Weekly Geekly Rundown for May 17, 2027
The Science and Analysis of Scary Movies
As many of you know, in my day job I do research and statistical analysis. That’s right, I do homework for a living. My journey into data analysis started when I was earning my MBA and has continued as I finish my Ph.D. in Political Science.
It started with relatively easy to use tools that were featured in courses that demonstrated how do do a number of amazing things with Excel when doing business analysis. If you think Excel is “lame,” I’d invite you to spend a few hours watching Kenji Explains on his YouTube channel. Kenji demonstrates the many ways that Excel can be used in data analysis. For the record, I’ve done logistic regression and converted that regression into log odds and marginal effects by hand in Excel. It’s more powerful than it’s given credit for being.
Okay, Excel shilling over. After training in Excel (and some in Access) the more “serious” work of learning data analysis began. I’ve taken courses on Statistics, Statistical Analysis for Business, Probability, and a series of classes on Quantitative and Qualitative analysis. As I moved through each, the tools I learned expanded. I learned to use SPSS for my MBA thesis, then Stata (which I also love) early in my Ph.D. studies, and eventually the R programming language and I’m in the process of really digging into Power BI. Yep, bookended by Microsoft.
It can be hard work, but it is really rewarding as each new question creates puzzles to solve and using a combination of the tools I’ve learned allows me to come at questions from a variety of angles. I’m definitely not an everything is a hammer kind of person, but I will say that I have a particular fondness for playing around with R. Lately, I’ve been watching a lot of Albert Rapp’s videos on how to use R and I’m also a big fan of Elena Llaudet’s Data Analysis for Social Science. It’s one of the best introductory textbooks on how to do data analysis and one of the best introductory books on R.
What does all of that boring background have to do with the Science of Analysis of Scary Movies?
Glad you asked. As a part of my continual learning, I’m always looking for new data to look at and I recently found Dr. Jess Hartnett’s blog Not Awful and Boring. Dr. Hartnett is an Associate Professor in Psychology and Counseling at Gannon University and she has made it one of her goals to share ways of teaching statistics that are neither awful nor boring. Statistics scares the crap out of students, but it’s an amazing tool that can open up new ways of looking at the world and some of the best practitioners of statistics are Psychology professors. The Psychology stats sequence at my university was a God send.
Since Dr. Hartnett wants learning statistics to be interesting and fun, she wrote a recent (if I can still call April 10th of 2024 recent) post featuring data from The Science of Scare Project by MoneySuperMarket. While The Science of Scare Project is primarily a means for Money Super Market to promote their financial insight services, it also serves as an interesting way to look at and analyze scary movies and it provides some very interesting data.
The first question, and it’s a legitimate one, is how does one determine what the scariest movie of all time is? There are likely many methods, but the one that Money Super Market chose is physiological. They look at both the heart rate in Beats per Minute and the Heart Rate Variance (the time between heart beats) and the film that effects those in the most dramatic ways is the scariest film of all time. Their scariest film combines both “constant dread” as represented by a continuing elevated heart rate as well as jump scares. It’s pretty good in my opinion, though I might argue that rating a truly scary film should focus more on the average heart rate increase than the Heart Rate Variance, maybe by weighting them.
According to their research, the scariest film of all time is currently Sinister (2012) starring Ethan Hawke. This isn’t based on any critical analysis, just the physiological effects. Regardless of the methodology though, I think that Sinister is probably in the running for “Scariest Film for the Current Generation.” I say this because I think that horror as a genre shines a lens on what the underlying fears of the current generation are and we have been sitting at a moment where older generations are afraid of (and for) younger generations, a major theme of Sinister, for some time now. Look at all the discussion of the negative effects of TikTok on the mental health of youth today. Look at the discussions of suicide. Look at the generational tensions in a number of places. They are all rich for exploration and Sinister explores those themes to good and chilling effect.
Dr. Hartnett took the data offered on the MoneySuperMarket website and added some additional information to allow for creative engagement with the data. For example, she and her research assistant added Year of Release, Rotten Tomatoes Ratting, and whether the movie was or had a sequel. I downloaded the data and added a couple of other things to it as well. I added Rotten Tomato fan ratings and whether the film was a part of the Conjuring Universe. I might change that to just the one production company, since they have been prolific of late. You can download the data below.
The addition of fan ratings meant that each film now has two rows of data. This doesn’t matter as when analyzing the data I just filter to one or the other, but it made for an easier to understand transformation than having it in a separate column which I then transformed to create the bar graphs where I compare Critic ratings to fan ratings.
So I had a couple of questions. The first being whether there was any relationship between whether critics, and fans, thought a film was scary and whether they thought it was a good movie overall. After all, one likely goes to a scary movie to be scared. So…what were the results?
For critics, there was a small but insignificant relationship between a film’s scariness and it’s quality. In fact, the 49th scariest film on the list (Alien) was rated very highly as far as film quality whereas Sinister had far fewer critics find it fresh.
The scatter plot visualization above is a visualization of the regression analysis of Scare Score and Critic Rating. If you look at the Regression Analysis above, you can see that Scare Score does seem to have a positive relationship on Rating but that the error term (that’s the thing in parenthesis) is so large as to make any relationship nonsignificant. That can be seen above in the lighter red area. This is due to a number of factors. The first being that there aren’t a lot of “REALLY” scary films out there (above 90) and that most of the horror films on the list have 60% or more of critics finding them fresh. Seems like horror films might make money not only because they are cheap, but because they tend to be good too.
I did some initial analysis to see how components of the scare score (Heart Rate etc.) might affect critical ratings and found that average heart rate does have a positive relationship (once again nonsignificant) but that max heart rate and percent change have a negative (and nonsignificant) relationship. This might be suggestive of people finding continuous dread more satisfying than sudden scares, but the lack of significance means I cannot say the relationship above is due to anything other than random error. Of course, there’s the added component that Rotten Tomatoes Ratings are the percentage of critics who found it Fresh and not an actual average score so it might be better to get even more data. Oh, and the heart rate data is averages too. Ideally, we would get individual heart rate scores and individual film ratings from critics and fans, but we play with the data we have.
How did this relationship work with fans?
For fans it was pretty much flat with no relationship between scariness and rating. Since there is a difference, though not a statistical one, between critic and fan relationships, I thought I’d look to see if the age old “Critics vs. Fans have different ratings” debate was true. Do fans really rate films differently than critics on Rotten Tomatoes?
The answer is “Yes and No.” Fewer fans, as a percentage, find movies in the top 50 scariest films to be Fresh, but the difference isn’t a statistically significant one. In fact, running a t-test on Critic and Fan ratings to determine if there is a significant relationship between the two demonstrated that they was a statistically significant relationship between Critic and Fan ratings.
Because Quarto files are not compatible with Substack, I couldn’t upload the file for you to download here so I’ve provided a Dropbox link to the Analysis file. You will need the Excel file below and RStudio to run the file, but if you’ve got them you can have fun playing around all you want.
So what do you think is the Scariest Film of All Time?
Weekly Film Article Cavalcade
The Lamentations of Luke Y. Thompson
Luke has three very positive reviews this week. One that shows how he doesn’t hold assessments of earlier films against their sequels, another that shows him out of step with many other critics while being maybe more in step with my tastes, and a final one that I’m going to imagine he wrote just for me.
Furiosa-ly Excited
Luke wasn’t as big a fan of Fury Road as most critics. To be honest, I wasn’t either. I thought the film was beautiful, but hollow. I understand that there is a certain hopelessness in Miller’s post-apocalyptic future, but in the Mad Max trilogy two of the three have notes of optimism. With Fury Road, Miller dialed up the nihilism a little high for me. It’s still a beautiful film and one that I enjoy, I just didn’t think it deserved the “Best Picture” talk it got in some circles. Where Luke was skeptical of Fury Road, he’s all in on Furiosa and it sounds like I will be too. To be fair, I was always all in on Furiosa the character, even as I was critical of plot points in Fury Road.
Based on Luke’s review, the nihilism is still there, which is too bad. The Mad Max trilogy went from absolute hopelessness and nihilism (Mad Max) to Campbellian heroics (Road Warrior) to eventual salvation (Thunderdome). In Mad Max, we got to see the world that will lead to a nuclear war. The apocalypse of that film is one of increasing scarcity due to humanity’s cruelty and lack of foresight. Road Warrior takes place after a nuclear war. Cruelty is everywhere, but love and kindness still exist. They may be threatened by Humongous threats, but by whit and will they can survive. Thunderdome is told as an old story. It is a tale of the “World that Was” before civilization was possible again. Just as the final issue of The Walking Dead, and Shaun of the Dead, let us know that there is life after the Zombie Apocalypse, Thunderdome let us know that there was hope. That hope was missing in Fury Road, even the end there seems temporary. It’s more like the end of Road Warrior than Thunderdome. Given the timeline, it makes sense that this is true, but I’d like to see hope and faith in humanity come back.
Faith and Imaginary Friends
Speaking of hope, and faith, coming back. Luke’s review of IF is one of the most positive reviews I’ve read on the film. There aren’t many movies I hate. I’m a very forgiving viewer.
When people ask my least favorite film, I usually say Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter. Not because of the subject matter. If I was going to be offended by the subject matter, I’d have never watched the film in the first place. No, it’s that the film bored me to death. It didn’t put me to sleep like John Woo’s Broken Arrow1, that would have been a mercy. It just bored me to death.
Saying Jesus Christ Vampire Hunter is my least favorite film isn’t really true though. My least favorite film is Disney’s Inside Out. It’s a film that offends me. It makes me angry. It doesn’t make me sad. It makes me filled with hatred for the people who made it. I won’t go into a long screed why, maybe some other time, but I will say it has something to do with the treatment of Bing Bong and the way it presents Depression as mere Sadness. The Sadness in the movie lies the way Depression lies and that makes the young girl’s struggle even harder, so hard she ends up killing her childhood. My anger at the film is made all the larger by the fact that the performances are so good. It only exacerbates the pain I feel in watching the film.
All that aside, I actually love stories about young people dealing with the pain of loss. Stories provide roadmaps that can help us overcome adversity. Where the Red Fern Grows hurts, but it provides comfort. I Kill Monsters, Simon Birch, and A Monster Calls each provides important lessons for dealing with pain. When my mom died due to her heroin addiction, it was films about heroin addiction like Permanent Midnight and Trainspotting and music and memoirs by people like James Taylor and Lou Reed who helped me understand. That understanding helped me contextualize why what happened had happened.
My personal “night of fire” provided me with the solace I needed to overcome my grief. Like Blaise Pascal, my night of fire was one that involved “Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy. Peace.” I was alone and felt love. There were no fireworks, no visions, no conversations, just love and peace. With all of that came faith and hope.
Hope is central to recovery. What that hope is differs from individual to individual. Perhaps it is a religious hope, as it was for me and Pascal, but that hope can come from other places. From those around you who love you. From music. From art. Even from an Imaginary Friend. If that is the message of IF, which it appears to be based on Luke’s review, then this is a film I very much want to see.
I think that Luke is right that many films we might not think of as films about faith are in fact films about faith. Some are likely shifted to avoid claims of blasphemy, as Luke claims, others might have creators who don’t quite know that’s what they’ve done. It reminds me of when I read Mark Salzman’s books. Salzman is a poetic and artistic atheist and atheist who happens to write books about faith, sometimes without knowing it. His books Iron & Silk and Lost in Place: Growing Up Absurd in Suburbia are unknowingly books about faith, but his book Lying Awake is expressly a book about faith. It’s one of my favorite books about faith and it is not a story of conversion. Salzman did not become religious after he wrote it, but he did come to understand that his own faith in art was a kind of faith and he came to understand those of religious faith better. That kind of insight is valuable and it should work in the opposite way too. Here’s to hoping that IF is as complex and messy in dealing with this question as I hope.
From Meanderings About Faith to Shear Joy
Luke has written a review of the new Warduke and Strongheart action figures from NECA, and it’s a great review. It’s almost like he wrote it just for me. My headcanon, okay imaginings, is that he said to himself one day, “Can I write something just for Christian?” If he did, then this review was a good answer to that question.
I have a lot of thoughts about the direction that WotC/Hasbro has taken with D&D over the years, and I’ll write a full version of those thoughts next week. I will say that I think they have been trying for some time to simultaneously appeal to the nostalgia of old players, while presenting that nostalgia to new players in a way they think will appeal to new audiences. I think it is a noble effort, but I think having Chris Perkins as the creative force behind these efforts is a mistake. The man who thinks ThAC0 the Clown is a good idea, or mocking 3rd edition players for the weird grappling rules of 3rd edition D&D, isn’t the guy who can manage that balance. I think that Wizards/Hasbro have hit a couple of bullseyes, the NECA figures are one of those examples, but that it has sometimes backfired. As I wrote though, more on that later. For now, just read Luke’s article and buy the action figures.
Courtney Howard’s View from the Center Seat
Courtney Howard’s review of IF comes off as a stark contrast to Luke’s and she seems almost as angry at this film as I was at Inside Out. It’s definitely a divisive film and one I’ll have to see for myself. One thing I will say is that regardless of whether I agree with Courtney’s overall assessment or not, I will keep in mind her comment that the score is overbearing. That’s something I’ve noticed in a lot of films lately. While Socrates was right that music can be used to order the soul, and to shift emotions narratively, it can be overused and often is.
Mendelson’s Melodic Meanderings
’s latest podcast discusses Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, or is it Empire of the Planet of the Apes, or Postscript to the Planet of the Apes? The podcast is a lively and fun discussion. I just don’t know how many more Apes movies I can take, even when they are good.Glimpses from the Substackosphere and Bloggerverse
Geoffrey Golden is considering making a new game inspired by the Disney+ series X-Men ‘97, which is feeding the nostalgia bug for a lot of Millennials.
is hard at work on his new/old role playing game and has presented to us some rules for clerics. I’ll definitely be playing around with his ideas as I work on Heroes of Karameikos. has a very interesting post on our political system this week. I’d even say it’s a vital read. I’ll be making my students read it next semester for sure. When it comes to political science, there are a few things that have really shaped how I think about the world. The first is the writings of Jane Mansbridge on deliberation. She’s my favorite political scientist and her work sings to me. Second was William Riker’s writings about pluralism and how he loved it, I mean hated it, depending on the outcome. It was the first glimpse I had into one of the major necessities of democratic systems, that of Loser’s Consent. A third was Kenneth Arrow’s discussions regarding public choice and the difficulties of democratic systems in actually delivering “what the public wants.” A final one, for now, was Marion Just’s discussion of an Activist’s Response to Deliberative Democracy.
These combined to make me a huge supporter of pluralism and understanding that “being a good loser is the most important skill in a democracy.” Why? Because you will lose a lot and the only way to win is to keep participating. Thankfully, while any given election is a zero sum game (only one person can win after all), as long as the system continues it isn’t. It’s a positive sum game. There is the potential for everyone to benefit. At least so long as we avoid majoritarian systems. Those lead to weird situations where the potentially indifferent become the deciders (see Kenneth Arrow for lengthy explanation). I prefer a system where political minorities still have power, and yes our system can accomplish this as well (in my opinion) as any parliamentary system, but political scientists since Woodrow Wilson have been trying to “Make Parliamentary Happen” in the US for some time. That’s not what Glassman is doing here, he is descriptive rather than proscriptive, and that’s what political scientists should be.
Do you want to learn Gaelic? If so
has some great advice on where to start. is inspiring me to use more LEGOs in my D&D campaigns. To be honest, if the original D&D players could use weird pseudo-dinosaur toys from Hong Kong in their games, why shouldn’t we use LEGOs?
Time for de Camp Conan
Sprague de Camp Fan has a series of post on the Bantam imprint Conan stories. One of his most recent ones was on The Ivory Goddess and he provides us with some interesting information about that tale. As you know, I’m a bit of a defender of de Camp’s Conan efforts. Not in the sense that they are equal to Howard’s tales, just that they are worth reading and are part of why we love the character. Check out the DeCampFan blog.
Role Playing Game Recommendation
Since I’m in the process of thinking about how to work my Heroes of Karameikos rule set, I’ve been looking at a number of “kid friendly” role playing games to see what games directed at the very inexperienced look like. One of the best games along those lines is Hero Kids. It has a very easy system to run that feels a little like RISK and so you can play Hero Kids while using RISK as your mass war simulator. In fact, I’m thinking you could run an entire campaign using a RISK map (renamed) and enacting battles to shape the campaign world, then play out adventures with Hero Kids.
Music Recommendation
I’m feeling very punk today and so my recommendations are all punk. The first is from The Police. Most of their songs are a post-punk fused with Reggae and Jazz elements, but there was a time when they could just provide some straight punk and Nothing Achieving is one of those times.
Dwarves were one of the first punk bands I saw in person. They are famous for doing long shows in dive bars and quitting right when they start at bigger venues, only to then do a follow up show at a local dive bar. The song “I Will Deny” has Blag Dahlia incorporating a bit of Country into traditional punk tones. Dahlia recently released an Outlaw Country album. I haven’t heard it, but look forward to it.
No one could grow up in Reno, Nevada and like punk music without listening to 7 Seconds. Given that they were in the “positive hardcore” genre, they often got a lot of pushback from the punk community. As I was someone who wore rugby shirts and polos to punk shows, I didn’t care that the band wasn’t angry enough.
Classic Film Recommendation
I’ll be releasing a full film review early next week that’s a long analysis of a specific film and a commemoration of how important Roger Corman was to the movie industry. Since that’s still about half a week down the pike, I’m doing a little more research and rewatching the film with commentary on, this week’s selection won’t have a long surrounding commentary.
While it looks like my least read posts are reviews of Westerns, I am a huge fan of the genre. I came late to watching Budd Boetticher’s Ranown Westerns. In fact, I saw them long after I saw Ride the High Country, a film that has even more meaning after watching the Ranown films. Film critic Terry Teachout once said that the traditional western ended with Ride the High Country. After that film, most Westerns became revisionary is some manner. I think this was true for a time, but I think he was wrong in the long run. I think cinematic Westerns have always been complex works that constantly engage in revisionism, it’s only the TV Westerns that ossified the white hat vs. black hat cliché. I love Bonanza and Wild, Wild, West as much as the next person, but they are pretty clear in their depictions of good and evil. It was only after Sam Peckinpah worked in TV that TV Westerns gained the complexity of their filmic counterparts. From The Rifleman on, TV Westerns have had an edge. Whether it’s Big Valley, or it’s modern update Yellowstone, the morality of the modern TV Western is complex.
Boetticher, like Anthony Mann, infused Westerns with a dark moral complexity and one of the best of the Ranown films is 7 Men from Now. Heck, I may have even recommended it in the past, but it’s so damn good I’m recommending it again. You can see where things are going in this dark film, but like 3:10 to Yuma, there’s a little twist at the end that shows that the story isn’t over. You know what life will be like for the protagonist in 3 or so years after the end of the film, but the film doesn’t leave with every relationship fully resolved. Some of those relationships are only beginning.
Unlike too many films about revenge, you never see the death that prompts the protagonist to vengeance. That’s backstory. It was cruel and it would be inappropriate to share that cruelty with the audience. Anyway, 7 Men from Now has one of the best opening scenes of any film, so check it out.
I am a massive John Woo fan and I tend to like John Travolta, but it took me 4 viewings to get through Broken Arrow. I kept falling asleep. It was like a sedative. I don’t think the movie is terrible, but if I ever need a nap I just pull it up and hit play.
I'm so with you on Inside Out that I wonder if there is a correlation between feelings on that film and IF.
I just want to know what the film is at the top right of the Scare Score x Critic Rating plot.