. Skinamarink is the exception. Its score comes almost entirely from the quiet, prolonged unease it creates.

Canadian filmmaker Kyle Edward Ball wrote and directed the film, his feature debut. Set in 1995, it follows two young children who wake in the night to find their father missing and the doors and windows of their house gone. Something in the dark begins speaking to them.

There is little conventional storytelling. The camera holds on ceilings, corners, toys and doorways, often from a child’s low vantage point. Faces are rarely shown. Much of the dialogue appears in subtitles because it is whispered. The image is heavily grained, mimicking old home video, and old public-domain cartoons flicker on a television in the background.

Ball developed the style on his YouTube channel, Bitesized Nightmares, where he recreated nightmares that viewers described to him. Skinamarink was shot in his childhood home on a very small budget. A copy leaked online during its festival run in 2022, and clips spread widely on TikTok before its official release.

That buzz carried the film into theaters in January 2023, where it became a modest box-office success for a micro-budget experimental film. It then moved to Shudder.

The study describes Skinamarink as among the most divisive films on its list, and that reflects wider audience reaction. Many viewers found it tedious or impenetrable. Others reported that it unsettled them more than any conventional horror film. The panel’s HRV data suggests the second group has the physiology on its side. The title comes from a children’s song popular in North America, which adds to the film’s eerie nursery tone.

Insidious, James Wan’s 2010 haunted-house film, ranks No. 4 in the Science of Scare 2026 study with a Scare Score of 90. It also holds the study’s No. 2 jump scare, which sent viewers’ heart rates to 133 beats per minute.

For six years, that spike was the largest the project had recorded. Insidious held the jump-scare record from the first study in 2020 until 2026, when Zach Cregger’s Resident Evil edged past it by a single beat per minute. Resident Evil finished outside the overall top 50, while Insidious stays in the top five.

The story centers on Josh and Renai Lambert, played by Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne. After their son Dalton falls into an unexplained coma, the family is plagued by apparitions. Moving to a new house does not help. A psychic, played by Lin Shaye, explains that the haunting is tied to the boy, whose spirit has wandered into a realm called the Further.

Wan directed the film from a script by Leigh Whannell, his collaborator on Saw. It was made for about $1.5 million and grossed close to $100 million worldwide, one of the most profitable horror films of its era. Its best-known scare involves a red-faced demon appearing behind Wilson in a family kitchen, a moment widely cited as one of the genre’s great jolts. The use of Tiny Tim’s recording of “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” became another of its signatures.

Insidious launched a long-running franchise. Insidious: Chapter 2, Chapter 3, The Last Key and The Red Door followed, the last directed by Wilson himself. The 2026 entry, Insidious: Out of the Further, joined the study this year at No. 41. It raised heart rates by 13 beats per minute, more than any other new film.

The franchise helps explain two of the study’s records. Wan has more films in the top 50 than any other director, with four. Wilson appears in six top 50 films across the Insidious and Conjuring series, more than any other actor.

The Conjuring, James Wan’s 2013 supernatural thriller, ranks No. 5 in the Science of Scare 2026 study with a Scare Score of 88. It also delivers the study’s No. 3 jump scare, behind only Resident Evil and Wan’s own Insidious.

The film dramatizes a case from the files of Ed and Lorraine Warren, the real-life American paranormal investigators. Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga play the couple. Set in 1971, the story follows the Perron family, who move into a Rhode Island farmhouse and begin experiencing violent disturbances. Lili Taylor plays Carolyn Perron, the mother who bears the worst of the haunting.

Wan builds many of the film’s scares from simple material. A children’s game of hide-and-clap, played blindfolded, becomes a device for some of its most effective jolts. Doors creak open, clocks stop at the same hour and the camera lingers in dark rooms long enough for the audience to search every corner. That restraint gives the jump scares more force when they arrive.

The Conjuring was a major commercial success, earning roughly $320 million worldwide on a budget of about $20 million. It started one of the highest-grossing horror franchises ever made. Three main sequels followed, ending with The Conjuring: Last Rites in 2025, along with spinoffs built around the Annabelle doll, a demonic nun and other figures from the Warrens’ case files.

The wider universe also shows up in the study’s director data. Michael Chaves, who directed several later Conjuring-universe films, is among the directors with two films in the top 50.

The Conjuring sits alongside Insidious as one of two Wan films in the study’s top five. Together they account for much of Wan’s reputation as horror’s leading craftsman of the jump scare, a label the study’s data supports. Wan has more films in the top 50 than any other director.

The film also accounts for part of Wilson’s record. The actor appears in six top 50 films, split between the Conjuring and Insidious franchises, making him the most featured performer in the study’s history.

Hereditary, Ari Aster’s 2018 debut feature, ranks No. 6 in the Science of Scare 2026 study with a Scare Score of 81. It is the highest-ranked film on the list from A24, the independent studio closely associated with prestige horror.

Toni Collette stars as Annie Graham, an artist who builds detailed miniature dioramas. The film opens after the death of her secretive mother. Annie’s family — her husband Steve, played by Gabriel Byrne, and their children Peter and Charlie, played by Alex Wolff and Milly Shapiro — starts to come apart under grief and a series of disturbing events.

Hereditary works as a family drama for much of its running time, which makes its horror harder to brace for. A sudden tragedy around the film’s first act reshapes the story and is often cited as one of the most shocking moments in modern horror. From there, the film moves toward the supernatural, revealing a cult devoted to the demon king Paimon.

Aster uses the miniatures as a visual motif. Several shots make the Grahams’ home look like one of Annie’s dioramas, suggesting the family is being arranged by forces outside its control. Charlie’s habit of clicking her tongue became one of the film’s most recognizable sounds.

Critics widely praised Collette’s performance, though it did not receive an Oscar nomination. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2018 and became one of A24’s biggest commercial successes at the time, grossing around $80 million worldwide.

The film combines both kinds of fear the Scare Score is built to measure. A slow accumulation of grief and suspicion sustains tension, while sudden reveals deliver sharp shocks.

Aster followed it with Midsommar in 2019 and Beau Is Afraid in 2023. Hereditary remains his most widely discussed horror film and, according to the study’s heart-rate data, one of the most physically frightening films ever made.

Smile 2, Parker Finn’s 2024 sequel, ranks No. 7 in the Science of Scare 2026 study with a Scare Score of 79. It edges out the original Smile by a single point, so the sequel outranks the film that launched the series.

Naomi Scott stars as Skye Riley, a pop star preparing for a comeback world tour after a car crash and a period of addiction. Shortly before the tour, she witnesses a disturbing death and becomes the next host of the curse introduced in the first film. The entity shows itself through people wearing a fixed, unnatural grin.

The sequel keeps the core mechanism of the original but moves it into a new world. The pressures of celebrity give the story extra layers of paranoia. Skye is surrounded by fans, handlers and crowds, any of whom might suddenly smile in the wrong way. Rehearsals, publicity events and concert stages become settings for the curse.

Finn wrote and directed the film, returning after the first Smile became a hit for Paramount $PARA. He gave the sequel a larger scale and a longer running time. Rosemarie DeWitt plays Skye’s mother, and Kyle Gallner returns from the first film in a brief role that links the two stories.

The Smile films lean heavily on jump scares and on the visual threat of faces that do not behave as faces should. That combination suits the study’s scoring, which rewards both sustained heart-rate elevation and sharp spikes.

Smile 2 opened in October 2024, positioned for the Halloween season like its predecessor. Critics generally gave it strong reviews, and much of the praise focused on Scott’s performance and the film’s ambition.

Finn is one of several directors with two films in the study’s top 50. Both of his features rank inside the top 10, placing them back to back at No. 7 and No. 8.

Smile, Parker Finn’s 2022 feature debut, ranks No. 8 in the Science of Scare 2026 study with a Scare Score of 78. It sits one point behind its own sequel, giving the franchise two of the 10 highest scores in the ranking.

Sosie Bacon plays Dr. Rose Cotter, a psychiatrist at an emergency ward. A patient tells her she is being stalked by something that wears other people’s faces, then takes her own life in front of Rose while grinning. Rose soon begins seeing the same smile on the people around her. She learns the curse spreads from victim to witness and has a fixed timeline.

Finn adapted the film from his own short, Laura Hasn’t Slept, which screened at festivals in 2020. Caitlin Stasey, who starred in the short, appears in the feature as the patient whose death sets the plot in motion.

The film treats trauma as a central theme. Rose carries unresolved guilt from her mother’s death, and the curse feeds on that history. The horror is often framed as an extension of mental illness and the difficulty of being believed, which gives the jump scares an emotional base.

Paramount $PARA initially planned to release Smile on its streaming service, Paramount+. Strong test screenings led the studio to move it to theaters instead. The decision paid off. Made for about $17 million, the film grossed more than $200 million worldwide.

The marketing campaign also drew attention. Paramount placed actors with fixed smiles in the seats behind home plate at televised Major League Baseball games, where they stared into the broadcast cameras. The stunt circulated widely on social media.

Smile relies on frequent jump scares and a persistent sense of threat. Any background character might be the next to smile, which keeps viewers scanning the frame.

Smile’s success turned Finn into one of the more closely watched horror directors of the decade. He is one of several filmmakers with two films in the study’s top 50.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose, released in 2005, ranks No. 9 in the Science of Scare 2026 study with a Scare Score of 76. It is the second Scott Derrickson film in the top 10, joining No. 1 Sinister, and the oldest film in the top 10.

The film mixes legal drama with possession horror. Laura Linney plays Erin Bruner, an ambitious defense attorney hired to represent a Catholic priest, Father Richard Moore, played by Tom Wilkinson. Moore is charged with negligent homicide after a young college student dies following an exorcism he performed. Jennifer Carpenter plays Emily Rose, the student at the center of the case.

The trial provides the structure. As witnesses testify, flashbacks show Emily’s decline, from sleepless nights and terrifying visions to violent episodes. The prosecution argues she suffered from epilepsy and psychosis. The defense argues that something else was at work. The film leaves room for both readings.

Carpenter’s physical performance drives the horror. Her contortions and voice work in the possession scenes are among the film’s most remembered moments, and they were achieved largely without digital effects. The film also turned 3 a.m. into a recurring sign of demonic activity.

The story was inspired by the case of Anneliese Michel, a young German woman who died in 1976 after months of exorcism rites. Her parents and two priests were later convicted of negligent homicide. The film relocates the events to the U.S. and fictionalizes the characters.

The Exorcism of Emily Rose was a commercial success on a modest budget and helped establish Derrickson as a horror director. Seven years later he made Sinister, which would go on to top this study.

More than two decades after its release, the film still ranks above dozens of newer titles. Its structure alternates slow courtroom tension with sudden, violent flashbacks. That pattern lines up with two of the qualities the Scare Score measures: a raised average heart rate and sharp individual spikes.

Talk to Me, the 2022 Australian horror film from twin brothers Danny and Michael Philippou, ties for No. 10 in the Science of Scare 2026 study with a Scare Score of 75. It shares the place with Hell House LLC.

Sophie Wilde stars as Mia, a teenager still grieving her mother’s death two years earlier. At a party, she and her friends try a viral trick involving an embalmed hand. Holding it and saying “talk to me” lets a spirit appear. Inviting the spirit in lets it take over the holder’s body. The game has one firm rule: let go within 90 seconds.

The group treats possession as a party high, filming each session on their phones. When Riley, the younger brother of Mia’s best friend Jade, holds on too long, the game goes badly wrong. Mia believes one of the spirits might be her mother, and that belief pushes her further.

The Philippous first built a following with RackaRacka, their YouTube channel known for violent, effects-heavy comedy sketches. Talk to Me was their feature debut. It premiered at the Adelaide Film Festival in 2022 and then played at Sundance in early 2023, where A24 acquired it for U.S. distribution.

Released widely in 2023, Talk to Me became one of A24’s highest-grossing horror films, earning roughly $90 million worldwide. A sequel was announced soon after its success.

The film’s scares rely on practical effects and on the performances of its young cast during possession scenes. The contorted faces, blackened eyes and sudden bursts of violence are the kind of moments the study’s peak heart-rate measure is designed to capture. The grief at the story’s core adds sustained tension.

The Philippou brothers are among several filmmaking teams and directors with two films in the study’s top 50. Their second feature, Bring Her Back, was released in 2025 and also centers on grief and the occult.

Hell House LLC, Stephen Cognetti’s 2015 found-footage film, ties for No. 10 in the Science of Scare 2026 study with a Scare Score of 75. It shares the spot with Talk to Me and is the only found-footage film in the top 10 besides Host.

The film is presented as a documentary. Five years earlier, a crew opened a Halloween haunted-house attraction in the abandoned Abaddon Hotel in a small New York town. On opening night, something went wrong and 15 people died. The documentary pieces together what happened using the crew’s own behind-the-scenes footage and interviews with a surviving member.

Much of that footage shows the crew preparing the attraction in the weeks before it opened. They hang decorations, test effects and film each other in the hotel’s dark hallways and basement. Small things start to shift. A mannequin dressed as a clown appears in places it should not be.

That clown is the film’s central image. Cognetti keeps it still and silent, often half-hidden in the background of a shot. Viewers are left to notice it before the characters do, which builds tension in long, uneventful takes. The approach rewards close attention and creates dread without a visible monster.

Hell House LLC was made independently on a very small budget and built its audience gradually through streaming and word of mouth. Its reputation grew in online horror communities, where it is often recommended as one of the best modern found-footage films.

That following produced a franchise. Cognetti wrote and directed Hell House LLC II: The Abaddon Hotel in 2018 and Hell House LLC III: Lake of Fire in 2019. A prequel, Hell House LLC Origins: The Carmichael Manor, followed in 2023.

The study does not break out the film’s individual heart-rate readings in its summary. Its tie with Talk to Me puts an independent, low-cost production level with an A24 release on the study’s scale.