Marilyn Burns Tops Horror Movie Scream Ranking Ahead of Florence Pugh And Drew Barrymore

Ask horror fans to name cinema’s greatest scream and you could spend the rest of October arguing about the answer. Janet Leigh has a claim. So does Jamie Lee Curtis. But a ranking from Alpine Hearing Protection puts Marilyn Burns ahead of both, with her performance in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre taking first place.

The company compared selected horror movie screams using audio measurements, including perceived loudness, sharp changes in intensity and the amount of high-frequency sound. Burns earned an “Iconic Scream Score” of 8.354 out of 10, followed by Florence Pugh in Midsommar and Drew Barrymore in Scream.

That makes this a handy conversation starter for Halloween movie night. It also comes with a distinction: these are scores for the clips Alpine analyzed, rather than a public vote on which performance has left the biggest mark on horror.

The Top 10 Horror Movie Screams in Alpine’s Ranking

Here is the full top 10 supplied by Alpine Hearing Protection, with the original scores preserved.

Marilyn Burns Takes First Place for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre

Burns recorded 17 audio spikes and 2.5 seconds of sustained high RMS levels in the analyzed clip. Alpine uses that second measurement to describe how long a scream maintains a high level of audio intensity.

Anyone familiar with Sally Hardesty’s ordeal can understand why Burns belongs in this conversation. Her performance makes fear feel physically exhausting. By the time Tobe Hooper’s film reaches its final stretch, Sally’s desperation has become almost unbearable to watch.

The numbers give Burns the win here, but the performance has been doing the work for decades. For more on why the film still gets under the skin, read GVN’s review of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre.

Florence Pugh and Drew Barrymore Finish Almost Level

There is barely anything between second and third place. Pugh’s 8.256 score beats Barrymore’s 8.254 by just 0.002 points. Without the full scoring formula, that tiny gap offers little reason to declare one performance meaningfully more effective than the other.

Pugh’s Midsommar clip registered 17 audio spikes and 0.4 seconds of sustained high RMS levels. Her place near the top feels fitting for a film in which emotional distress is so central to the horror. Dani’s grief is difficult to sit with long before the festival takes its ugliest turns. GVN’s Midsommar review takes a closer look at Ari Aster’s unsettling film.

Barrymore’s clip, meanwhile, recorded 14 spikes, 1.1 seconds of sustained high RMS levels and a treble energy value of 0.32, the highest in the top 10. That last measure describes the proportion of high-frequency sound, which can contribute to a scream’s piercing quality.

Her performance as Casey Becker remains a huge part of why Scream makes such an immediate impression. A phone call becomes terrifying, and Barrymore sells every change in Casey’s understanding of the danger. Revisit the film in GVN’s Scream retrospective and 4K review.

Samara Weaving and Vera Farmiga Lead Individual Measurements

The overall winner did not lead every category. Fifth-place Samara Weaving recorded 20 audio spikes for Ready or Not, more than anyone else in the top 10. Fourth-place Vera Farmiga had the longest sustained high RMS duration at 3.1 seconds for The Conjuring 2.

Further down, Mia Goth’s Pearl performance finished sixth, ahead of Curtis in seventh. Leigh placed ninth, which should be enough to provoke a few objections from Psycho fans. Alpine also identified Jenna Ortega in X and Maika Monroe in It Follows as falling just outside the top 10, although it did not supply their scores or exact positions.

What the Scream Scores Can Tell Us

The supplied release does not include the complete scoring formula, the exact clips or details about how the audio was prepared for comparison. It also does not specify units for its perceived loudness figures. Those omissions make it difficult to independently assess the results.

There is still plenty here for horror fans to argue over. A scream can be memorable because of its sound, the actor’s expression, the editing or everything the story has put a character through before that moment. Audio measurements capture only part of that experience.

Burns gets Alpine’s top spot. Who gets yours?