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By: Richard Kroon, Director of Engineering, EIDR

Halloween, observed on October 31 each year, has its origins in the Celtic festival of Samhain (or “Summer’s End”), which marked the last day of the Celtic year and the traditional start of winter. On this night, the boundaries between the worlds of the living and dead blurred and ghosts would walk the earth while the living would wear costumes and burn bonfires through the night. When Pope Gregory III established November 1 as All Saints Day, the day before became All Hallows Eve and eventually Halloween. Customs vary over the years and around the world, but a common theme cuts through them all: being scared.
 
People do love being scared, at least in a safe and comfortable way, likely beginning with ghost stories told to eager audiences around a campfire. Many horror stories and folktales come down to us from the Ancient and Medieval words. The first modern horror novel was The Castle of Otranto (1764) by Horace Walpole while horror movies have been frightening audiences since Georges Méliès released Le Manoir du Diable (The Haunted Castle) in 1896.
 
In the dark and shrouded mists of 2016, we shared with you the gruesome tale of London’s Time Out magazine and their list of the 100 best horror films of all time as judged by their panel of ghoulish experts, including Alice Cooper and Stephen King – the former credited with creating “Shock Rock” and the latter with more than 200 film adaptations to his name, starting with Carrie (1976). This year, we turn our statistically-evil eye towards Rotten Tomatoes and their aggregated Tomatometer scores. (Fun fact, there’s currently a three-way tie for the worst horror film of 2018 between Blood Honey, Delirium, and Day of the Dead: Bloodline, each with a 0% Fresh ranking.) Rotten Tomatoes’ list of the 100 best-reviewed horror movies of all time ranges from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) to Hereditary (2018) with entries from Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Perhaps scariest of all is the fact that the top-ranked film has a lower Tomatometer score than number two on the list thanks to Booosian – sorry that should be BooOOoo-sian – I mean, Bayesian statistics, where the Rotten Tomatoes’ editors take into account the number of critical reviews received to come up with an adjusted top score of 113.376% Fresh. Now that’s frighteningly fresh.
 
Naturally, all of the movies on Rotten Tomatoes’ list of the 100 Best Horror Movies of All Time have a corresponding EIDR ID. Happy Halloween.
 

Rotten Tomatoes’ 100 Best-Reviewed Horror Films of All Time