I'm McGarris and this is post-mortem. When breaking down what makes a horror movie work or not,

it is easy to bypass one of its most important elements.

The script, the atmospheric lighting and lens choice, the cast, the visual and makeup effects,

the editorial approach are all important ingredients when leading the audience down that

dark path to their deepest fears.

But a particularly crucial piece of the puzzle is usually the last one to be locked in. The musical score. Music can make or

break a film. It can make a good movie of any genre great. Or it can take a mediocre or a crummy film and make it better. Or it can just

sit there in a puddle of its own lifeless blood. Film music is its pulse, and when the right film

and composer meet, magic happens. Movies are visceral,

experiential. Music may be mathematical on charts, but from its beginnings with the heartbeats of

prehistoric tribe members around the campfire, to the fantastic

digital samples and electronic oral creations that never existed in nature.

It amplifies our emotions, digs in deep to primal places that words and pictures cannot easily access.

Even when they were silent, movies always had a soundtrack.

In the pre-Vitophone days, score sheets were distributed with the films to the cinemas

and the music was performed live on giant warwitzer pipe organs in the most elegant big city theaters, or an out-of-tune old Steinway upright in the more

modest locations. They were, for the most part, consistent in that regard.

Tension is built as much through sound as through image. in that

in that regard. And in some ways even more.

Just as the storytelling tools of cinema have evolved over the years

to become a language of their own, so too has the metamorphosis of film music

led us to expect, or not, the traps being laid by the score. Some aspects of these are obvious, the loud discordant chord crashing onto the jump scare,

...