No fear... NI movie fans aren’t scared easily by horror films, poll shows
IT’S official. It takes more than a bump in the night to frighten tough Northern Ireland folk.
Halloween revellers can celebrate the fact we’re the least easy to scare region out of the UK — according to a survey released this week to mark the spooky season.
It revealed that 48% of horror film buffs questioned here don’t react at all during scary scenes.
This is in sharp contrast to movie fans across the Irish sea — specifically the same percentage of Welsh people who admitted they look away.
We also appear to be braver than our Scottish counterparts, with 28% insisting they keep their eyes on the screen.
In England overall the percentage was 31.
A total of 2,000 participants took part in the survey, commissioned by online betting site Casumo, which also revealed what scary film people in Northern Ireland love the most.
The 1999 supernatural flick The Sixth Sense took the top spot out of a list of 18 films, including The Shining (right), Scream, Psycho and The Exorcist, with 17% surveyed choosing it as their favourite horror movie.
Widely regarded as having one of the most shocking twist endings in all of cinematic history, it comes as something of a contradiction that local scary movie lovers rate ‘suspense’ as more important than ‘being scared’ and surprise endings.
However, people here are also the UK’s second least likely region to say that they watched horror movies alone (28%), narrowly missing out to Londoners who at 32% were found to be the most likely region to watch with friends. Meanwhile, our biggest pet peeves in ruining the overall horror flick experience is unrealistic special effects (53%) followed jointly by bad acting and predictable plot-lines at 46%.
The three top genres guaranteed to send a shiver up our spines are ghost/haunting tales (37%), narrowly missing out to supernatural themes at 36%, with blood-thirsty vampires coming in at 29%.
Movies set in haunted buildings are also a sure fire way of frightening local horror aficionados with 32% citing this backdrop as the one that scares them the most. AN Antrim company selling counterfeit children’s superhero costumes has been fined a total of £10,400 at Antrim Crown Court.
An officer of the company — Mr Quan Gan (55) — was also sentenced to 140 hours of community service for selling the fake Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Wonder Woman, Mickey Mouse and Cinderella outfits without the consent of the brand owner.
In a case brought by Trading Standards, Gat Fashion Ltd pleaded guilty to 15 charges under the Trade Marks Act 1994.
In November 2016, Trading Standards officers raided premises at Springfarm Industrial Estate, where they found large quantities of counterfeit costumes. The items were being sold online from the premises.
Some 4,400 suspected items were seized and another 2,400 items were later voluntarily surrendered.