20 Essential Horror Soundtracks

After sharpening his metaphorical slasher knife on seminal flicks like North By Northwest, Citizen Kane, Vertigo, and dozens of others, Bernard Hermann went in for the kill with Psycho. After the release of Alfred Hitchcock’s now iconic thriller, horror music changed.

The use of muted strings add to the tension throughout the film, while the shrieking sounds during the infamous shower scene make for one of the most impactful uses of music in all of cinema. Beyond the masterfully built tension throughout, Hermann’s orchestral arrangements are also quite beautiful at times, making for a great listen with or without the film.

Besides penning on the most critical successful European jazz records of the 1960s, Astigmatic, Christopher Komeda worked as Roman Polanski‘s point man for all things horror. The Polish musician first scored more comedic ventures like Cul-De-Sac and The Fearless Vampire Killers, but earned the most notoriety for his chilling work for Rosemary’s Baby.

Where Psycho is known for its strings, Rosemary’s Baby‘s most iconic element is the human voice. Mia Farrow’s breathy vocals sing a somber lullaby, and the occult chanting used throughout adds a dimension to the soundtrack that many have emulated since. The score also uses avant-garde jazz compositions that are sure to keep you on the edge of your seat and make you feel like you are descending into madness.

The Jaws theme has become the blueprint for inspiring dread. Most impressive is the fact that it did so with a two-note alternating pattern. Simple at its core, its ability to signal impending doom is masterful. The rest of the score features many classic John Williams elements that balance suspense and adventure with the use of a full orchestra.

Williams leans heavy into sharp pulsations throughout the score, playing up the motif, and associating those dissonant pangs with the shark. Fans of Williams’ non-horror work will appreciate his more traditional, bouncy pieces like “Preparing The Cage,” and “Out To Sea,” which propel the the hunt forward and inspire memories of youth.

Innocence and evil — one cannot exist without the other. The Suspiria soundtrack, composed by Italian prog rock band Goblin, takes full advantage of this concept by intertwining the two early and often.

There’s groove, industrial passages, slapstick moments, shrill sound effects, and full on progressive greatness. It’s an amplification of everything low-budget, ’70s Italian horror films are: cheeky, a little creepy, and a lot of fun.

During Jerry Goldsmith’s prolific career, he worked on hundreds of productions, including several entries in the Star Trek film adaptations, parts of the Rambo series, and episodes of The Twilight Zone. In his life, he earned 18 Academy Award nominations, but he only won once for his work on The Omen.

Truly, The Omen is one of Goldsmith’s finest works in a sea of great material. Goldsmith excels in creating environments. Take “Ave Satani,” where choral voices sing Latin phrases over haunting strings, transporting the listener to an eerie black mass. Evocative, dramatic, and downright harrowing, the score for The Omen instills a sense of panic like few others.

John Carpenter is the hero of horror. He made the first Halloween with a shoestring budget. He co-wrote the script, directed the actors, and even composed the soundtrack. Halloween is an excellent example of how a synthesizer could be utilized for a divergent tone. It’s a trick Carpenter picked up from Italian Giallo soundtracks by the likes of Goblin.

Halloween‘s theme is one of the iconic in horror, nearly synonymous with the name. The icy piano pattern slithers forward like an unstoppable Michael Myers. Meanwhile, ominous strings elevate the tension toward terrifying heights. As horrifying as the masked murderer is, he surely owes some of his myth to the music.

The Phantasm soundtrack’s strength comes from its balance. Just as Don Coscarelli‘s cult sci-fi film teeters between terrifying and terrific, so do the sounds. Fred Myrow and Malcolm Seagrave bounce between dissonance and disco without shame. The result is an enjoyable listen, whether the actual source material is involved or not.

The piano in the main theme is incredibly memorable, almost paying homage to the pattern’s of Carpenter’s Halloween theme. Meanwhile the soundtrack’s funk and disco elements help move the score and film forward without ever veering too far into cheesy territory.

Esoteric and avant-garde, Goldsmith’s soundtack for Ridley Scott‘s Alien encapsulates the cosmic horror of the unknown. There’s little to do with melody here. Instead, the storied composer opts for silence, grinding, mechanical textures, and sound effects.

Goldsmith pushes his orchestra far into left-field, with violent string sweeps, flute flourishes, and striking percussion. While it may not be great background music, Goldsmith’s score is a challenging, pioneering approach that showed how far composers are able to go to mimic the mysterious creatures on screen.

There’s certainly traces of influence from Psycho and Jaws throughout the Friday the 13th soundtrack, but composer Harry Manfredini had a few original tricks up his sleeve. One of the most iconic elements of the score are the “ki ki ki, ma ma ma” whispers used throughout.

By cutting up the words kill and mommy and using a tape delay effect, the whispering was meant to echo the voices that Jason Voorhees’ mother was hearing in her head. Watching the movie or spinning the soundtrack will get those whispers lodged in the listener’s head for days.

Never has music so beautiful been paired with such a perverse movie. The juxtaposition of the senses — one harsh and disturbing, the other soft and oddly comforting — is what makes Cannibal Holocaust and Riz Ortolani‘s accompanying score so unnerving.

The free-flowing and often upbeat tracks directly parody the carnage happening on screen. There is always something slightly off with the deep, fuzzy synth sounds, making for a dissonant listen on its own.

Famously, much of the music synth pioneers Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind went unused for The Shining. The music Stanley Kubrick stuck with, though, “Main Title (The Shining)” and “Rocky Mountains” is masterful. The huge, looming track that blasts as the family drives through rockies foreshadow’s the massive, empty Overlook Hotel’s dark past.

For the rest of the film, Kubrick selected already existing works, mostly from European composers such as Krzysztof Penderecki and György Ligeti. Most the selections are atonal, orchestral drones, lending themselves well to empty, spacious settings.

Fabio Frizzi scored multiple films directed by Lucio Fulci, including Zombi 2, Contraband, and City of the Living Dead, but The Beyond (also known as L’Aldilàh) has endured as one of the pair’s finest collaborations.

Frizzi’s score has it all – elements of prog rock, funky basslines, and creepy keyboards that all come together to create something that is melancholy but also full of melody. This one fits somewhere between the aforementioned soundtracks for The Omen and Suspiria, but provides its own terrifying twists on the classic horror score formula.

Eraserhead might not strictly be considered a horror film, but this surrealist psychological creeper is guaranteed to give you the chills. Director, actor, and composer, David Lynch played a strong role in creating the soundtrack to the film. To work alongside him, Lynch once again tapped sound designer Alan R. Spelt, continuing a long partnership that would last through films like The Elephant Man, Dune, and Blue Velvet.

Lynch and Splet chose to prioritize into noise and ambiance rather than traditional horror tropes. “Side A” and “Side B” are cavernous. Each featuring field recordings, wind-like whooshes and emptiness. Even “In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator Song),” which features smoky vocals and a more traditional song structure, is packed with room reverb and devolves back into wind as it closes.

For The Thing, potentially his most critically-acclaimed work, John Carpenter let go of the compositional reigns. Instead, the director chose to hand them to Italian composer Ennio Morricone. Morricone brough the whole orchestra with him to score the icy landscapes present in the film.

Much of the music features high-pitched melodies played on the strings or organ, creating a prickly, cold atmosphere. On “Containment,” he sends the string players into a frenzy, having them pluck their instruments at increasing speeds, mimicking a crawling spider. It’s a perfect match for the desolate  landscape that dominates The Thing. If you’re looking for omnipresent, ambiguous ethereality, give this one a spin.

Berlin-school superstars Tangerine Dream’s use of microtonal synth pitch changes prevails throughout the entire recording. Fans of the group’s early work, like Alpha Centauri, Phaedra, and Rubycon, will find familiarity in the icy, slow moving passages.

Where The Keep excels most, though, is when Tangerine Dream blend in choral vocals with their reflective synths, specifically on “Puer Natus Est Nobis (Gloria).” The beauty of the soundtrack matches the aesthetics of the film, making it a well-developed score for an otherwise bizarre narrative.

Many 1980s horror scores relied on synthesizers to create an eerie atmosphere without breaking the bank. Today, many of them sound dated. However, Charles Bernstein’s score for A Nightmare On Elm Street that continues to feel timeless.

The soundtrack’s use of music box melodies and playground rhymes elevate Freddy Krueger’s crimes to disturbing heights, while the dream-like quality of the synth textures further add to the terror of a dream-dwelling killer.

After Coil’s “bowel-churning” Hellraiser score was rejected by the film’s producers, Christopher Young was hired to compose a more classical-leaning set of chilling tracks. Young moved away from Coil’s synth-centric approach and focused on orchestral pieces with ominous synth textures woven in.

The soundtrack’s blend of sweeping romance and dissonance captures the film’s explorations of pleasure and pain so perfectly that vivid visions of the Cenobites will almost certainly enter the listener’s mind moment the needle drops on this soundtrack.

Haunting vocals backed by cautious, optimistic melodies make up the main structure that runs through the Candyman soundtrack. Phillip Glass leans into minimalist background here. Throughout the now-classic score, simple vocal, bell, and piano patterns pulse together, creating complex, ancient sounding web.

The album is not dissimilar to tracks on Nils Fram’s All Melody, especially songs like “Cabrini Green.” The haunted voices of the chorus slowly creep down your spine. Candyman is an urban horror story that roils and builds, and it features a more than complementary soundtrack.

For the 2010 sci-fi horror thriller, Beyond the Black Rainbow, composer Sinoia Caves taps into the spirits of 1970s and ’80s synth scores, while also utilizes modern production techniques, creating something that honors the past but pushes still pushes the genre forward.

The dramatic ebbs and flows and the immersive yet soothing qualities of the various synth layers make this score essential listening for anyone interested in mind-altering electronic music.

After scoring for beloved indie games like Fez, Shoot Many Robots, and Monsters Ate My Birthday Cake, Richard Vreeland, also known as Disasterpeace, nailed his first forray into film music with It Follows. For the film, the composer brought his most utilized trick: taking bit-crushed digital synth sounds and cranking up the darkness.

The juxtaposition of the senses — one harsh and disturbing, the other soft and oddly comforting — is what makes this film so jarring. The free-flowing and often upbeat tracks directly parody the carnage happening on screen. There is always something slightly off with the deep, fuzzy synth sounds, making for a solid listen on its own.