One note. That’s all it takes. A movie scene can seem so innocuous until one note changes everything. Suddenly you start wondering, what is behind that door? Why is the light at the end of the hallway flickering? You’re afraid of what will happen next.
That’s the magic of a great movie soundtrack. We don’t need to see anything explicitly scary on screen to feel the hairs on the back of our necks stand up... I love this feeling.
I love horror movies, and I love being scared! Or rather, I love getting swept up in the excitement of a scary movie. And I have such admiration for the composers who pull that off. So in honor of the spookiest time of year, here are some of my favorite horror movie soundtracks in (somewhat) chronological order:
Bernard Herrmann: "Psycho" (1960)
If I walked outside right now and asked someone on the street to sing me some horror movie music, I bet they’d imitate the screeching strings from the shower scene in "Psycho." Those first four shrieks from Bernard Hermann’s minute-long song “The Murder” are so well-known that they’ve transcended the film, becoming synonymous with the sound of Horror.
The rest of the soundtrack is more lyrical, moody, and mysterious. The opening tracks “The City,” “Marion,” and “Marion and Sam,” don’t forecast bloody murder, but rather, that somethin' just ain’t right. The subdued nature of these pieces make that iconic shower scene all the more heart-stopping.
John Williams: "Jaws" (1975)
On the topic of horror-movie music that transcended it's film, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the main theme from "Jaws." Though some folks say that Spielberg's "Jaws" isn’t strictly a horror movie (Google claims it’s a Thriller/Adventure?), I do think Williams’s soundtrack deploys silence in a truly terrifying way. We come to rely on that predictable two-note ostinato, so when it suddenly stops… we all hold our breath.
Steven Spielberg originally thought John Williams's score was a joke, so the story goes. But once it was paired with Bruce the prop shark, whose frequent mechanical problems kept it off screen for much of the movie, Spielberg felt that the score saved "Jaws": "The movie would only have been half as successful, and half as scary."
Wayne Bell and Tobe Hooper: Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)
I love this soundtrack—or should I say, soundscape. Grimy outlaw country music spliced with gnarly musique concrète is spilled over scenes, making the lines between soundtrack, background noise, and Foley work blur. The sound of a shovel plunging into dry dirt starts to sound percussive. A muted trumpet replaces the whine of a film camera pushing out a polaroid. Chains shuffling start to sound like a tambourine. It’s mesmerizing to listen to. The score pulls you into "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre," even when everything you’re seeing on screen makes you want to run away.
Goblin: "Suspiria" (1977) and Thom Yorke: "Suspiria" (2018)
The time has come to talk about my favorite horror movie, which actually inspired this article. Both the original 1977 "Suspiria" by Dario Argento and the retelling of "Suspiria" in 2018 by Luca Guadagnino have AMAZING scores. The Italian prog-rock band Goblin was tasked with composing the music for the 1977 version of the witchy tale, and they did so with instruments atypical of movie soundtracks at the time: tabla, bouzouki, and Moog synthesizer are whipped up with bright colors and flashing lights, making the movie a feast for the ears and eyes.
When Luca Guadagnino created his homage to "Suspiria" in 2018, he also wanted a spell-binding score. So naturally, he reached out to Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke.
”There's a way of repeating in music that can hypnotize,” Yorke said. “I kept thinking to myself that it's a form of making spells. So when I was working in my studio [on this soundtrack], I was making spells.”
The resulting music isn’t wild and freaky like Goblin’s soundtrack, but beautiful and haunting. It fits perfectly with the desaturated colors of the film, and offers a horrifying tension when layered atop scenes of brutality. Here’s the opening credits of the film — no scares, I promise!
John Carpenter: "Halloween" (1978)
When John Carpenter went about creating this slasher flick, he wore a lot of different hats. He was a script writer, a director, and a composer, despite his self-proclaimed “minimal chops as a musician.” He took a lot of inspiration from Goblin’s "Suspiria" score, John Williams’s "Jaws" score, and Bernard Herrmann’s "Psycho" score. The result is a sparse soundtrack of keyboard stabs, descending half-steps, and circling contemplative melodies. Rolling Stone Magazine would go on to name it as the number one greatest horror soundtrack.
Wendy Carlos: A Clockwork Orange (1971) and The Shining (1980)
Stanley Kubrick's lurid 1971 film adaptation of Anthony Burgess's novel “A Clockwork Orange” needed an adventurous score, and so Carlos was brought in along with composer and producer Rachel Elkind. Classical selections from Beethoven and Rossini are mixed with Carlos's groundbreaking electronic distortions, mimicking the movie's theme of organic life being distorted with the mechanical. "March from 'A Clockwork Orange,'" based on the “Ode to Joy” movement of Beethoven’s Ninth, was the first recorded song featuring a vocoder for the singing.
Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind reunited with Kubrick in 1980 for “The Shining,” though only two of their compositions made it to the soundtrack. The “Main Title” is an electronic reimagining of the “Dies Irae” from Berlioz’s "Symphonie fantastique.”
Michael Abels: "Get Out" (2017) and "Us" (2019)
We’ve talked about Michael Abels and his Pulitzer Prize-winning opera “Omar,” co-composed with Rhiannon Giddens, but we haven’t yet talked about his genre-defying scores for Jordan Peele’s horror films. When “Get Out” hit theaters in 2017, I remember feeling uneasy by the opening credits! "Sikiliza Kwa Wahenga” plays as the main character Chris drives through the woods to meet his girlfriend's parents for the first time. Voices whisper-sing a warning in Swahili: "listen to the ancestors."
Abel’s score for Peele’s 2019 film “Us” blew me out of the water too. Peele wanted the soundtrack to experiment with duality, which is an overarching theme in the film. Abels came up with a mixture of traditional and non-traditional sounds using a variety of instruments, such as orchestral strings, cimbalom, karimba, berimbau, and didgeridoo.
There’s even a duality with how Abels uses voice in the soundtrack: one minute you’re singing along to "I Got 5 on It" by rap duo Luniz, and the next minute you’re listening to a choir of children loudly chanting nonsense syllables. “You can tell something’s coming and it’s not good. These people mean business, but you can’t tell exactly what it is they want,” said Abels. “It was important that they sounded not like any specific culture. They sounded like they were organized and evil, but not foreign."
Ludwig Göransson and various artists: "Sinners" (2025)
Perhaps the biggest horror movie release of 2025 has been "Sinners," Ryan Coogler’s Southern Gothic horror-thriller. The music spans two albums: "Sinners (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)," which features various genres performed by cast members and real-life blues, folk, and country musicians, and "Sinners (Original Motion Picture Score)" composed by Ludwig Göransson.
Since this movie is still pretty new, I'll steer clear of spoilers. All I'll say is that the soundtrack and score play a huge role in the actual plot. "Sinners" invites us to listen closer to the music of those who have been silenced by colonialism, religious persecution, and slavery. The real magic—and horror—is in the music.
Here's the now famous scene of musical worlds colliding in "Sinners" (no scares here either, just SCARY good blues):
As many WCRB listeners know, music helps us process the world we live in. It can help us escape our surroundings, but it can also bring us back to ourselves. So in a world that can be quite scary, I encourage you to take the time to watch a scary movie. Let the story and the music carry you somewhere else and bring you back to the present moment that much braver.
