Oct 30, 2012

The Calories of Horror

Lee Unkrich of Toy Story 3 fame is a big fan of The Shining. The other day he posted a link to a study by The University of Westminster that details how watching horror movies can actually burn some calories. The results were as follows.

Title Calories
The Shining 184
Jaws 161
The Exorcist 158
Alien 152
Saw 133
A Nightmare on Elm Street 118
Paranormal Activity 111
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 107
The Blair Witch Project 105
[Rec] 101

Being the nerd that I am, I thought it would be fun to see which film burned the most calories per minute. Run times on some of these films is longer than others and I wanted to see which film was most effective at burning calories, not just which one was really long.

Title Calories Length(m) Calories/min
The Exorcist 158 132 1.97
Alien 152 117 1.30
Saw 133 103 1.29
[Rec] 101 78 1.29
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 107 83 1.29
A Nightmare on Elm Street 118 92 1.28
The Shining 184 146 1.26
Jaws 161 130 1.24
Paranormal Activity 111 99 1.12
The Blair Witch Project 105 105 1.00


So if you're looking to burn calories the most efficiently by watching horror films tomorrow, watch The Exorcist. It clocks in at nearly 2 calories a minute, just from watching the movie.