Films and fans, ranked.

The Leaderboard tab answers two questions horror fans argue about anyway: what is the scariest film, and who has seen the most? Gasper keeps both on one screen, with a switch between them.

Two boards, one switch

Films ranks the films. Fans ranks the members. The switch at the top reads "Films" and "Fans", and the top three on either board wear a medal: gold, silver and bronze.

That is the whole interface. The interesting part is what the numbers are made of.

The Films board

The Films board sorts horror by Community Scare, shown in the column "AVG SCARE": the average scare score of everyone who ranked each film. Because every scare score is a position in someone's personal head-to-head list, a film has to be repeatedly judged scarier than other films by many people to climb. There is no way to vote a film up, and no way to review-bomb it down.

A film needs 2 rankings before it can chart. The board is also live. A film's place shifts as more members rank it, and new releases enter the board as they are seen. Checking the board in the weeks after a big release is one of the better uses of the app: you can watch a reputation form in real time, before the consensus hardens. The same chart is mirrored in Discover as the "Scariest on Gasper" shelf.

The Fans board

The Fans board ranks members by "FILMS WATCHED", the number of films they have ranked. It rewards volume and commitment, and it is the board for the people who treat the genre as a discipline. The gold medal at the top is a real achievement.

Among a group that ranks together it turns into friendly pressure. The order changes week by week, and the person in fourth will, at some point, book a marathon. The ranking with friends guide covers how to run one.

Where the argument gets settled

The Films board is where to go when the argument starts. Someone says nothing made since 2000 is really scary; the board is the reply. Someone says found footage is a gimmick; see how many entries from found footage sit near the top.

If your Scare Tolerance says you scare easily, read the board as a list of films to approach carefully rather than a list of dares. The Community Scare on each film's page is the same number, one film at a time.

What it does not do

The Films board does not rank by quality. There is no board for how good a film was and no board for hearts, because quality averages invite reputation voting, and the point of Gasper is to measure effect. The scariest film on the board may be one you never hearted, and that is fine.

The Fans board does not rank by taste or tolerance. It is a count of devotion, not a judgment of nerve. Being hard to scare does not move you up it; ranking more horror does.

There is no switch between everyone and the people you follow. Both boards show the whole community. For what your friends found scariest, their rankings are in your feed and on their profiles.

Neither board can be gamed by hearting. The heart feeds the loved percentage on a film page and nothing else.

Visibility is separate from the boards. Stealth mode hides a rank from the feed, not from the count, so a stealth rank still feeds the Community Scare as part of the anonymous aggregate and still counts as a film watched. For what Stealth mode and Private account do and do not hide, read privacy controls.

And the boards do not leave the app. This site does not publish the scariest film on Gasper, because the number changes daily and belongs to the people who built it. Open the app.