Now on Hulu and Tubi: ‘Black Phone 2’ Director’s Horror Movie Proven by Study to Be the Scariest Ever Made
Before returning to the shadows with this year’s highly anticipated sequel, Black Phone 2, director Scott Derrickson had already terrified audiences with what scientists once crowned the scariest movie ever made.
Back in 2020, researchers at Broadband Choices conducted the now-infamous Science of Scare Project, a study designed to measure the physical impact of horror movies. Participants were fitted with heart-rate monitors and watched more than fifty of the most frightening titles ever released, from Insidious to The Conjuring and Hereditary. When the numbers were tallied, one film rose above the rest: Sinister. They did it again in 2025, and Sinister is still at the top spot.
The top 10 scariest movies of all time, according to the study:
According to the data, Sinister generated the highest sustained heart rate of any movie tested, with viewers’ pulses spiking to an average of 86 beats per minute — nearly 30% above their normal resting rate. The 2012 supernatural chiller even out-scared modern classics by James Wan and Ari Aster, earning the scientific title of “the scariest film ever made.”
More than a decade later, Derrickson’s nightmare still holds that crown. Its combination of found-footage terror, true-crime storytelling, and occult mythology hasn’t lost an ounce of its power. And now, the so-called “scariest movie ever made” is streaming on both Hulu and Tubi, making it easier than ever for new audiences to discover (or rediscover) its dark magic ahead of Black Phone 2’s release.
Dread Central interview with The Black Phone cast:
In Sinister, Ethan Hawke — who also headlines The Black Phone — plays washed-up true-crime author Ellison Oswalt. Desperate for a comeback, he moves his family into a house where a brutal murder took place. There, he finds a box of unnerving Super 8 home movies depicting different families being slaughtered by an unseen force. Each reel is worse than the last, slowly revealing the presence of a pagan entity known as Bughuul, a demonic figure who feeds on children’s souls.
Check out the trailer for Sinister here:
Bleak, grainy, and deeply unsettling, Sinister remains a benchmark for modern supernatural horror — a film so effectively disturbing that science itself has confirmed its potency. If you’re counting down the days until Black Phone 2, this is the essential rewatch: proof that Derrickson’s brand of dread isn’t just terrifying, it’s empirically proven.
Source: Science of the Scare
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