The horror soundtracks that scare me more than the screen are John Carpenter's Halloween theme and the borrowed classical pieces Kubrick dropped into The Shining, both of which do their damage with no picture attached. Carpenter's piano line, written in an unusual 5/4 time, drops your stomach on its own; Kubrick's tortured strings under something as ordinary as a boy on a tricycle do the same thing without a single original note.
I proved it to myself once by muting a horror film entirely and just watching the picture. Nothing happened. A woman walked down a corridor. A door was slightly open. I felt fine. Put the sound back on and my shoulders were near my ears in ten seconds, same corridor, same door. It's very rarely the thing on screen. It's the score underneath it, doing all the actual threatening while the picture just stands there looking like a normal hallway.
Why is the Halloween theme so scary?
John Carpenter's theme for Halloween is the one everybody mentions and I'm not going to pretend I'm above it, because I'm not. It's a simple piano line in 5/4 time, which apparently makes it feel slightly wrong without most people knowing why, and it does exactly what a good horror score should do: it tells you something is coming long before anything actually does. You can hear four notes of that theme with the telly off in another room and still feel your stomach drop a little. That's not the mask. That's not the kitchen knife. That's a man who wasn't even a trained composer working out that dread has a rhythm.
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I own an unreasonable number of physical copies of this film for someone with limited shelf space, and I'm not sorry about it. If you want the whole thing properly, the Halloween 1978 Blu-ray box set is the one I'd point you towards, mostly because a score like that deserves to be heard properly and not through a laptop speaker at two in the morning, which is how I first experienced it and how I do not recommend anyone else does.
Why didn't Kubrick write an original score for The Shining?
The Shining does something I find almost rude in how effective it is. Kubrick didn't write an original score at all for most of it, he took existing unsettling classical and orchestral pieces and dropped them in wherever he wanted your skin to crawl. There's a moment with strings that sound like they're being tortured rather than played, and it plays under something as ordinary as a boy on a tricycle going down a corridor. A boy. On a tricycle. That should not be frightening. It is deeply, personally frightening, and it's entirely the music's doing.
What gets me about that film's sound is that it never resolves. Most scores give you a little release, a breath, somewhere. This one just keeps you slightly unwell the entire time, which I think is the most honest thing horror can do, because that's what dread actually feels like. Not a jump. A low hum that doesn't stop. The Shining Blu-ray steelbook is worth having if you want to actually hear that properly and not have half of it swallowed by a tinny telly, which is a genuine crime against the sound design.
Why I still put these on with the lights off
I have, on more than one deeply questionable evening, put a horror score on with no film attached at all. Just the music, a strong coffee gone cold beside me, and the sort of silence in the flat that starts to feel like it's listening back. It sounds like a strange way to relax. It is a strange way to relax. But there's something about being frightened on my own terms, with a blanket and a mug and full control of the volume dial, that feels completely different to being frightened because a director decided it was time.
I think that's the actual appeal of a scary score away from its film. On screen, the music is doing a job, it's manipulating you towards a specific moment. On its own, in your own space, it's just atmosphere, and you get to decide what to do with it. Mostly what I do with it is wrap myself in something warm and pretend I'm not slightly on edge, which never, ever works, but I keep trying anyway.
Which horror soundtracks are worth listening to on their own?
If you want to actually test this theory on yourself, start with something you already know well and pay attention only to what the music is doing rather than what's happening on screen. Nosferatu's restored score has this same quality, an unease that sits under the silent picture like something breathing slowly. It's a completely different kind of horror to a modern jump scare, and it lasts a lot longer in your head afterwards, which I suppose is the whole point of a proper score. It's not there to make you flinch once. It's there to still be sitting in your chest the next morning while you're making toast and wondering why you feel unsettled for no reason at all.
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