On the face of it, this story fromare  Mental Floss (and soon to be followed up by Wired and Popular Science) looks like scientists once again spending millions of pounds telling us what we already know. Horror movies are scary- or at least they inspire activity in the centres of the brain that monitor emotion (particularly fear). That revellation is thanks to research by film producer Peter Katz, he of Pop Skull fame (see my review of the film here). True, this is by no means a new thing- marketers have used the technique to monitor responses in test audiences for a while now- but it has never been quite so contrived, it has never been so specifically employed to see whether a film retrospectively affects its audience the way it intended 

But shouldnt research money be put to better use? Forget curing cancer, Igor, today we’re going to see how many Reese’s Pieces a marmaset can fit in its mouth!

All sarcasm aside, could this spell a new dawn of conscious film-making where test audiences are hooked up to MRI machines to monitor their reactions to key passages of films? I can understand the appeal- gone will be the days of luke-warm “horror” flicks that claim to be “the scariest film of the summer”. And why stop at the horror genre- there are way too many comedies these days that fail to raise a half-hearted sneer let alone a laugh: hooking up willing guinea pigs to MRI machines monitored 24/7 by gleeful film execs would soon raise the bar for self-confessed emotive film-making. And probably spell the end of Jack Black’s career.

I’m only half joking here. Yes it might be a sacrifice of the sanctity of the artistic process- but films are a product, and products are increasingly subject to advances in technology that unite consumers with their (often unconscious) desires. It is an inevitability, just as Wall-E’s consumer-poisoned dystopia will find its reality somewhere in our future. But should we welcome it?

But at the very least, it’s good to see that someone actually cares about a film’s effect on its audience beyond the lightening effect on their wallets…

Pop Skull is available to buy now on DVD and if youre a ghost fancier, check out The Pop Skull Experiment on Youtube.