Sounding the abject in contemporary horror scoring

Abstract

This article explores the use of noise in the scoring and sound design of recent horror soundtracks. Using case studies on Darling (Keating 2015), Crimson Peak (del Toro 2015) and the found-footage genre, the article argues that the noise is deliberately employed as a signifier of the abject. Drawing on Metz’s ideas of music, sound and speech as three distinct channels of communication, noise’s ability to move fluidly between these channels and to collapse them into a single sonic channel is identified as a key way in which noise transgresses boundaries and operates as both a symbolic and a concrete manifestation of horror.