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Who is Hollywood’s real scream queen? 

Plenty of horror’s leading ladies have a memorable shriek, from Psycho’s Janet Leigh to Pearl’s Mia Goth. Yet some of these cries of fright are truly ear-piercing. Recently, Alpine Hearing Protection put some famous cinematic screams to the test, analyzing them for loudness, RMS levels, audio spikes, and vocal tremble using its in-house audio analysis process and the Python audio library Librosa to extract a range of audio metrics.

Marilyn Burns from ‘The Texas Chain Saw Massacre’ crowned top scream queen 

The analysis found that the top scream came from a classic flick that’s been ranked by some as one of the scariest of all time. Marilyn Burns’ performance in the The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, which had a score of 8.354/10, recorded 17 audio spikes. Those indicate repeated sharp changes in the sound’s intensity. Her scream also had 2.5 seconds of sustained high RMS levels. That measures the average energy of an audio signal over time, helping identify how long a scream maintains a high level of intensity. Combined, those qualities allowed Burns to nab the top spot in the scream analysis.

Coming in second was Florence Pugh’s scream in Midsommar, with a score of 8.256/10. Her shriek had high perceived loudness and 17 audio spikes. Her scream was shorter than Burns’, with just 0.4 seconds of sustained high RMS levels. But it ranked among the highest overall, proving that a scream’s impact is not just about length but also its intensity and acoustic characteristics.

The 10 most intense horror movie screams, according to science

Other top scream queens include, appropriately enough, Drew Barrymore in Scream, as well as Vera Farmiga in Conjuring 2 and Samara Weaving in Ready or Not. The overall top 10 is a mix of memorable performances from iconic horror movies (including one mother-daughter pair) and younger stars of future classics. Several newer horror actors narrowly missed making the top 10, including Jenna Ortega in X and Maika Monroe in It Follows.

Here’s the full top 10 most iconic horror movie screams. 

10. Sissy Spacek in Carrie (1976)

9. Janet Leigh in Psycho 

8. Sarah Michelle Gellar in I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997)

7. Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween (1978) 

6. Mia Goth in Pearl (2022) 

5. Samara Weaving in Ready or Not (2019) 

4. Vera Farmiga in Conjuring 2 (2016)

3. Drew Barrymore in Scream (1996)

2. Florence Pugh in Midsommar (2019)

1. Marilyn Burns in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) 

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