Getting under the blankets to watch a horror movie is a time-honoured Halloween tradition – and now the most popular spooky-film choices in 19 countries around the world have been revealed.
According to Google search data, the overall most popular Halloween horror movie is Alien, which takes the top spot in England, New Zealand, Spain, France, Germany, Norway and Wales and has the biggest search tally in total.
The Shining is also a top choice, with America, Scotland and the Republic of Ireland all apparently seeing it as the best bet for a TV fright night.
Getting under the blankets to watch a horror movie is a time-honoured Halloween tradition – and now the most popular spooky-film choices in 19 countries around the world have been revealed
The Shining is the top choice for a Halloween horror movie in America, Scotland and the Republic of Ireland
According to Google search data, the overall most popular Halloween movie is Alien, which takes the top spot in England, New Zealand, Spain, France, Germany, Norway and Wales and has the biggest search tally in total
Australia and Canada, meanwhile, prefer to watch gore-heavy Saw, South Africa turns to the creepy clown It for Halloween scares, and Brazil chooses Resident Evil.
The research was carried out by hotel chain Premier Inn, which drew up the ranking by researching IMDB’s most popular horror films – from vintage classics such as The Exorcist, Blair Witch Project and Scream, through to modern fright fests Hereditary, Midsommar and Doctor Sleep – then analysing Google search volumes for the month of October back to 2016.
The study revealed that there had been 2,314,000 online searches in America for The Shining, 409,500 online searches in England for Alien and 764,500 online searches for Saw in Australia.
Making up the rest of the table in America is Zombieland: Double Tap (second, 1,831,030 searches); Alien (third, 1,818,000); Scream (fourth, 1,793,000); It (fifth, 1,767,000); Halloween (1978) (sixth, 1,576,000); Insidious (seventh, 1,447,000); Hereditary (eighth, 1,344,000); Gerald’s Game (ninth, 1,342,600); The Conjuring (tenth, 1,310,000); Midsommar (eleventh, 1,222,670); The Exorcist (twelfth, 1,149,000) and Sleepy Hollow (thirteenth, 1,102,000).
And in the UK there is broad agreement about what constitutes a top horror movie.
The Shining, Alien, Doctor Sleep and Scream all feature in the top five rankings for Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The Exorcist and Gerald’s Game both appear in all UK rankings, too.
The top 13 overall most-searched movies ranking comprises, after first-place Alien (4,175,600 searches) – The Shining (second, 3,464,670); Scream (third, 3,267,400); Resident Evil (fourth, 2,862,500); The Conjuring 2 (fifth, 2,827,200); Zombieland Double Tap (sixth, 2,748,210); Insidious (seventh, 2,715,100); It (eighth, 2,654,800); Saw (ninth, 2,426,270); Doctor Sleep (tenth, 2,379,520); The Conjuring (eleventh, 2,293,700); Hereditary (twelfth, 2,245,000) and Midsommar (thirteenth, 2,138,370).
A spokesperson from Premier Inn commented: ‘We know at this time of year that people like to frighten themselves with a spooky movie, and we were curious to compare which movies were most popular across the UK, and then see how it compared to other places across the globe. We hope the research gives some frightfully good movie inspiration for anyone looking to give themselves a little scare this Halloween.’
To see the full research visit www.premierinn.com/gb/en/news/2020/halloween-films.html.