There are many aspects that contribute to the creation of a work of horror. Design, atmosphere and the story heavily contribute to the creation of that eerie environment. While each of these things have their importance, I feel that the most necessary part of horror media is the music and sound design.
Music and sound give so much to the atmosphere of media, drawing that line between fiction and reality. There are many good examples of this throughout horror history, but I’d like to focus on how this is used in more modern horror works. One example being “The Walten Files,” a horror series on YouTube made by Martin Walls.
In this series, what makes it so haunting for me is its choice of music. It focuses on older music, distorting it to make it more eerie. Old music tends to lend a very creepy atmosphere to whatever it is accompanying, even if the song isn’t threatening.
To give an example, during the third episode of the series, there is a scene with the character Bon staring at the screen as the song “Daisy Bell” plays in the background. The unmoving, uncanny animatronic is already horrific enough to see, adding on the music makes it 10 times worse.
This can be seen in games too, such as “Little Nightmares.” In the game there is a scene where the player has to turn on a TV to distract an enemy named The Janitor. When the TV turns on, you are met with a loud, booming, 1940s-esque song and with a black and white video of a lady cooking.
Despite being a song completely made up for the game, just that old feeling manages to impact the player with the feeling of dread. When the song plays, The Janitor approaches and puts his ear to the TV to listen. As you make your way out of the room, the song is still audible the whole time, carrying this feeling of dread as you rush to make your way out of there.
When you turn a crank in order to set up a pathway to the next area, it suddenly alerts The Janitor. Now you are rushing as you hear his footsteps quickly getting louder and louder as the cheerfully eerie song continues to play from the TV. Still being able to hear the TV, despite being two rooms away, adds so much to the atmosphere of this scene and makes it one of my favorite scenes from this game.
Another game that accomplishes this feeling is “Five Nights at Freddy’s: Secret of the Mimic.” There are many parts in this game that scare me, from the speed of the enemies to the costumes littered around the location with body parts of technicians sticking out from them.
There is a secret part of the game that has the player going into a dark room underneath Edwin’s Costume Manor, the main location of the game. In this section, you have to navigate through to turn on the power and open a door within the middle of a giant, dark maze.
The area is extremely quiet and you get this odd feeling that something is down there with you, but you can’t see anything. As you proceed into the maze, though, you suddenly start to hear a loud voice singing a lullaby. When you go to inspect the area, you see a large, glowing moon face wandering around in the darkness.
When I went through this scene, just hearing the lullaby from the darkness was legit one of the creepiest things I’ve experienced in a while. Anytime it sounded close, I would start to panic in fear of getting caught by the Moon. Luckily, I managed to make it through with rarely getting caught, but still, it was a very unsettling experience the whole time.
Music doesn’t even have to accompany the atmosphere to add to the horror; just the sound effects alone can do that, like with “Silent Hill f.”
One of the monsters in this game detects the player through sound as it completely lacks a face, and they are always followed by the sound of swinging chains and loud footsteps. It is a horrifying experience wandering around and suddenly hearing them get closer and closer.
Without their great use of music and sound, I feel like it would ruin a lot of the atmosphere that makes these moments as great and as unsettling as they are. It makes me so happy to see these aspects being used so effectively in horror, and I can’t wait to see how people will find new ways to build upon them in future horror media.