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Halloween is typically all about scary costumes, candies and jack-o’-lanterns. This Halloween, we made things a bit more exciting with our Halloween Data Visualization contest. The rules were simple, we released an IMDB dataset containing more than 9,500 records of horror movie data visualization and dared our followers to find spooky insights from it. The results were amazing and we’re happy to share some of the best visualizations from the contest here.
Most Horror Movies had an R rating
It is understandable that it’s tough for a horror movie to be true to its genre with no objectionable content at all. A PG-13 rating would be a disappointment for horror movie fans and this is backed by the movie data visualization too. Most of the horror movies had an R rating. R stands for restricted and isn’t meant for audiences who are below 17 years old. An R rating would mean that the movies contain material of a violent, sexual or vulgar nature which isn’t suitable for younger viewers.
California is the Home of Haunted Houses
Do horror movie makers prefer a certain location for their movies? The data tells us so. When the location data associated with the horror movies was visualized, California turned out to be the most common location. Most horror movies were shot in and around Los Angeles, California. If you live somewhere close by, you can even visit some of these movie sites which are open to public.
Americans are the Top Consumers of Horror Movies
America seems to love a good scare as they hold the top position in the list of countries that produce horror movies. In fact, the number of horror movies made in Hollywood was actually 4 times higher than that of UK, which is in the second position. This is also backed by the fact that American horror movies dominate most IMDB lists for the scariest movies ever made.
Young Characters are the Trump Card of Horror Movie Makers
When the words found in horror movie plots were visualized, the most common word turned out to be ‘Young’. This could indicate young characters are an important ingredient of most horror movies. Showing young characters such as kids or toddlers in dangerous situations could be a tactic used by the filmmakers to increase the intensity of the horror element in their movies. House, family, group and killer were some of the other common words.
Here is the movie plots word cloud:
Average Run-Time of Horror Movies
It looks like most horror movies average between 85-100 minutes in runtime. So that’s how long you will have to sit with a fast heartbeat while watching a typical horror movie. This would be an ideal duration considering the story progression style of scary movies. They usually have a happy beginning which is followed by stressful events and finally a not so happy ending.
Most Horror Movies are Simply Mediocre
Whether you are a fan of horror as a genre or watch horror movies once in a while, the numbers show that most horror movies are just mediocre. The most common ratings received by horror movies are between 5 to 6. This could be because horror movies generally don’t have anything substantial in them if you take out the horror factor.
Bottom Line
These insights shed some light into the facts and figures around horror as a genre and the horror movies released during the last few years. Most of the horror movies are made in USA and the most popular location is Los Angeles, California. Irrespective of whether the horror movies are actually scaring the viewers, most of them had an average rating of 5 to 6. When it comes to content rating, most scary movies fall into the R rated category and isn’t suitable for the young audience.
