10 Horror Movie Soundtracks You Need To Listen To
Horror soundtracks as fascinating as they are frightening.
Music in cinema, according to film scholar Michel Chion, creates "added value" to the image. While the visuals and script are capable of telling stories and expressing endless creative ideas, it's the music that has the power to imbue these images with a deeper meaning and convey the intended emotion of the scene to audiences.
Take John Williams' iconic theme from Jaws, for example. The underwater POV shots of the shark about to grab a bite would lose all of its suspense if the music was removed.
Nowhere is film music's influence best felt than in the horror genre. Coating their cinematic worlds in anything ranging from malicious strings to all-out phantasmagorical synths, the genre's sonic landscapes are incredibly varied from film to film.
While, these soundtracks are intended to heighten the dread and suspense that comes with watching them, setting the stage for effective scares or making imagery that extra little bit more creepy, we often forget just how fantastic many of these soundtracks are in their own right.
Helping to make their respective films as unnerving and unsettling as possible, here are just some horror movie soundtracks that deserve a closer listen.
10. The Shining
Although Stephen King famously loathes the 1980 adaptation of his novel of the same name, Stanley Kubrick's visualisation of The Shining is nonetheless regarded as one of the auteur's greatest masterpieces. Continuing to terrify audiences since its release, the film remains one of the all-time genre greats.
Set in the empty Overlook Hotel during the winter season, the film centres around the Torrance family as they move into the creepy establishment when patriarch Jack (Jack Nicholson) takes the caretaker job. With plenty of blood-chilling sights haunting young Danny (Danny Lloyd) and Jack descending into murderous violence, the film is a tour de force in atmospheric tension.
Leading the charge is the soundtrack which colours the Overlook in malevolence. With the ominous synth score of the opening theme, composed by Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elken as a reworking of Berlioz's Dies Irae, instantly setting the film's tone, this was only a taste of things to come.
The rest of the soundtrack, however, was a collection of atonal works by Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki (who's music was also used in The Exorcist) effectively utilised by musical editor Gordon Stainforth, manipulating and layering different works together to create a cacophony of terror.