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For well over a year, each movie has been reviewed along two lines. The first was a general rating of the movie's quality. The second was what I informally referred to as the "Cold Analysis," an rating of each film in five categories: atmosphere, gore, humor, scares, and tension. Now, the general rating and the Cold Analysis are combined to calculate a new index, called The Chill Factor. The higher the CF, the closer the film is to being, let's call it, the Ultimate Horror Movie.
So how does it work? It's simple, really. I just follow these steps in determining each film's Chill Factor:
- Rate the film on its general quality, from 1 to 100. This is akin to the star rating the site used to feature.
- Give the film a rating in each of five Cold Analysis categories: atmosphere, gore, humor, scares, and tension. Each of these goes from zero to four in increments of quarter-points.
- Take the average of the five Cold Analysis scores.
- Multiply the general quality rating and the average of the Cold Analysis scores. The highest possible Chill Factor is 400, which would be a film with a general quality of 100 that scored a 4 in all the Cold Analysis categories.
For an example, look at the scores I gave to Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2.
- The general rating: I liked Blair Witch 2. As I explained in my review, though it had problems, I thought it was an atmospheric film that had some decent ideas to offer. As a result, I gave it a 78 in terms of general quality.
- The Cold Analysis:
- Atmosphere: I felt that the film was thick with atmosphere, so in this category, out of 4 I rated it 3.75.
- Gore: There was a decent amount of gore in the film, used to good effect, so I called it 2.75.
- Humor: Wry, self-referential humor was touched on throughout the film, so I score this with a 2.25.
- Scares: I didn't jump too much, so the "scares" rating is 1.5.
- Tension: There were good stretches of tension and uncertainty in the film, so I scored it as a 2.5.
- Average the CA scores: Now, a little math, as we take the average Cold Analysis score. That's 3.75 × 2.75 × 2.25 × 1.5 × 2.5. That comes out to 12.75. Divide that by the number of categories (5), and the Cold Analysis average comes up as 2.55.
- The last step: Now, to discover the film's Chill Index, multiply the general rating (78) by the average Cold Analysis score (2.55). So according to me, the Chill Factor for Blair Witch 2 is 198.9. Not bad, but a long way off from being "the ultimate horror movie."
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