Let’s face it, horror films are all-the-scarier because of music. Things that go bump in the night are often punctuated by the stab of violins, the whine of woodwinds or the cackle of choir. But not always. Composers have come up with all manner of ways to give us the willies on screen over the years. So, get some popcorn (and a cushion to hide behind) as we rank 13 of the very best horror film scores of all time.
The best horror film scores of all time...
13. The Bride of Frankenstein (Franz Waxman, 1935)
Not many sequels surpass the original, but James Whale’s follow-up to Frankenstein (1931) is one of them and not least of all because of Franz Waxman’s original score. Wildly exciting and ahead of its time in many ways, Waxman’s music was riding high on the wave of the new ‘Hollywood Sound’.
Film music as we know it was really born just a couple of years before and Waxman was part of its origin story, along with Max Steiner, Alfred Newman and Erich Wolfgang Korngold. This horror film score, with its thrilling orchestral palette and something called a theremin, really made audiences sit up and take notice.
12. Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Wojciech Kilar, 1992)
The ’90s were all about style (over substance?) and Francis Ford Coppola’s take on Bram Stoker’s legendary vampire tale was certainly an expensive exercise. Keanu Reeves’s British accent remains awful, but the film is – today – loved for its excesses and high camp. Gothic horror abounds on screen and in the music, with Polish composer Wojciech Kilar pulling out all the stops. The brass is flagrant, the choir is steaming and the strings are frenzied…
11. Ring/Ringu (Kenji Kawai, 1998)
Hideo Nakata’s 1998 frightener remains one of the most talked about horror movies of all time. It’s a cut above the Hollywood remake which followed a handful of years later, and the music by Japanese composer Kenji Kawai is a big part of why Ring (or Ringu) is so intense.
Kawai created a brilliantly unsettling soundworld of synths and strings, in a John Carpenter vein, augmented by punchy percussion and all manner of sounds. Hans Zimmer scored the remake, and while his efforts are effective, there’s something more chilling about Kawai’s intense horror film score.
10. The Witch (Mark Korven, 2015)
Horror remains huge and the last decade has seen some of the most popular franchises make big money. Some of the best films, though, have taken the stance of ‘less is more’. The Witch is one such example, with its period setting and earthy folklore. The pace is slow, the scares actually more impactful as a result.
Canadian composer Mark Korven followed suit and created a horror film score that scratches and picks away at the drama. The emphasis is on strings, but they’re ragged and unsettling. Howling banshee-like voices are added into the mix, just to make it even more terrifying. This is one of the most artful, atmospheric horror film scores ever written.
9. Rosemary’s Baby (Krzysztof Komeda, 1968)
Hollywood had well and truly moved on from classic monsters by the 1960s and the young visionary directors of the day took things in more unsettling directions. Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby focuses on the paranoia of a mum-to-be who believes the child she’s carrying may not be of this world.
The music by Polish composer and jazz musician Krzysztof Komeda set a beautiful lullaby waltz at the heart of his score which appears in variations throughout. Very much of its time, the wider score is infused with jazz inflections and pop sensibilities, though Komeda brings in more traditional orchestral elements when things get creepy.
8. Insidious (Joseph Bishara, 2010)
Writer/director James Wan has really delivered some of the glossiest, grizzliest, most devilish and most popular Hollywood horror franchises, from Saw to The Conjuring. Insidious might be the best of the bunch, and though its story (of a child lured into an unseen demonic realm) might be a devilish version of Poltergeist, it was done with some great scares and quite a lot of heart.
The music, by Joseph Bishara is a bit of a masterclass in creating a horror film score that is modern while keeping at least one foot in the past. Bishara is seemingly gleeful in his application of terrifying strings – they shriek, scream and even whinny like demonic horses. It’s quite a trip.
7. Poltergeist (Jerry Goldsmith, 1982)
‘They’re heeeere’… Composer Jerry Goldsmith took a leaf out of the score for Rosemary’s Baby for Tobe Hooper’s 1982 suburban nightmare – ‘Carol Anne’s Theme’ is a lullaby, sung by children’s choir. So far, so sweet and melodic… but it ends with the children laughing, which is terrifying.
Like his score for The Omen, Goldsmith unleashes orchestral hell as the Freeling family is subjected to ghostly forces that snatch their young daughter and hold her captive somewhere ‘beyond’. The cue ‘Escape from Suburbia’ is a tour de force by the composer, a wild orchestral ride and truly one of the great action-musical set pieces of all time.
5. Hereditary (Colin Stetson, 2018)
One of the most original horrors in recent years, Ari Aster’s Hereditary was full of surprises and has an atmosphere that is intense and wholly unique. A large part of that intensity comes from the music by Colin Stetson, a one-time wrestler and go-to reeds virtuoso who happens to also contribute memorable soundworlds for film and television. Reeds (saxophones of every variety) feature heavily, and their long-held, rasping, bubbling and undulating notes sit awithin a heady, throbbing soundscape. It’s a sonic fog through which Aster’s shocks and revelations alternately creep and bellow. An inspired horror film score.
6. Hellraiser (Christopher Young, 1987)
There was more of an appetite for blood, guts and gore in the 1980s, and Hellraiser gave audiences plenty of that. Clive Barker’s cult classic also gave us one of the genre’s most iconic characters (‘Pinhead’) and one of the decade’s best horror scores. The likes of Halloween (1978), Friday the 13th (1980) and A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) before it had plumped for more modern musical scores – the synthesiser was becoming king.
For Hellraiser the producers turned to composer Christopher Young who created one hell-of-an orchestral accompaniment. Young had cut his teeth on a number of low budget horror films and made his break with the sequel to A Nightmare on Elm Street in 1985. He proved himself adept with a large orchestral canvas, however, applying broad Romantic strokes to this sickeningly brilliant film.
4. The Omen (Jerry Goldsmith , 1976)
An example of horror as blockbuster (a term still in its infancy – Jaws came out the year before), Richard Donner’s The Omen saw Gregory Peck and Lee Remick star as the unwitting parents of the Devil incarnate. Everything about this film was big, from the performances to the effects and set-pieces.
The music, by Jerry Goldsmith, is something to behold as the legendary composer created a lavish accompaniment for orchestra and chorus. It won him his only Oscar and he would go on to write two more scores for the Omen series; some say his third score, for The Final Conflict (1981), outdoes the original. You can’t beat this first score, though, for sheer spine-tingles and unabashed devilment.
3. Halloween (John Carpenter, 1978)
It’s not often a film director writes his own music, but John Carpenter has done just that for the majority of his most classic films. Halloween is perhaps the most familiar and like Bernard Herrmann’s Psycho, Carpenter opted for a slimline approach to his music for his own legendary take on the neighbourhood slasher genre. Creeping piano notes and stabbing synths underscore the majority of Michael Myers’s night of terror in Haddonfield. Carpenter’s main theme is insistent, repetitive, breathless even; it creates an unyielding urgency which reminds us that Myers is a killer who is single-minded, machine-like and seemingly unstoppable.
2. Psycho (Bernard Herrmann, 1960)
Less is more, as they say, and composer Bernard Herrmann went for a stripped down approach to his music for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 horror-thriller. Given the director chose to shoot his motel-based nightmare in black and white, Herrmann felt it only right that he compose a spare score for strings only. The result is one of the most iconic film scores of all time, with Herrmann’s shrieking (and at the time, shocking) music for the infamous ‘shower scene’ sending popcorn flying in cinemas the world over.
1. The Shining (Wendy Carlos et al, 1980)
Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film adaptation of Stephen King’s classic novel remains one of the greatest films of all time. Even without music, the atmosphere Kubrick creates at the eerie Overlook Hotel (not to mention Jack Nicholson’s unnerving performance as the increasingly troubled Jack Torrance), makes The Shining a total frightfest.
The film’s music is something of an inspired patchwork, with some of the most unsettling moments actually coming courtesy of Bartók (Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta), Ligeti (Lontano) and Penderecki (Da natura sonoris No. 2, among others). Add to that Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind’s brief, but brilliantly executed Moog synthesizer cues (the first of which quotes Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique) and you’ve got the recpie for the most terrifying of soundtracks.
