Courtesy of Blumhouse
For the third year in a row, science has asked a very important question: what are the scariest movies ever made? And while for the previous two years, Shudder’s Host has been crowned the king of fear, this year, a new player has entered the arena of terror: DASHCAM.
A controversial 2022 release from Host director Rob Savage, DASHCAM enters the top 10 scariest horror titles, according to science, at number 8.
The found footage horror release made the news earlier this year when Savage reportedly claimed the movie was pulled from theatrical chain Vue for being “offensive.” While Vue disputed this claim, it is possible that star Annie Hardy’s personal beliefs ultimately left a mark on DASHCAM‘s release.
Politics and potential controversies aside, Blumhouse’s 2022 DASHCAM left a non-partisan effect on the participants of The Science of Scare study this year, landing the title as the eighth scariest ever made.
According to The Science of Scare study via Broadband Choices, “Each year, the Science of Scare project curates a list of the most terrifying feature length movies and puts them to our panel 250 ‘victims’ (test subjects).
Post-Covid, our test subjects are invited to special screenings of our movies in our ‘screaming rooms’, where they are fitted with special heart rate monitors and their heart rate is tracked throughout the movies, under researcher supervision.
From here we measure the average impact our shortlisted movies had on the heart rate (measured in BPM) of our subjects, compared to the average resting BPM of the total sample size, which each year has been 64 BPM.
To prevent audience fatigue, our screenings take place over the course of several weeks throughout the year, before we publish our results in October, just in time for Halloween.
To decide what films to screen, we take recommendations for the most frightening films from horror experts, critic ‘best of lists’, online communities (in particular r/horror), and our own personal picks. More on our ‘Scare List’ and selection process can be found at the bottom of this page.”
Check out the trailer for DASHCAM here
Lastly, have you seen DASHCAM yet? If so, do you think it deserves its addition to this scariest film list? Let us know on Twitter via @DreadCentral. We’re always around to chat about all things Blumhouse horror!
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