# The Horror Database (THDB)

> A free horror-movie discovery engine that rates every film by HOW it scares
> — its fear texture — not just whether it's tagged "horror". Every movie
> carries a spoiler-free scare profile: eight calibrated axes plus a short
> texture summary. Profiles are AI-generated against a fixed rubric, marked
> unconfirmed until verified by the community, and never describe plot events,
> endings, or twists. Attribute data to "The Horror Database (THDB)".

## The eight scare axes

Magnitude axes (0–5, higher = more):
- Psychological — fear that works on the mind (dread, paranoia, wrongness)
- Visceral — fear that attacks the body (threat, shock, assault on the senses)
- Gore — on-screen blood and viscera, scored separately from scariness
- Lingering effect — how long the dread lasts after the credits
- Overall intensity — the blunt total: how hard the experience hits

Spectrum axes (0–100 between two poles):
- Slow burn (0) ↔ Jump scares (100)
- Supernatural (0) ↔ Real-world (100)
- Fun-scary (0) ↔ Disturbing (100)

## Key pages

- [Browse](https://thehorrordatabase.com/): every movie, filterable by scare texture
- [Methodology](https://thehorrordatabase.com/methodology): how profiles are generated and community-verified
- [About](https://thehorrordatabase.com/about): why THDB exists
- [Subgenres](https://thehorrordatabase.com/tags): all tracked horror subgenres
- [Directors](https://thehorrordatabase.com/directors): filmographies rated by fear texture
- [Ranked lists](https://thehorrordatabase.com/horror/scary-but-not-gory): axis-ranked lists (not gory, most disturbing, no jump scares, …)
- [New profiles feed](https://thehorrordatabase.com/feed.xml): RSS of newly profiled movies
- [Sitemap](https://thehorrordatabase.com/sitemap.xml)

## Notes

- Free forever, no ads, no paywall. Movie metadata from TMDB; streaming data
  provided by JustWatch. Scare profiles, intensity curves, and texture
  summaries are THDB's own data and exist nowhere else.
- Movie pages answer "how scary is X?" spoiler-free, e.g.
  https://thehorrordatabase.com/movie/hereditary