ScareScore Wants to Turn Your Heartbeat Into the Ultimate Horror Review
New biometric entertainment platform will use smartwatches and wearable devices to measure real-time audience reactions at horror screenings and immersive experiences.
By Seth Metoyer | More Horror
For decades, horror marketing has loved the physical reaction. Audiences screamed. People supposedly fainted. Moviegoers covered their eyes, jumped out of their seats and occasionally became part of the legend surrounding the movie itself. William Castle famously wired theater seats for The Tingler. The Exorcist became inseparable from stories of overwhelmed audiences. Modern horror trailers routinely turn night-vision footage of frightened theatergoers into part of the sales pitch.
Now a new entertainment technology company wants to take that reaction out of the realm of anecdote and turn it into data.
ScareScore officially announced its launch October 1, introducing a biometric entertainment platform designed to measure how audiences physically respond to movies, haunted attractions and other adrenaline-driven experiences in real time. Its pitch arrives with a line almost purpose-built for horror fans: “Your body is the review.”
Rather than asking someone whether a movie scared them once the credits roll, ScareScore connects with smartwatches and wearable devices audiences already own and tracks physiological signals including heart rate, heart-rate variability and movement. The system establishes an individual baseline and then analyzes changes throughout the experience, eventually converting those reactions into a personalized ScareScore.
The company plans to begin public activations during the 2026 Halloween season at select film festivals and location-based entertainment experiences across North America.
What Happens When Horror Gets a Heart Monitor?
The concept turns one of horror’s oldest questions into something quantifiable: Did the scare actually land?
ScareScore says its technology can synchronize audience biometric information with what happens on screen or inside an attraction, allowing reactions to become time-coded to particular moments. A sudden heart-rate spike during a jump scare, increased movement during an especially tense sequence or the body’s recovery afterward could all become part of the resulting data.
For fans, ScareScore envisions the system as both an individual experience and a social one. Users will be able to compare results with friends and other audiences, share scores and eventually participate in what the company describes as its “Global Human Scoreboard.”
For filmmakers, studios, festivals and attraction operators, the more intriguing application may happen behind the curtain. ScareScore intends to provide synchronized audience-response information that can reveal exactly when measurable physiological reactions occurred rather than relying exclusively on surveys, reviews, focus groups or audience recollections after an experience ends.
“Entertainment has spent more than a century asking audiences what they thought after an experience was over,”
ScareScore founder and CEO Chris Anastas said in announcing the company. “We believe there is another incredibly valuable signal sitting right in front of us: what their bodies were doing while they experienced it.”
A wearable can record physiological signals; ScareScore’s technology then interprets those signals and converts them into its scoring system. A racing heart can accompany fear, excitement, anticipation or physical movement, so the platform represents a new measurement of bodily reaction to entertainment rather than a literal machine reading the emotion inside somebody’s head.
That may ultimately make the experiment more interesting. Horror has always operated in that strange electrical territory between psychology and physiology. The monster exists on the screen. The reaction happens inside you.
ScareScore wants to capture the moment those two things collide.
Horror Is Only the Beginning
ScareScore comes from Anastas and co-founder JP Ouellette, whose backgrounds cross technology, filmmaking, immersive entertainment and horror production.
Anastas previously founded SoundFi Systems, developing patented smartphone synchronization technology designed to connect personal devices with theatrical playback. SoundFi launched commercially in 2018 in connection with Sony Pictures’ The Equalizer 2, using synchronized technology for applications including personalized theatrical audio and language translation.
His work later moved further into immersive horror. In 2023, Anastas helped create and write Angel of Light, an elaborate horror experience staged inside downtown Los Angeles’ historic Los Angeles Theatre. The attraction combined live performance, theatrical storytelling, sound and environmental design, placing audiences directly inside its fictional world.
ScareScore takes that interest in synchronized entertainment one step further. This time, the audience itself becomes part of the signal.
Ouellette approaches the equation from the filmmaking side. A writer and producer with deep roots in horror, he produced Fran Kranz’s acclaimed 2021 Sundance drama Mass, which later received the Robert Altman Award at the Film Independent Spirit Awards. His more recent genre work includes the horror film Do Not Watch and the Jessica Rothe-led sci-fi horror feature Affection.
According to the company, Ouellette’s experience watching filmmakers depend on test screenings, surveys, reviews and box-office performance helped inspire the central question behind ScareScore: What if creators could see the physical response while an audience was actually experiencing the movie?
Horror became the obvious testing ground.
Fear and suspense can produce immediate physical reactions, and the genre already has a culture built around measuring intensity. Fans argue about the scariest movie ever made. Haunted attractions advertise themselves through endurance. Festivals celebrate audience reactions. Even horror marketing regularly treats a screaming crowd as evidence that a movie delivered what it promised.
ScareScore essentially wants to give that conversation instrumentation.
From Movie Reviews to Biometric Awards
The company also plans to introduce what it calls Biometric Awards, recognizing films and entertainment experiences according to real-time physiological audience reactions.
That idea could create one of ScareScore’s more fascinating wrinkles. Traditional horror awards depend on juries, critics, audiences or industry voters deciding which films deserve recognition. A biometric category would introduce an entirely different measurement: which experiences generated the strongest physical responses among participating audiences.
ScareScore says the larger technology will eventually expand beyond horror into theatrical films, streaming content, theme parks, immersive attractions and other forms of entertainment.
For now, horror gets first crack at the machine.
The company’s initial public activations are scheduled to begin throughout the 2026 Halloween season, with additional film festival, location-based entertainment and technology partners expected to be announced.
There is something wonderfully appropriate about horror becoming the proving ground for this kind of technology. The genre has always understood that watching a movie involves more than sitting quietly in front of a screen. Horror lives in clenched muscles, held breath, nervous laughter, the involuntary jump when something enters the frame half a second before your brain catches up.
ScareScore is betting that those reactions tell a story of their own.
Soon, your smartwatch may be taking notes while you scream.
For more information about ScareScore, visit scarescore.com; follow @yourscarescore on Instagram, TikTok, Threads, X and YouTube, and download ScareScore in the App Store or your preferred app marketplace.
