The Hateful Eight: 8 Reasons It's Quentin Tarantino's Best Film Since Pulp Fiction

5. The Music Has A Big Impact

A Tarantino film is always going to sound great - aside from the visceral gun shots and blood splatters, he's got an incredibly astute ear for music, always picking tracks that accentuate his aims for each scene. Typically these come from classic movies, another of his many forms of homage, but for The Hateful Eight he's done something a little bit different. Oh, certain musical beats are still cribbed in this manner, but much of the film is scored by legendary composer Ennio Morricone. That is by itself a pretty big deal; Tarantino has always been one for complete control of his movies, keen to realise his own, pure vision, so letting someone (even someone he calls maestro) take on responsibility for part of it shows him opening up as a filmmaker. And Morricone really does add to the film. His score uses traditional genre musical elements to craft something that feels both classic and grandiose, and how it's worked in actually influences how you regard the movie. I don't mean that lightly either; at some points the inference of a scene as written is changed. In one scene there's a shot of two characters setting out path markers in the middle of blizzard that would otherwise feel rather innocuous, but the score creates an unexpected sense of foreboding. It's an unnerving contrast and shapes the mood of not just this moment, but the events that follow.