Research: The Importance Of Sound In Horror Films

In any kind of movie, music and sound are an important factor in creating an atmosphere for the audience which allows them to explore the film in a lot more detail. The sound of some films are iconic and can be tied to a particular film, and in horror films particularly. The most iconic of them all is probably Jaws, where the composer, John Williams mainly uses string and wind instruments. When listening to the sound track, the speed of the piece gradually increases to build more tension, as you'd expect of a horror film. From this, we expect that something bad is going to happen which is the entire aim of the music. The music builds on fear but also on excitement as we wait in anticipation of what will happen next. This iconic piece of horror music is now used by everyone when they want to symbolise fear or threat, they will hum the tune and follow the same pattern of getting louder and faster as the threat becomes greater. 

Another major soundtrack in the horror film industry is that of Psycho. As opposed to the Jaws track, this one is more exciting from the offset. The creator, Bernard Herrmann uses string instruments which are played at a fast pace to fulfil the fear element of the piece and to leave the viewer powerless and defenceless. The difference between this and the Jaws soundtrack is that this doesn't build tension, it just jumps in at the deep end however they both have very similar outcomes, in the fact that the audience is in ore of what will happen.


On the flip side of this, instead of talking about the perks of using sound in a horror film, what about a horror film with out music and sound? I watched a horror trailer the other day as part of this research and muted it to see the effect and the feel of it was completely different. Just watching the trailer itself is not enough to build up the adrenaline inside and bring fear to me. This sold me on how important music is to a horror film and now I am focused on producing a good piece of music for my opening to really bring out the horror element of it.