We chose to conclude our October heart rate monitoring with a film recently added to Shudder. Haunt (2019) has received terrific word of mouth within the horror community for being one of the scariest haunted house movies in recent years. Find out if this American slasher produced by torture aficionado Eli Roth raised our subject’s heart rate to terrifyingly high levels.

SYNOPSIS:

On Halloween, a group of friends encounter an “extreme” haunted house that promises to feed on their darkest fears. The night turns deadly as they come to the horrifying realization that some nightmares are real.

Test Subject: Leah

Age: 35

Gender: Female

Fears: Spiders / Clowns

Resting HR: 62-65 bpm

Walking HR: 80-85 bpm

ANALYSIS:

Haunt (2019) led our subject into familiar territory but in less than fifteen minutes a nightmarish landscape began to take shape. Her heart rate climbed from resting numbers and escalated toward a walking pace. Her first noteworthy spike came at 22:30 when a creepy crawly scene preyed on one of our subject’s biggest fears sending her pulse to 84bpm. Several additional jolts maintained her overall average above 80bpm while twists and turns carried our subject through a horrific maze of tension and anxiety.

This consistently high heart rate would eventually lead to a tremendous peak of 103bpm at 50:00 as a combination of stress and gore hammered away at her psyche. And as seen in the scale, our subject was still running hot through the credits. There were moments while viewing when she wanted to look away but knew better than to break the FearScale rules.

CONCLUSION:

Haunt (2019) delivered the brutal haunted house film we craved this season. The film introduced a number of fears including enclosed spaces, spiders, and clowns that combined to grate on our subject’s nerves. These high spikes paired with low periods of relaxation were a heart racing formula that landed the film a spot in the top ten on our leaderboard. Haunt created similar results to the found footage genre where visceral reactions produced extremely high levels of stress. We recorded our subject’s final words after viewing Haunt, “I’m covered in sweat. I’m in deodorant failure.” You’ll have no problem burning off the Halloween candy consumed this year while watching this terrifying treat.

HAUNT: BURNS AN AVERAGE OF 248 CALORIES

WITCHES BREW (SPICED RED WINE): 130 CALORIES

How many Fear Calories did you burn watching Haunt? Let us know in the comments below or on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook