10 Horror Movies So Extreme They Actually Made People Sick

Everyone remembers the first time a horror movie made them feel physically ill. (For yours truly, it was Paranormal Activity.) Maybe you didn’t actually faint or vomit or have a dread-induced panic attack, but you remember the feeling nevertheless. Or maybe, against your own self control, you did do one or all of those things, in which case you would join the quaking ranks of people who have genuinely gotten physically sick during a scary movie, and lived to tell about it.

Reports of audience members having physical reactions to movies have been popping up ever since that theater full of people (supposedly) ran away from a train. And horror movies, spooky and visceral as they are, prompt a great deal more of a physical reaction from their audience, whether it’s simply chills or the persistent need to puke. People in a test screening for the 1932 circus movie Freaks reportedly ran out before it was done. A lot of these stories are overblown, but that won’t stop studios from using them in their marketing. (Before seeing the 1958 movie Macabre, ticket buyers were handed a $1,000 life insurance policy, just in case they died of fright.)

With horror movies pushing boundaries every day, the spooks and scares have gotten gorier, freakier, and realistic to a degree that they can and will provoke their viewers into fits of fear. There are plenty of stories out there of horror movies that actually made people faint, or worse. Because misinformation is more rampant on the Internet that ever, we’ve done our very best to validate these claims. Here, then, are the ten wildest scary movies that have caused their audience to seek medical attention.