Science Says This is Ethan Hawke’s Scariest Movie
Ethan Hawke’s Sinister has been crowned the scariest horror movie in a BroadbandChoices study that tracked 50 viewers’ heart rates over 100-plus hours, with Scott Derrickson’s nerve-shredder sending pulses spiking higher than any rival.
If you ever watched Sinister and felt your pulse doing sprints, turns out that is not just your imagination. A study that literally tracked heart rates while people watched horror movies named Scott Derrickson's Ethan Hawke creepfest the scariest of the bunch. And honestly, if you remember the opening scene, that checks out.
The science bit (yes, really)
BroadbandChoices ran an experiment where 50 participants watched more than 100 hours of horror movies while researchers monitored their heart rates. Sinister landed at No. 1, averaging a jump from a resting 65 BPM to 86 BPM during the movie. Not exactly peer-reviewed neuroscience, but as a vibes-based metric for sheer dread, it is a useful yardstick.
Why Sinister hits so hard
The movie follows Ethan Hawke as Ellison, a true-crime author chasing his old glory by moving his family into a house where the prior owners were murdered. He digs into the case and finds a stash of Super 8 reels that play like snuff films, documenting a string of family murders tied to the home. Those reels are the movie's beating, rotten heart: Derrickson shot them on real Super 8 to mimic the rough, handmade feel of actual found footage. They are grainy, patient, and stomach-turning in a way jump-scare factories never are.
And it all starts from frame one: a family hanging in a backyard, captured on that same scratchy film. It is a brutally effective mission statement for the movie's tone.
The opening scene almost went catastrophically wrong
Here is the grim behind-the-scenes wrinkle. The team had to stage that hanging safely. The stunt coordinator proposed a crane setup to lift the performers as a tree branch appeared to fall. Art director El Manahi flagged the plan as a bad idea in prep. Then the stunt coordinator skipped the final production meeting. On the day, Manahi's warnings played out in real time: when the rig lifted, the mechanics did not behave as promised, and a harness slipped up around a stunt performer's neck. He was badly shaken.
'The plan was a crane out front lifting the actors while we timed a branch dropping. From the start, I said you cannot hide the cables or sync that safely the way they wanted.'
No one suffered serious physical injury, but the near miss was enough for Derrickson (yes, the Doctor Strange director) to fire the stunt coordinator on the spot. The mistake cost the production thousands and forced them to rethink the setup properly. They eventually pulled it off safely, and the result is a big part of why the movie still has a reputation for getting under your skin.
Quick hits
- Study result: Sinister ranked scariest; average heart rate jumped from 65 BPM to 86 BPM across 50 viewers watching 100+ hours of horror
- Cast/crew: Ethan Hawke stars as Ellison; directed by Scott Derrickson
- Vibe: Found-footage-adjacent Super 8 reels that feel uncomfortably real; less about cheap jumps, more about lingering dread
- Numbers: IMDb 6.8; Rotten Tomatoes 64% Tomatometer / 62% Audience
- Box office: $82.5 million worldwide; runtime: 110 minutes
- Where to watch: Streaming on Hulu in the US (with Hulu continuing to fold into Disney+)
The bottom line
Whether or not you buy the heart-rate crown, Sinister earns its reputation. Those Super 8 sequences are the rare horror gimmick that actually gets scarier the longer you stare at them. If you are queuing it up on Hulu, consider this your friendly reminder to maybe not watch it right before bed.