Watching HBO's terrifying new show could actually help you lose weight

It's almost that time of the year when towns sprinkle a bit of Christmas magic over themselves, decking the halls with boughs of holly, toasting chestnuts on an open fire, and gathering around the tree to sing carols. Before we get there, horror hounds are still celebrating the spooky season, with Halloween well and truly upon us.

Halloween is the favorite holiday for many, and whether it be dressing as the razor-gloved Freddy Krueger, dusting off your top hat to play the Babadook, or doing the Dead Dance as Wednesday Addams, it's an excuse to have a little fun.

It's also a great time to turn off the lights, draw the curtains, and disconnect the landline (as if we still have one of those) to watch a good ol' scary movie – and we don't mean the Anna Faris-led franchise.

From playing horror games to watching banned movies, who doesn't love a good ol' fright? Apparently, it could be good for your health, with a 2012 study claiming watching certain horror movies could burn as many calories as going on a 30-minute walk. While we're not here to suggest you should all become couch potatoes instead of hitting the gym, but with The Shining supposedly burning 184 calories by raising a heart rate, it's a bonus to think about when watching Stanley Kubrick's 1980 classic. Steven Spielberg's Jaws could burn 161 calories, while Ridley Scott's seminal Alien has been linked to a loss of 152 calories.

It's not just golden oldies that can get your pulses pumping, thanks to Saw burning 133 calories and watching Paranormal Activity apparently equating to 111 calories.

If you're looking for a quick way to burn calories, we'd suggest tuning in to HBO's It: Welcome to Derry, which, despite its infancy, has been praised as a truly terrifying experience.

Dubbed even scarier and bloodier than Andy Muschietti's It and It Chapter Two from 2017 and 2019, Welcome to Derry is a prequel to It, which once again brings back Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise the Dancing Clown. Adapting Stephen King's 1986 novel of the same name, Muschietti's It movies are the second adaptation of the source material following the 1990 miniseries that famously starred Tim Curry.

It's hard to determine what the 'scariest' movie of all time is, but with the Science of Scare Project using actual metrics to try and work it out, it claims that 2012's Sinister is the scariest of all time, thanks to an average BPM of 86 while watching. 2020's Host is in second with 88 BPM, the unnerving Skinamirink in third, with the Top 5 being rounded off by Insidious and The Conjuring. It Chapter One is down in 37th place with 75 BPM, but still, some think it's the scariest movie ever made.

Given that 2017's It is the highest-grossing horror movie of all time (boasting $704,242,888 at the box office), there's a lot of pressure for Welcome to Derry to continue the franchise's legacy.

Thankfully, Welcome to Derry has already scored an impressive 80% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Maintaining that the eight-part miniseries is already part of the King pantheon alongside some of the best adaptations, The Guardian said it "should give fans the nightmares of their dreams."

The London Evening Standard referred to it as "next level body horror," while Metro said fans will enjoy the "over-the-top thrills and chills will have a bloody good time with this."

Some of the highest praise comes from Nerdist, writing: "Welcome to Derry truly shocked the hell out of me by delivering some epic brutal and terrifying moments. I found myself gasping and audibly going “whaaattt?!” more than once in the very first episode."

Fan(g)s are already hooked, so if you want to shed a few pounds before Christmas, maybe give Welcome to Derry a go.