Should You Beware of Horror Movies?
The “bloodcurdling” horror film has long been an advertising staple in the movie industry, alerting fans to the most gruesome Hollywood releases. And now, thanks to a group of enterprising if tongue-in-cheek researchers, the effect has been proven as a medical reality.
A study by doctors and academics at Leiden University in the Netherlands analysed blood samples from volunteers who had just watched either a horror film or a distinctly non-frightening documentary about the French wine industry. It found that those who sat through the horror title had higher levels of the blood-clotting protein factor VIII.
The research was published in the Christmas edition of the British Medical Journal, the august and usually serious publication which, every festive season, devotes itself instead to more frivolous, if still properly robust and peer reviewed inquiries.
As well as the horror film study, the 2015 festive edition includes papers about using MRI scans to locate Christmas spirit in the brain (it seems to be in parts of the cortex associated with spirituality); which doctors drink the most coffee (orthopaedic surgeons followed by radiologists); and whether the Austin Powers films are accurate in labelling the British as having notably worse teeth than the Americans (perhaps surprisingly, no).
Banne Nemeth, who led the horror film study, said it originated from the fact that the idea of a bloodcurdling fright exists in several languages, including Dutch (bloedstollend), German (das Blut in den Adern erstarren lassen) and French (à vous glacer le sang).
Nemeth and fellow doctor Luuk Scheres specialise in venal thrombosis and decided they wanted to fact check the phrase, he said.
The study saw 24 young volunteers with no health issues watch films in a university meeting room that had been converted into a home cinema. Around half of them watched the 2010 US haunted house film Insidious followed by, at least a week later, the distinctly non-alarming documentary A Year in Champagne, with the others seeing the same films but in the opposite order, also at a gap of at least a week.
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