New report: 'The Ring' is most Googled horror movie in Idaho

Idaho has a state gem, a state bird, a state fossil—and now a favorite horror movie.

CableTV.com took IGN’s list of the top 25 horror movies and used Google Trends data to see which states were most interested in which films.

Idahoans favored “The Ring,” and so did horror fans in 17 other states, many of them in rural middle America. The next most-Googled movie, “The Silence of the Lambs,” came out on top in five different states. Just nine states had a unique favorite movie, including “Alien” in Alaska and, naturally, “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” in Texas. Only Washington staked a claim on “Let the Right One In.”

CableTV.com also conducted a survey about when people start watching horror movies and which ones are scariest. “It” topped the list of scariest movies ever made, ahead of “The Exorcist” and “Saw.”

For many, “It” was also their first brush with horror films, with most respondents probably referring to the 1990 miniseries. Some of those viewers may have been in second or third grade when they met Pennywise the Clown; the average age at which survey respondents said they watched their first horror movie was 7.2 years old.

Other popular first-time horror movies include “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Scream.”